asked on

Why can't I scan over the network from Brother MFC-8840DN?

I have a Brother MFC-8840DN all-in-one connected to a small LAN. Several computers are setup to be recognized by the printer, i.e., they appear on the printer's list of "scan to" PCs. There are 2 ways to do network scanning with this setup. One is to select the software scan button on the computer, and the other is to press the scan button on the printer and tell it which PC to scan to. Basically this just tells the scanner what settings to use, i.e. color or B&W, file type, and where to save the resulting file. The problem is that since we recently switched to Small Business Server 2007, the computers that are running Windows XP cannot use the later method, while computers that are running Windows 2000 can. Both types of computer can scan using method one. When we used Windows 2000 Server all computers could use either method. I looks to me like there is some security setting that is causing the XP machines to reject the printer's request to connect to the PC. Everything looks nominal but when you press the "scan" button on the printer and the "connecting to PC" message appears, nothing happens until it just disappears after about a minute.

Any ideas what needs to be changed?

dcsdave

Can you re-run the scanner setup from CD on one of the XP boxes that it is now on the SBS network and see if scanning works after that?

Neale Williams

The SBS server had probably implemented a group policy relating to the windows firewall. Check the windows firewall setting on one of the Windows XP computers to see if file and printer sharing is allowed.
You may need to edit the group policy in Active Directory on the SBS server to open the firewall ports that you need.
Windows 2000 doesn't have the Windows firewall so this might explain it.

tomcahill

SBS 2008 will modify the Firewall, but you can still add exceptions. There must be some Brother software sitting on the machines that receives the scan signal. You should be able to add that program to the exceptions. Alternatively add UDP port 54925 to the exceptions to allow for the scanning to work.

check out this link:
http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/BSC/public/us/ca/en/faq/faq/000000/000100/000085/faq000185_002.html?reg=us&c=ca&lang=en&prod=mfc8840dn_all&Cat=8

There is a patch as well that is supposed to fix this problem.

If you have a lot of machines to work on for this then I suggest you use the UDP method and set that exception using Group Policy.

tomcahill

sorry, you also need TCP 137

mvpharm

ASKER

Windows firewall is enabled, but there is no file and print sharing setting there. Under network connections however, file and print sharing is enabled.

Can you give me a little lesson on editing the group policy on the SBS. I have not found any setting that looks promising.

Thanks

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

tomcahill

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

tomcahill

I put both TCP and UDP for each because the Brother documentation was a little weird.

mvpharm

ASKER

Thank you, you get the points. I actually only needed to add the UDP 54925 to the local firewall exceptions list to get the scanning to work. I only have a few machines so that was convenient. Thank you for the more general group policy answer.