Win-10 (v20H2) Fax and Scan and HP2400 Scanner Issues

dw85745 · 29 Mar 2021

I recently solved an HP printer problem I was having which I originally blamed on Win-10.
Turned out the roller on the printer needed to be cleaned and for whatever reason Win-10 was receiving an "out of paper" flag that would cause the printed document to hang in the print spooler.

I mention this as "MAYBE" the following may also be some type of hardware tweak or minor cleaning issue rather than Win-10.

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Now the Scanner Issue
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Using Win-10 Fax and Scan.
I have a couple of things going on.

1) "Normally" I can scan 1 page. Then when I go to scan the 2nd page (sometimes the 3rd), the scanner hangs.
At this time I need a soft boot -- OR -- sometimes just being up task manager, and then cancelling
task manager (NOT the scan program) triggers the scanner to work.

2) 2nd problem -- Again sometimes when I scan a page I just get mostly white and then a big black smear.
Nothing legible or reflective of the document being scanned.

I have yet to get M$ troubleshooter to solve any problem on anything.

Anyone have any ideas how to troubleshoot this type of scanner issue?
For example is the scanner using the print spooler, WIA, etc. Any Reg keys I need to know about.
How about folders, or files (including dlls) that are used.? Where to start?

Berton · 29 Mar 2021

Your mention of Task Manager brings to mind an issue I've seen with a Browser where just opening TM allowed it to open a page, might be an issue with the memory/RAM in the computer or a program not clearing itself when closed. RAM is volatile, holds data only while it has power and rebooting/shutting down clears it, programs load part of themselves in RAM and should normally delete that data when closed.

dw85745 · 29 Mar 2021

Berton thanks for responding.

Not sure how to troubleshoot the RAM issue. Can physically pull the RAM and reseat or
use a Memory eval program -- however every time I've done that (NOT this issue) never turned up anything.

In regard to freeing memory, as I see it, the only way that memory would still be allocated is if the program is active -- or the OS thinks a program is active when it's not, (in the case of COM that may be possible if the counter did not get decremented--
BUT
in this case, Fax and Scan is active when task manager is just started and then cancelled .
Sadly invoking TM only works randomly to get the scan going.
Not ever sure where to start troubleshooting on this.