Dell 968w won't scan on wired network

Question

I have a HP DC7800 running XP will all updates, service pack 3.

The Dell 968w AIO is attached via ethernet cable thru a switch and router to the network.

It has a static IP as does the PC. It is set to work on the wired network only.

I want to scan to a PDF.

I have it configured to scan to Adobe.

I cannot get it to scan with any consistency. There are several problems.

1. It takes forever to "download the scan applications" and returns to selecting the computer to scan to.

2. It scans one or two pages, says "Scanning complete" and then nothing appears in the PDF and it returns to the main printer menu.

I have removed and reinstalled all printer drivers with the latest off Dell's website. I have the latest .net framework and java.

Occasionally, after a fresh restart of the computer, it will scan one document, and then not all of it.

any ideas?

ct-esq · Accepted Answer

No, I think you are misunderstanding my earlier post. I added ABBYY, and Adobe, and now, ABBYY works fine, Adobe works fine - all the scanning programs work fine. The file size is not an issue. None of these things were the ultimate issue.

The problem was a memory leak in the rundll32.exe process kept the scanner from working properly. The process was consuming 50megs of memory. Some program or process, possibly including the Dell Printer Drivers - but I'm not sure, caused the memory leak. Now that I have killed rundll32.exe and allowed it to restart, all is well and scanning works flawlessly. Rundll32.exe now uses about 1.5 meg. That is a big difference.

The lesson, I think, is that the previously bloated Rundll32.exe process kept the scanner from talking to the dell driver software on my PC (or interfering therewith). The memory leak in the process was the culprit.

For those with a similar problem, and I've seen unresolved cases on these forums with similar problems, one answer could be solving the rundll32.exe memory leak. At this time, I don't know what was causing the leak, but I have reproduced the problems and killing the process solves it each time. To those still suffering with this problem, take a look at the memory used by rundll32.exe.

and good luck.

PudgyOne · Answer

ct-esq,

You said...

The Dell 968w AIO is attached via ethernet cable thru a switch and router to the network.

It has a static IP as does the PC. It is set to work on the wired network only.

This printer has a wireless adapter and can be used wirelessly. If not using the wireless adapter, it's usually connected with a USB cable.

Do you have any trouble printing?

Virus program and firewalls?

Did you try these tweaks?

Go to device manager(right click my computer, left click properties, left click hardware, left click device manager)

Go to the USB Controller section and click the + sign.

Go to each USB Root Hub and right click on it, left click properties, left click power management. Uncheck the box, allow computer to turn off this device to save power.

Restart your computer.

--------------------------------------

Go to device manager(right click my computer, left click properties, left click hardware, left click device manager). Click on Network and then right click on your wireless adapter, left click properties, power management. Uncheck the box, allow computer to turn off this device to save power.

Rick

PudgyOne · Answer

ct-esq,   There is a power management box for the ethernet cable port on your computer, also.     Rick

ct-esq · Answer

Rick

The same problem existed when using the printer over wireless. For a variety of reasons, the printer is now on a wired network. USB is also not an option. The printer comes with a 10/100 ethernet port. I assume that it is capable of scanning over a network.

It exhibited the same behavior over USB, but it seemed to lessen once I changed to wireless. When I moved, wireless was no longer an option.

Printing, copying and faxing all work without any difficulty.

I have Microsoft Security Essentials and Zone Alarm. The printer is in the trusted zone and all of the dell programs can bypass zone alarm.

I will try the tweaks you mentioned regarding USB but that seems useless as I don't connect over USB.

Lastly, My PC doesn't have a wireless adapter so I cannot disable it as you suggest.

From my reading of the forums, this is an issue with the printer and its software. There is some communication problem where the printer doesn't receive information back from the PC. This is either a virus/firewall issue or some other deeper program or OS conflict.

ct-esq · Answer

One more piece of info: It is adobe 9 pro extended, if that matters.

ct-esq · Answer

I've adjusted that setting and got one scan in. I had multiple pages on the feeder and it scanned one, opened in Adobe and then stopped.

I tried to scan the additional pages.

"Downloading" the scan application list went faster, but the printer menu hung once I selected the application and I had to reselect the program more than once.

On the third try I received an error message on the PC: "dldoafcn.exe encountered a problem and needs to close"

The error signature is:

AppName: dldoafcn.exe AppVer: 0.0.0.0 ModName: dldodrs.dll
ModVer: 0.1.25.0 Offset: 0001f564

This is the error report:

PudgyOne · Answer

ct-esq,

Do you have the OCR Program installed and activated? Start, all programs, ABBYY FineReader 6.0 Sprint, ABBYY FineReader 6.0 Sprint

Open and activate it.

If it's not there...

As for scanning, if you have the disk that came with the printer, then insert the Printer disk and stop it from running. Go to My Computer and double click on it. Look for the drive with the Dell disk in it. Right click on it, left click explore. Look for the OCR Folder. In the OCR Folder, there is an Abbyy Folder. right click on setup.exe, that's in the Abbyy Folder and left click run as administrator. This will install the OCR program.

If it's there, then you need to scan from the Dell All-In-One Center(might be Dell Imaging Toolbox on yours)

Try reading...

Update list of applications to send scans to

Rick

PudgyOne · Answer

ct-esq,

You added it to the list of applications to send scans to, then used the Dell AIO Center to scan, correct?

You're also saying it's creating a huge pdf, correct?

I have tried scanning to Open Office(similar to Microsoft Word, but FREE) and then export the document as a pdf.

Maybe you want to try using Simple OCR and see if it creates a smaller pdf.

Rick

ct-esq · Answer

Ok, I got it working, intermittently, with abbyy 6.0.

But that stopped pretty quickly.

Here is what I am onto now - i was killing the dldocoms, etc. process and getting them reloaded when I reopened the Dell AIO center. I noticed that my rundll32.exe process had swelled to 50,000k of memory.

I killed that process to restart it and it is maintaining 444k of usage and I'm having no trouble scanning to Abbyy or Acrobat!!!!!

Thus, it seems like a memory leak problem that is connected to the scan process. So, something in the Dell software is causing a rundll32.exe memory leak? what could that be? How can I fix that? Any ideas?

PudgyOne · Answer

ct-esq,   Glad you got it working! :emotion-21: Thanks for posting back.   Take care,     Rick

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Dell 968w won't scan on wired network

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