Home › Forums › TWAIN Classic › State 5 is out of bounds (but not states 6 and 7)!?
- This topic has 5 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 18 years, 5 months ago by sparge.
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I apologize that this isn’t exactly on topic – really it’s a manufacturer issue – but since I’m getting nowhere slowly with them, and it’s definitely the most weird scanning problem I’ve come across yet, I thought I would share it here in the hope that someone can speculate on what the problem might be.
My Epson Perfection 2480 has suddenly decided that it is only going to work for applications that hide the DSUI 🙄 The other way round would be much less of a surprise …
It has been working fine for months, and I had even used it on the day it suddenly stopped doing so. This is what happened.
– I tried to use it, for the second time that day, from Adobe Photoshop, and after the EpsonScan splash screen, I got this error message (astonishingly accurate): “Could not complete the Import command because of a problem with the acquisition module interface”;
– I tried to use it with Kodak Imaging. After the splash screen, it closed itself down;
– then I tried using the scanner driver as a stand-alone application. I waved its splash screen briefly at me, and then … nothing;
– finally I tried to probe the matter with Spike’s Twirl application. Getting into state 4 was no problem. When I tried to enable the DS (showing the UI), however, I got the error message “Fatal error in TWAIN device driver”.What possessed me even to try the next step I don’t know, except possibly trying to get as much information as possible. I started up one of my own applications that hides the DSUI. It worked fine! 😯 So did all the other such applications at my disposal that I tried, including Twirl when I asked it to hide the DSUI instead.
So it appears that there is a problem specifically to do with being in state 5. I’d really love to hear some informed guesswork on this one!
Andy
@sparge wrote:
So it appears that there is a problem specifically to do with being in state 5. I’d really love to hear some informed guesswork on this one!
My guess would be that the DS GUI uses some ActiveX component that is no longer working due to some recent update to your computer. Or there are some settings files or registry settings that have been corrupted. You might be able to fix it if you re-install the driver or if you can find a way to eradicate any driver specfic presets from your computer.
Jon Harju
Hi Jon,
Thanks for your thoughts. I don’t remotely understand how or why applications hook into ActiveX and so this (type of) explanation hadn’t occurred to me. I should have said, but didn’t, that I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the scanner and software, without any success. On the second occasion, I even followed the Epson-approved version of how to do this, including connecting the scanner direct to the PC rather than via the USB hub. No dice.
Is ActiveX anything to do with DirectX? There is a tool that can interrogate the state of health of DirectX on a PC; I wonder if there is anything similar for ActiveX? Sounds like a good line of Google enquiry.
“eradicate any driver specific presets from your computer”
Not sure what you mean by this. Can you elaborate a wee bit please?
Andy
@sparge wrote:
Is ActiveX anything to do with DirectX? There is a tool that can interrogate the state of health of DirectX on a PC; I wonder if there is anything similar for ActiveX? Sounds like a good line of Google enquiry.
ActiveX is just a way of integrating 3rd party software into the user interface of any application. Depending on how the TWAIN driver was put together, it may or may not use any ActiveX controls.
Since these are typically 3rd party components, it is possible that some other software upgrade can cause problems.
Unfortunately there is no easy way for you to know what may or may not have happened here, except try to think of what kinds of changes you have made to your system since it was last working properly. Any un-related updates you applied or software you have installed.
In the end such a list might offer some clues, though ultimately the scanner manufacturer is the only one that can confirm or deny any potential conflicts for you.
@sparge wrote:
“eradicate any driver specific presets from your computer”
Not sure what you mean by this. Can you elaborate a wee bit please?
I was referring to any settings files or registry entries that are not typically touched by the un-install programs. Usually session settings are stored and restored from either a configuration file or a registry section and they often survive the process of re-installing. If unexpected values are poorly handled by the driver in question, then it might be helpful to manually delete anything you find left over after an uninstall.
I have no specifics for you, since the implementation of this is completely up to the manufacturer.
Jon Harju
@JonHarju wrote:
@sparge wrote:
“eradicate any driver specific presets from your computer”
Not sure what you mean by this. Can you elaborate a wee bit please?
I was referring to any settings files or registry entries that are not typically touched by the un-install programs. Usually session settings are stored and restored from either a configuration file or a registry section and they often survive the process of re-installing. If unexpected values are poorly handled by the driver in question, then it might be helpful to manually delete anything you find left over after an uninstall.
I have no specifics for you, since the implementation of this is completely up to the manufacturer.
Jon Harju
Right, I get you now. Yes, I’ve done this many times before (when I’ve had scanners conflicting), but not yet on this occasion (with only one scanner misbehaving). I hope it won’t come to that. I’ve just fired up “ActiveX Manager”, which I found and downloaded after your original suggestion, and it tells me that I have four controls missing. Three of them have the same file location – cic.dll – and the fourth does not have a file location listed (which seems a little odd; all the registered ones live in a dll). cic.dll is present, in system32, so it definitely looks as though something I installed recently overwrote the proper version with an older version. Now to figure out how to get the original version back. I’ll report back. Thanks for your help!
Andy
All sorted now 😀 The ActiveX thing was a red herring (might well have been a symptom, but certainly was not a cause). The dll in question was up-to-date, and the components in question just needed to be re-registered, but that made no difference.
What did make the difference in the end, was open registry surgery, to remove all the Epson scanner-related stuff that didn’t get removed by the uninstallation, and on this occasion was obviously the cause of the problem.
Thanks for the suggestions, everyone; I’m sure the ActiveX/GUI-related learning will come in useful in due course.
Andy
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