Scanner problems

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ken147's picture
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Scanner problems

In our shop we use Epson Perfection 1670 scanners. in the last month they have all come down with the same problem. when you go to preview a document it comes up with a blank page for the image that has been scanned. and if you then scan the document. it saves it normally but when you open the saved picture it is just a blank image. I have tried the following things to fix the problem:

1) find firmware updates for the scanner. (couldn't find any)
2) find a newer version of the software for the scanner. (still the same problem)

The computers that we are using are:

1) Aluminum Intel iMacs
2) Power Mac G4 Quickslivers

I have also tried using a Power Mac G3 running Mac OS 9.2.2 and i have tried it on my computer which is a Power Mac G4 running Mac OS 9.2.2 and Mac OS X 10.1.3. Any help in fixing this problem would be much appreciated because we don't have any scanners and we are going to need them soon.

thanks in advance

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Does the scanner lamp light u

Does the scanner lamp light up when it's scanning? It's possible that the CCFL tube has simply burned out.

ken147's picture
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Lights

it does light up, all the sanners work fine it just they are...well...blind.

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Is the Scanning Light On.....

Ken,

Is the scanning light on during the preview and the actual scan?

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Re: Is the Scanning Light On.....

Ken,

Is the scanning light on during the preview and the actual scan?

yes the light is on for both the preview and the the actual scan.

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If All have the same problem....

Ken,

If all four computers are having the same problem, and the lights are on during preview or scan processes, then this leads me to believe that you are having connection problems. I assume that you have checked the cable between the scanner and whichever computer you are using as a server? What type of connection is it? USB? Which computer is it connected to? If the G4 MDD, is there a card of somekind installed?

A little info on the system goes a long way. Smile

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This is a really weird one. F

This is a really weird one. From your description, it sounds like you've gone through all the correct troubleshooting, including swapping computers and OS - which would also mean you'd be using a different version of the scanning software.

If it were just one scanner, then I'd point the finger to scanner hardware, but two scanners (or more? how many are there with this problem?) it seems too coincidental.

We've got some Epson 836XLs, and they've been rock-solid for a decade of heavy use. I've had one loose internal connection to repair and that's been it, so I've got a respect for Epson's scanning equipment (on that note...any recent changes to the humidity or temperature of your scanning area? It was just long, slow thermal differences that caused our scanner to stop).

Only other thing I can think of is some electrical trouble we had some years back with our RIPs. They kept crapping out, until we finally figured out the weekend cleaner was plugging his floor buffer into the same circuit, and the power fluctuations from this - and possibly his occasionally blowing the breaker and resetting it without telling anyone - were causing the damage.

Any chance you could monitor your AC voltage for a while to see if wall AC might be a cause? Could be the Epsons are more sensitive to spikes and dropouts than your other equipment.

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Yes, the way you describe it

Yes, the way you describe it is really too strange. Maybe you should give a detailed description of how many scanners and how they're all hooked up, and how the computers are hooked up together, and how they're all hooked up to the power source(s). Are all the scanners hooked up to the computers through USB?

I've got an Epson 1640SU hooked up to a Digital Audio via both SCSI and USB at the same time. I did that because it wasn't always recognized with just SCSI. It doesn't seem to have any problems being recognized this way and it still seems to have the transfer speed of SCSI. IIRC, there were times when I had software problems like you describe, but I think I solved them just with software upgrades. I do almost all my scanning on that scanner through Photoshop. Are you using only the Epson application, or are you scanning through another program too?

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Details

for software we are using the epson scanning software that came with it. but on the G4's we are scanning through Photoshop. there are three of them and they are all hooked through USB.

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Have you tried...

Ken,

I realize that you may have already tried this, but I'll ask anyway. Have you tried reloading your scanner software in all the computers?

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yep

yes i did, i even did a fresh install on one of the computers just to make sure that it wasn't anything there that was effecting it. but it didn't work.

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Just for Grins....

Ken,

Just for grins and giggles, have you tried taking one of the scanners to an outside of the office Mac and tried it out there?

I know its a long shot, but actually I'm running out of ideas. lol

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Do the scanners show up under

Do the scanners show up under Image Capture.app?

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To get this straight, there a

To get this straight, there are three scanners hooked up to various Macs, and the exact same problem happens with all three scanners on all the different machines and with different Mac OS's. When you run it in OS 9.2, you mean the machine is booted into 9.2, not running Classic in X, right? The only possibility that comes to mind is that there's a software conflict with one of your third party programs that you recently upgraded on all machines--I'm thinking something like anti-virus software. The only hitch in that theory, though, is the fact that it occurs in 9.2, as well, unless the conflicting program also functions in a booted 9.2., or an older version of the program for OS 9 still present was automatically upgraded along with the X upgrade.

One of the things I really like in Windows is that control panel that shows you what programs are installed on your machine and when they were installed and you can remove them with a simple couple clicks. I don't know, is there a similar utility in Macs? There should be a record of upgrades and updates in every system, including automatic ones. Then you could estimate the date when the problem started happening and correlate it with the date of an upgrade or update, and work from there.

Do you, by chance, have any Norton programs installed?

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hahahahaha

funny thing it only works with image capture. i have tried it on my on personal computer and it doesn't work. in OS 9 or OS 10.1.3

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I assume you've tried it on a

I assume you've tried it on an OS higher than 10.1.3 since you've tried it on an Intel Mac which probably has Tiger or Leopard, and you get the same result? And I hate to say this, but, 10.1.3? That's like...ew. What are you all doing hanging around with that old thing? Upgrading to Tiger might solve a lot more than just this problem, or at least to Panther.

I wasn't paying enough attention earlier--the 10.1.3 didn't catch my attention until now. I doubt the upgraded version of the Epson software is compatible with an OS that old. Most software written these days aren't compatible farther back than Panther, and a lot don't go back farther than Tiger.

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Fixed it!! :D

the most simplest thing solved the problem, we reinstalled the scanner software and now everything is now working!!!

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