HP Officejet 3620 Scanner won't connect, Printer works fine

Update:

I tried total removal of HP software and drivers, and allowing Windows to use its own drivers instead, and same results. I tried this on two machines, both Win10x64, though had the most recent updates and one had been offline and is about 2 weeks behind in updates, but it didn't matter.

I then tried the advice on some of the HP forum pages about this issue, not with this model printer but the same issue. There were two flavors of the same process, which basically involved using various utilities to wipe everything HP from system and reinstalling the software, and no dice. Same result.

No one else has any ideas?

Any thought about whether this might be something that will come in a Windows update so I should just wait a bit since using the scanner is not urgent right now? Clearly HP scanners and Win 10 are not getting along, I am not the only one experiencing problems nor is this the only model... but that doesn't always mean that they're working to fix it...

Maybe the Windows own scanner driver is the problem. Even if you run the scanner setup, Windows may replace the "old" scanner driver with a "newer" from Windows Update which is not compatible. You can try installing the HP software again. Then extract the installation files to a folder, open Device Manager and try to manually update the scanner driver with the one from the installation folder, just to make sure. See if your problem is fixed...

It could also be something else. I have encountered some MFPs that had problem printing when installing the HP drivers. The job went to the queue and then disappeared (supposedly send to the printer) but nothing was printed. The printer wouldn't even notice I was sending it jobs. No matter what I tried, I could not make it print, and guess what? Printer and Scanner Doctor didn't find any problems and the most annoying part, its test page (from Doctor) printed OK! So I decided to download a different version of the driver from HP (the first was the full bundle the other was some special light version, don't remember exactly). I attempted to install it WITHOUT removing the full version. Midway it discovered some configuration errors and fixed them. Then I could uninstall the second driver and the printer worked fine with the original full-pack driver! Some software bugs can drive you crazy!

So if you can find a different driver for your MFP it is not bad idea to try installing. It might fix any bugs and make the scanner work.

Hi spapakons, thank for the suggestions. Unfortunately, no dice.

When I go in through Device Manager I can find four different drivers listed as available. Two are from HP and they have the same name (not sure the difference) and two are from MS, and they are the "HP XXX Class" drivers. I tried with all four, and nothing changed. Then I checked that the ones as listed from HP were actually the ones in the install file by pointing directly to the unpacked installer, and sure enough they were, no difference. I thought I might as well try with the fax drivers as well, just in case, and again, nothing.

I had downloaded both the full installation and the basic installation options from HP, and tried with the drivers from both (which looked identical in file name and size, but just in case) and, yeah, they were identically useless.

The driver was last updated, according to the HP site, 16 October 2014, and that update was one to make it more Win 8.1 compatible. I can't find any older copies of it anywhere, though I will keep looking.

against my better judgment I did a live chat with HP Customer Service today and it was entirely useless, as I expected. After I explained the problem and everything I had done he asked for permission to share my screen and take over the system and then he went and checked all of the things I had just told him, finally concluding there was nothing he could do and he would alert senior IT about the issue. He also gave the excuse that they have a lot of products and upgrading the software with the release of new systems takes time. When I pointed out that people started reporting these errors at least as early as January (with Win 10 Insider builds) and the exact same issue had happened when people moved from Win7 to Win8 he just kind of said, 'Yeah, well, sorry about that."

::sigh::

I would love if anyone else has any ideas but I am betting that I will be scanner-less until either HP issues new drivers or MS issues an update that somehow resolves the issue.

Just a thought. Have you tried to change the USB cable?

I do have the HP software installed. That was the original route of attack, and only when that failed did I try Windows's options - it should be noted, too, that at least according to their settings and whatnot, the Windows default drivers should allow scanning to work without a problem. With just the Windows default drivers it is recognized as a scanner and it says that all drivers are up to date, and Windows Scan and Fax recognizes it and connects to it, but then fails to scan. It seems that the only drawback to the Windows drivers, and not the HP software, is that you cannot scan from the printer itself to the computer, you need to use the computer's interface.

I have tried various USB cables, and various USB ports.

Unfortunately, running it through my router is not a practical option for me, at the moment. The router is located quite a few solid concrete walls away (I am living in rural southern India, our house, like many others, are literally poured concrete) and it would take about 25 meters of Ethernet cable to go from the router, out the window and around back to me. Even that is a possibility, but our router itself is set to accept only certain MAC addresses, and I am not sure if I can get the printer to be accepted (probably, I just am not sure how). With that said, it is on my list of things to try. Folk with other models but the same problem said they found a work around that would allow them to use the scanner if they directly accessed the scanner through a web browser window (because the HP software and all Windows software still was ineffective at doing anything). However I need to get quite a few pieces into play, like 25 meters of cable and some free time, before experimenting in that direction. In the mean time I had already done a full uninstall and reinstall of the HP basic software.

There is one other thought I had... I had a problem on a different machine during the upgrade, an HP I think, the DVD drive disappeared. The solution had nothing to do with the DVD drivers but rather with the SATA controller. Basically, Windows did not use the HP driver, even though it was present, they used their own, and I had to manually download the driver, uninstall the Windows driver, and redirect the device to the HP driver, and the DVD drive appeared. Obviously this is not the same thing, as this is not governed by the SATA controller, but is there any other hardware device that this might depend upon which might need a driver update?

Yes, try updating your chipset drivers. Then USB ports might work better and make the scanner work.

I updated my chipset drivers, as well as everything in the System menu of Device Manager that was published by Intel (they all needed updating), then I uninstalled printer drivers / software, restarted, reinstalled printer software... and nothing.

I didn't see anything else in the Device Manager that looked like it might affect the scanner...

Back to square one, it seems.

You must first uninstall the printer software. Then go at Device Manager and click View->Show hidden devices to show Printers and Print queue. Then delete any remaining entry in printers and print queue and anywhere else. Next open Devices and printers and delete any entries still there. Restart the computer. At this point should be like installing the printer for the first time. If installation fails again, try the printer in another computer. If it is faulty, take it to service, if not, post again to see if we can help.