LaserSoft Imaging

I've been using Silverfaast for the last year or so on Mac 10.4 & 10.5. Lately I'm running 6.5.5r4

I've run into more than the usual share of bugs with your software -- I know how that goes since I'm a software developer. However, one bug I find particularly frustrating and I'm hoping you can suggest a work around.

Often I get myself into a situation where the scanner hangs or SilverFast stops responding. Usually I have to kill the Silverfast process, run the launcher again, and choose my scanner. Silverfast starts launching and promptly crashes. Nothing, short of rebooting the computer fixes the problem, e.g. power cycling the scanner, ejecting the negative holder.

Since I'm a developer I have my mac set up to attach to the debugger when an application dies -- surprisingly when Silverfast crashes I don't see the crash dialog I expect. I'm not sure how to explain this -- perhaps SilverFash exits without any error message and doesn't crash.

I suspected that SilverFast or the minolta driver has some "hung" daemon floating around. However, a careful review of all the running processes doesn't turn up anything obvious related to SilverFast or the scanner.

Any advice on a workaround would be appreciated. I'm also happy to help debug the problem for you if you're interested.

Dear Mr Anderson

if for whatever reason SilverFast crashed on a given scanning task, two things can hinder to restart the programme without running into further troubles.

(1)
This is most likely the source of the problem because of the scanner itself remained in an undefined state after the crash. Resetting it (turn power off, wait two to three seconds, power it on again) will help.

(2)
SilverFast's preferences files have been damaged and need to be deleted (while SF isn't running).

On a typical Windows XP installation, the SilverFast "Prefs" folder is to be found at:
C: \ Documents and Settings \ (your username) \ Application Data \ Lasersoft Imaging \ SilverFast \

If you haven't yet changed the standard setting of the Windows Explorer you won't see any folder "Application Data". You then want to open the folder options dialogue (from "Extras" the menu) and go to the "View" tab. There you can enable the Explorer to show you hidden and system files and folders as well as displaying the contents of system folders.

On a typical Mac OS X installation, the SilverFast "Prefs" folder is to be found at:
/ User / (your username) / Library / Preferences / LaserSoft Imaging / SilverFast /

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