The case of the disappearing scanner… we rejoin our intrepid detective as she struggles with yet another unexpected result:
Before I got the HP color inkjet printer/camera combo last summer, I had an HP scanner, with drivers installed to my computer. I accessed the scanner through IrfanView, a free utility Tom picked up that is great for resizing, cropping and other basic photo editing. IrfanView allows a person to scan things in batches, which is handy when processing a series of cards or other images, as I do for my business. shameless plug!
Today, I finished a couple of Artist Trading Cards (for more info on that, see Cedarseed‘s explanation) and wanted to record them, as these are “one-offs”, originals that won’t be reproduced. So naturally, I hooked the scanner up to my printer and…
nothing.
Apparently, when HP installed the drivers for the inkjet and camera, it overwrote or simply deleted the scanner software. insert grumpy face here Including the “hey! I’m over here” signal that usually allows me to tell the computer that I want to use something.
So since the drivers were quite large and would take a while to download and install (according to my resident tech-support-dude) I just put the scanner back and hooked it into the other computer.
Which also wanted to use newer software that didn’t have the intuitive interface that was part of the reason I got the scanner in the first place! sigh
Luckily, when I called up IrfanView on that computer, it found the right interface and I was able to scan the trading cards into the right file on the network.
So at this point, I need to find the right software, tell the software that is currently installed (called HP Image Zone) to NOT load automatically, and figure out how to get back the interface I prefer. Maybe those are all the same thing, at this point in the day, i am pretty tired!
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