hp scanner problem (1 Viewer)

[Grady Reid]

Help! I'm at my wits end! I have a HP ScanJet 4300C. I have it hooked up to my Gateway laptop via USB. One day I try to start a scan using the scanner application (Precision Scan LTX 1.1). I app opens up and a window appears saying it warming-up the lamp- but the lamp never comes on. The window is on the screen until I close the app. I get the same results when I hit the "hot button" on the scanner. The scanner app opens up, but the lamp never comes on.
Now here's the kicker! I can use the copy function on the scanner. I can open up the application that will simply scan an item and spits it out on the printer. Lamp comes on- no problem. Unfortunately when I use that app to scan something, I can't save it as a file.
I've tried removing and re-installing the Precision Scan app, but I get the same results.
FYI- the scanner is out of warrenty and HP wanted $25 just to say hello to tech support. I'm trying to do this on my own.
I'm guessing its the scanner software. Is there other software I can use other than Precision Scan to run the scanner? Can this be fixed? Will my scanner scan to file ever again?

 

[Mike LS]

You can use most any image editing program with TWAIN support to initiate a scan. Only problem is that they don't have their own scanning software (all I've used anyway) so they use the HP scanning utility to get the scan.
I use PhotoShop and it goes through the HP ScanJet utility to aquire the scan, then dumps it into PhotoShop.

What OS are you using?

 

[Grady Reid]

I'm using Windows 98.

 

[Mike LS]

I had some problems with a similar HP scanner on Win98. It never really did work the way it was supposed to. I had to kind of rig it.

First off, I uninstalled all the HP software. Drivers and all, then re-ran the installation using the custom setup. I only installed the needed files (no image editing software, just drivers and capture software) and used a 3rd party editing software to scan to.

Granted, this is a different situation, but it worked for me to use as little HP software as possible.

My problems were solved when I finally got a new PC running Win 2000. It had drivers for the scanner so I never had to install anything, Windows loaded what I needed and it's worked great since then.

My overall opinion is that I don't like HP scanners. They're nice when they work correctly, but I've heard other stories of them doing really weird things for seemingly no reason.

 

[JoshR]

have you checked to see if HP offers an updated version of the software, or a patch?