HP Scanner Woes

[Tannah]

I have this HP Scanjet 3400c scanner. what the problem is, when I install it on a computer using the latest drivers from HP. Just after the installing the driver everything is fine, then after I restart the computer my usb device comes up with unknowen USB device and I can no longer use the scanner.. the scanner is a USB scanner.
I have tested this on a windows 98 machine and a windows 2000 machine, they both have the same results.. can anyone give me an idea how I can fix this problem? or do I have to send the Scanner back RMA?
I am really at an loss here..

 

[rpbrown]

I am not sure if I remember this right but it seems I had the same problem with another person's scanner and I finally had to call HP tech. He had be delete a key in the registry and then reinstall the drives again. What OS are you using and have you tried deleting the drivers or device in the device manager and starting again. I think that you have to load the driver after it boots and the scanner must be on. Wish I knew more about your scanner. If it has a parallel port you may have to go to that until you can sort it out. I have a 7400c and had a 6200 which I could never get to work and did exactly the same thing you are having problems with. Sent it RMA back to HP and then ended up replacing it with the 7400c.

 

[Tannah]

Hmm a regestry key?
well the scanner is a dual port paralle and usb, I've tryed this on two seprate Computers a k62 350 running a usb card on windows 98se, and a P2 450 running windows 2000 using the intagrated USB controller.
The scanner has no shut off switch its automatic shutoff. yes I've tryed uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling them, I use regcleaner to go into the regesty and yank out any regestry enterys related to HP.
but it still does the same thing install drivers reboot, scanner shows up.. reboot again scanner comes up as unknowen USB device.
heres a lttle diffrence I've found between the computers, Windows 2000 computer if I unplug the scanner usb cable from the computer then plug it back in, it sees the scanner, with the win98se machine it when I unplug the USB cable and plug it back in it just comes up with unknowen USB device..

I'm really starting to get the impression that HP products are really bad, with the exception of the printers..

 

[Sketcher]

I run quite a few HP products in a corporate environment. Have many of the same issues that are posted.

HP Scanners and Printers are excellent products when the software installs properly. Uninstalling/Reinstalling drivers often does not solve the issues. HP software does not uninstall all of the HP registry entries properly - which results in not being able to install the software properly.

I used to manually delete the HP registry keys to allow a reinstall of the drivers to take - Now I run Ontrack's "Fix-it" utility which automatically cleans the registry. After any HP uninstall, run a registry cleaner and then reinstall the software/drivers. Works great for me.

Fix-it, WinRescue, RegCleaner, there are a lot of trial and shareware cleaners out there. I've found Fix-It to be the most versatile and effective for my application.

**Note: Always back up your registry before manually or automatically modifying your registry**