Problems with old Canon scanner

fmuellerfmueller Auckland, NZ Icrontian
edited January 2009 in Hardware
I use my flatbed scanner very rarely. It's an old CanoScan N340P, which hangs on the serial port together with a HP LaserJet 4p. The printer plugs into the scanner and the scanner plugs into the computer. As I said, I use the scanner rarely, and when I just needed it I got an error message: 'printer port is used by another device'. The printer works fine, and I have tried the scanner both with the printer switched on and switched off. I have also de-installed the Canon software, and re-installed it again - still the same error message :grumble:

Does anybody have an idea what could be the problem?

Frank

Comments

  • trolltroll Windsor, Nova Scotia Icrontian
    edited January 2009
  • fmuellerfmueller Auckland, NZ Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    That though had occurred to me. If there are no other suggestions, that might well be the route I'll have to go, but I really don't even use the flatbed scanner once a year, and it seems a shame to throw out that Canon if it could be fixed. I wonder if I ever used it after upgrading from Windows 2000 Professional to XP, but I thought I did. If not, maybe that's the problem :-/
  • trolltroll Windsor, Nova Scotia Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Here is Cannon Support page for the N340P It has a driver and a possible fix for the port in use problem...

    http://www.canon.com.au/products/scanners/scanners_low_medium_volume/CanoScanN340P.aspx

    (It's hard to get rid of an good old scanner that you use rarely... I had the same problem with an HP... I got the LiDE20 a few years back and have never had a problem. It takes all it's power from the USB port... no brick no powercord etc.)
  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    I hate the older CanoScans. They've always been unreliable and crap out pretty easily from my experience. I haven't used an older one, but you kind of get what you pay for. I'm a fan of HP.
  • fmuellerfmueller Auckland, NZ Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Well, that scanner was the cheapest one in the store about 10 years ago when I needed a scanner. I was short on cash, and knew I wouldn't use it much, so I grabbed the sucker, and it has served me well to this day. I expect it to do so for many years to come because - hold on to your seats now! Wohoo - I solved the problem!

    :kneel:

    OK, here it comes. As I said, that scanners hangs on the same port as my HP LJ 4p printer - the old fashioned printer port with the huge plugs (I can never recall if that's parallel or serial) - with the scanner plugged into the computer and the printer plugged into the scanner.

    It turns out that my wife had send a huge print job, the printer ran out of paper, and my wife simply switched off the printer rather than doing anything about the problem. Now, the scanner usually runs fine regardless if the printer is switched on or off, but that print job in the waiting apparently blocked up the port. Once I switched on the printer and cleared the print queue, whop dido, the scanner worked again like new!

    Just for the record, this seems a fairly common problem with Canon scanners. I searched for the error code (0x801f0810) this morning, and found threads on various forums in English, German, and Dutch - all unresolved! I don't know if this is always the issue, but my advice if you receive that error code with your scanner would be, make sure everything is ok with your printer, and the print queue is empty!

    Greetings

    Frank
  • trolltroll Windsor, Nova Scotia Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Excellent!

    We always tend to look to the difficult sometimes and forget about the basics.
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