Just shoot me now

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I can’t get my HP Scanjet scanner to work. Ever since downloading and installing Internet Explorer 7 (WHY DID I DO THAT???) late this afternoon my scanner has refused to function. I tried everything I could think of, then called HP customer support in early evening.

It’s quarter of 3:00 a.m. now. I’ve been on the phone with three different reps for most of the last several hours. We’ve rung all kinds of changes on the beast, including ripping out IE7 (which, it appears, is incompatible with the HP Scanjet 5590 drivers), and nothing worked. Bless them, all three CSRs were endlessly patient and helpful (and spoke clearly understandable English despite being outsource Indians), and the last wanted to call me back when she returns on her next shift to keep trying – this after more than an hour straight on the phone with me, and trying (and failing) to rope in a senior tech when nothing in her capacious bag of tricks worked. I did have to pay since my scanner is eleven days (!!) out of warranty, but it was only 30 bucks, and I chewed through way more of their time than that.

I’ve lost count of how many reboots we waited through. How many system restores to a time before IE7 were tried. More stratagems. More, more, more. Nothing, nothing, nothing worked.

And yes, I managed to stay civil, even pleasant, throughout my dealings with the HP folks. It’s not their fault I’m teetering on the cliff’s edge of a red-faced screaming stuff-flinging fit. If I had enough strength left to indulge in one.

I’m done for. Whether or not the HP poobahs can fix it tomorrow, I’ll have to run out first thing to Staples to buy another scanner. With two expedite jobs tomorrow I know of for sure, and maybe a third, plus regular work – done and needing to be proofed – that will have to be PDFed and emailed out, I can’t wait and hope the problem will be quickly resolved. Not after seeing such a variety of possible fixes flop.

Gah.

DEATH TO INTERNET EXPLORER! LONG LIVE FIREFOX!

:: staggers off to bed, weeping desolately ::

2

I love my IE7. I can now print the entire web page without fiddling with it.

3

Bang! :stuck_out_tongue:

4

Pc Load Letter

5

I didn’t even try to get the HP Scanjet working this morning. Just headed out to Staples and bought a new scanner based on the recommendation of a knowledgeable colleague. So how’d it go?

Sigh. What should have been an easy, no-brainer install was… well, actually the install was no problem, but getting the scanner to work the way I wanted it to? Bloody stumbling trial and error, interspersed with bouts of screaming frustration and yet more rebootings of the system, even though I was reading the manual (which is actually rather easy to follow for such things). Finally got it doing what I want, though it’s not so transparently easy as my old scanner. Can’t scan as many pages in one go with this one as the HP Scanjet, either. Oh, well, I’m back in business, which is what really counts. And the noise it makes isn’t quite as annoying as the old one. Has its own set of quirks, though.

If you’re interested, it’s a Xerox DocuMate 510. Comes with Adobe Acrobat 4.0 as part of its suite of software, also something called Textbridge Pro, which looks like being a useful document management and manipulation tool.

I need a drink. But I have to work, so it’ll be another cuppa coffee instead.

6

I have nothing to offer but my deepest sympathy. I’ve been in “Microsoft hates Adobe” hell for a week or so. If Office is working, then none of my Adobe products will launch, and vice versa. This is AFTER a clean system reinstall after the first Office installation went awry. Arrrgh!

7

So it was, that, upon installing the new and regrettably fussy Xerox scanner, I sadly packaged up the old HP Scanjet, resolved to find it a new home through Freecycle. I hadn’t been able to find the original installation disc, so had downloaded the entire suite of software from HP during my struggles, and burned it to a CD.

Before posting the scanner for freecycling, I decided to see whether what I’d downloaded would actually install the software. So I popped the disc into the tower and launched the setup exe.

Behold! It cheerfully and swiftly uninstalled all the software that had refused to depart before! The Windows installer cheerfully and promptly installed the scanning software!

Mirabile dictu! I feverishly unpacked the scanner, hooked it up, and and clicked on the scan icon.

IT WORKED.

Oh, I had to go into Settings and restore all my scan-for-PDF parameters from the defaults that produce a uselessly huge file. But it’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!! :smiley:

Funny thing is, I’d disconnected the Scanjet during the attempts to fix it – or had I? Yes, I’d pulled the power plug, but I discovered while removing it from my computer desk that I’d unplugged, not the USB cable as I’d thought, but another cable that goes to a bit of hardware for processing photo negatives. So perhaps, all along, if I’d just unplugged the correct cable, the uninstall/reinstall would have worked the first time… :smack:

Sigh. Anyway, my trusty if occasionally quirky scanner is restored to me. I shall continue to keep the other scanner set up as a backup.

Life Is Good. :slight_smile:

Oh, and still: DEATH TO MICROSOFT! :mad:

8

I have an HP multi-function printer/scanner, and the software is absolute garbage. It has horrible memory leaks, so that it sometimes has more than 1 GB of memory allocated, and frequently freezes Explorer, such that I have to kill the HP process to get control of my machine back. I learned long ago that I have to disable it if I connect to our office VPN, because the driver will immediately lock up. I hold my breath after every software update, hoping against hope that finally, HP will fix it so that I can reliably use the full features of this otherwise good product.

I’m a bit puzzled as to how IE7 could suddenly break your scanner software, unless the add-on software used hooks into the browser for some reason. There’s no component of IE that overlaps with a normal scanner/TWAIN driver.

9

Time to re-install IE7!

10

PC Load Letter?!? What the FUCK does that mean?!?

Seriously, though. I noticed on microsofts web site there’s a patch to undo some of the inadvertent “enhancements” wrought by IE7. Might be woth checking out.

11

You wouldn’t hit a man with glasses, would ya…? :smiley:

12

DEATH TO PONDER STIBBONS!!! :mad:

Actually, the auto-update “feature” on my system has some version or other of IE (I think version 6) working again, but for whatever reason it isn’t stalling out the scanner now.

And Count Blucher: being a glasses-wearer myself, no, not normally, but after the untold hours of insane frustration I’ve experienced? Don’t tempt me. :wink: