When I attach and power-up our UMAX scanner (Astra 5400) or our Canon camera (Powershot A80) my PC fails to find the peripheral. This has happened repeatedly and even after re-installations of the driver software from the manufacturers CDs.
The PCs operating system is Windows 2000 Professional, Service Pack 4.
All suggestions gratefully received!
I have already performed the following checks and tests:
(a) both the scanner and the camera work with our Mac iBook.
(b) the connection cables are new and have been firmly pressed home.
(c) the USB ports of the PC are Enabled in the BIOS setting, and are working normally with two other USB devices a HP printer, and a synchronizing cradle for a Handspring palmtop device. (Both ports tested with both; also scanner/camera tested as sole device plugged in to any USB port.)
(d) the scanner and camera manufacturers support software has been reinstalled several times from the distribution CDs. (In the case of the UMAX s/ware, I have also downloaded an upgrade to Vistascan 7.82 from the CDs 7.75.)
(e) two sets of oem#.inf and oem#.pnf files were removed from the \WINNT\inf\ folder before one of the re-installs (a Canon suggestion).
(f) Windows Device Manager recognises each device (when powered-up and connected) as UMAX Scanner or Canon camera and reports This device is working properly. Re-installs of the UMAX/Canon software have been preceded by a Remove of the device using Device Manager. I have also Removed the device, then plugged it in freshly, and Windows has found it again, but this has not solved the problem.
(g) The Imaging program supplied with Windows fails to find the devices just as their own supplied applications (Vistascan, ZoomBrowser EX) fail to find them.
(h) \WINNT\twain_32.dll, \WINNT\twunk_32.exe have been checked and refreshed from the W2K distribution CD. There are no other files of these names on the system (apart from those in \WINNT\System32\dllcache\)
. [TWAIN appears to be the feature common to the scanner and camera, but not used by the other USB peripherals that are working correctly.]
(i) the copy of usbscan.sys reported as the scanner driver by Windows has been checked.
Note: the scanner and the camera both worked with the computer until about 10 days ago when (for no apparent reason, e.g. recent software changes, or any virus detectable by Norton) Windows slowed dramatically. The TWAIN peripheral problem was not the only new problem at one point the PC appeared also to lose the printer, until I reinstalled the printer driver software. The PC has since picked up most of its speed, but I have not been able to resolve the scanner/camera problem.
The slowing of the PC seemed to be traceable (thanks to help from ee postings) to heavy use of the CPU by the System process, and within that by ntoskrnl.exe. I have obtained from Microsoft and installed the hotfix mentioned in KB 841382 but this has not cured the scanner/camera problem. (Windows has been kept fully Updated.)
