LaserSoft Imaging

I'm new to SilverFast. I'm running a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 with an SF-210 on a new Mac Pro 2009 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon with Leopard 10.5.6. Thank you for picking up when Nikon quit!

When it works, SilverFast is quite splendid. Unfortunately, SilverFast will often hang in the middle of a batch scan. It does this if I'm doing something else in the background or if I'm not doing anything else.

Symptoms include:
- The thumbnail that shows you what is happening in the progress bar gets a random pattern of horizontal colored lines 1 pixel high.
- Sometimes, but usually not, I get the message "An error occurred at the start of the scanning process: media bumping." (My table is steady and not being bumped.)
- I cannot quit SilverFast. I cannot "force quit" SilverFast. If I power off the scanner, then I can force quit.
- Sometimes it scans 3, 4, 7 (pick a random number) of slides, then hangs. Other times, it scans many slides.

I do not own NIK software. I de-installed the PhotoShop plug-in that Nikon provided. (Even so, I'm not scanning from inside PhotoShop, I'm just batch scanning to disk.) I did not try to un-install any old Nikon drivers that might be around.

I don't know if this is your issue or Apple's. I hear rumors that Friday we will see Leopard 10.5.7 and "[it] is slated to fix a slew of networking, syncing and bluetooth issues."

[BTW - Kudos on your IT8 calibration process. That was amazingly easy and works well. Great stuff.]

Dear dickkaiser,

could you please tell me which version of SilverFast you are using ?
Please ensure that you use the SilverFast version 6.6.0r5 and with this strange crashes I would also recommend trashing the preferences of SilverFast.

Yes, I'm using Silverfast 6.6.0r5 from a CD. I will try deleting preferences, but this problem occurred shortly after I installed for the first time.

I tried scanning some negatives this weekend while I was doing a backup to an external USB disk. I never could get it to work while the backup was in progress. After the backup completed I tried again and it worked well.

I've attached an image of the progress dialog when the problem occurs.

Dear dickkaiser,

this seems to me as the scanner has to little bandwith I know the symptom from connecting Nikon Scanner to USB 1.1 sockets
Do you use a USB Hub where the harddrive and Scanner are connected to ?
I think you can workaround this problem by using both devices on different USB busses.

The scanner is connected directly to the computer via a USB port in the rear. The disk was connected directly via a USB in the front. If it was only during backup, it would not be an issue. Unfortunately, I see this when doing batch scans when I am not otherwise using the system. This is a brand new Mac Pro 2009 which only has USB 2. I saw that another user had a similar problem with Leopard when using Time machine for backup. Unfortunately, I see the issue even when I am not using the other USB ports. I see that 10.5.7 was released. I don't see any mention of USB improvements, but I'll give it a try.

Dear dickkaiser,

I think the problem is due to the fact that USB is a BUS System and the overall bandwidth is limited so I would that both Scanner and HDD are on the same USB bus. One thing to do would be changing the USB socket for the Scanner(just try all of them including the ones on the front) or if this does not help buy an additional USB controller for your MacPro.

Leopard 10.5.7 did not help. This problem occurs even when there is zero activity by other USB devices (not counting the mouse/keyboard). I tried switching to a different USB port. The problem still occurs. It seems to be worse when there are other activities and less common when only the scanner is running. I am also frequently seeing the message "An error occurred at the start of the scanning process."

Dear dickkaiser,

this behavior is very strange, could you please tell me if you could try it on another Mac ? or maybe you still got an OS X 10.4 partition on one of your HDDs partions you could boot into to see if the behaviour is any different.
I would also like as much information about your MacPro and the installed Soft and Hardware as you could provide, it would also be nice to get a silverfast logfile from you.
Has it ever been working fine ?

The latest version 6.6.1r1 seems to fix the problem! Thank you for the fast response! I haven't done a lot of scanning yet, but so far the problem is completely fixed. I've not had a problem since installing the update.

Dear Dickkaiser,

Glad the problem is now fixed. Thanks for your cooperation.

Cheers