Latest upgrade to SFAI Takes very long to start

[Harry Putnam]

AFter upgrading to 6.4.4r2, on first start AI takes a very long time to start. It hangs at the `searching devices' screen for several minutes.

This is on a P4 with 3.2 Ghz and 4gb ram.

I guess it is searching everything on my computer which is quite extensive including networked drives and several USB devices.

What can I do about this lengthy pause before I can begin work?
The previous version didn't do this so apparently something has changed in regards to scanning devices.

I didn't time it but its more than 2 minutes. Enough to be a big pita.
I started AI before coming to this website and writing this comment.
It is still `searching devices' .

[LSI_Noack]

Dear Harry

you may want to try if deleting the prefs helps (while SF isn't running).

If not, is this the only imaging device (incl. other scanners, combo printer/faxes/scanners, webcams and digicams with webcam functionality, graphic tablets) connected.
If yes, disconnect and reboot. Might be a driver issue.

If this doesn't help, too, please contact support using the trouble report form. Thanks in advance :)

Best regards
Sonny Noack
- Manager Technical Support, LaserSoft Imaging AG -

[Harry Putnam]

Dear Harry

you may want to try if deleting the prefs helps (while SF isn't running).

If not, is this the only imaging device (incl. other scanners, combo printer/faxes/scanners, webcams and digicams with webcam functionality, graphic tablets) connected.
If yes, disconnect and reboot. Might be a driver issue.

OK tried the prefs deletion with no change.. And I did try disconnecting a wacom tabet (but not the other devices listed below. I didn't try booting without some of the connected devices yet because I have had them connecected for a very long time and never saw this before in AI.

I have 1 multifunction HP unit that prints/scans/copy/fax
An Epson 4870 scanner (AI is taylored for it)
A wacom tablet
A mass storage device (300gb external drive)
All are connected via USB.

I also have 4 large HDD on this machine, 2 SATA and 2IDE, all are around 200 GB and one CD/DVD rom.

Before emailing an official Support message, my purpose in posting here was to find out if others have seen this problem and if any known fixes are available.

Further info since last report is:
.. AI will finally come up in normal working order. I timed it and it took
.. 5 minutes and 37 seconds.

Would this be true if a driver problem were responsible?

Gack... I should have tried all you suggested before posting I guess because when I did disconnect more stuff it turned out to be the HP
copy/scan/print/fax unit causing the hefty delay.

But still this is puzzling becasue that unit has been connected to this machine (along with the epson and wacom) for a very long time. And it needs to stay connected that way if possible.

Any ideas how to get this all to work without the monsterous delay?

[degrub]

if you have not already done this, put the scanner on a separate USB port if possible by itself. You could also try turning the power off on the HP unit.

[LSI_Noack]

Dear Harry

as degrub suggested the reason can very well be the drivers of the Hewlett-Packard multi-purpose printer/scan/fax combo device.
I've already experienced this a couple of times with other customers.

The problem is that (a) drivers don't let go of a Windows virtual device driver (here: USBSCAN.SYS) and (b) Windows isn't designed to cope with uncooperative drivers.
More information on this issue:

For more information about this topic you might want to have a look at the article "You Cannot Simultaneously Use Multiple USB Scanners in Windows XP" (article ID 324756 in the Microsoft knowledge base):
http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;324756

The very same holds true for multiple firewire scanning devices:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;830987
http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;894956
This time it is the 1394SCAN.SYS which cannot be loaded multiple times.

After a reboot, the drivers of the disconnected drivers won't get loaded and you might experience the problem is gone.
You then can try to - one device a at given system boot - to reconnect the device until you catch the culprit.

Best regards
Sonny Noack
- Manager Technical Support, LaserSoft Imaging AG -

[RAG]

Harry,

I can confirm that my HP Officejet caused SilverFast startup problems. Since I had the ability to connect to the HP via my home network, and only needed the print capabilities from my computer I un-installed the HP software and then installed the network print driver (only) version. If I need to send a FAX I do that from another computer.

[LSI_Noack]

This is actually how my home office is setup, too: HP 7550 on a network printserver with printer driver (from HP website) and Canon 8400 working flawlessly together in that way.
However, I never installed the full HP stuff from the CDROM, so I cannot tell whether this would have caused trouble with the Canon drivers.

Kind regards
Sonny Noack
- Manager Technical Support, LaserSoft Imaging AG -

[RAG]

In my case I know that HP has two versions of the print software, one that allows the use of all the Officejet features via the network and another that only allows printing. The concept of the first one is cool because you can put a document on the scanner and then select which computer will receive the scanned document.