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I’ve owned this scanner for two weeks and for the first week I could choose 8600F or WIA 8600F in applications like Photoshop and Acrobat.
It is the default for Scanner and Camera WizardA few days ago I was unable to select WIA 8600F as the scan choice and could no longer set preferences in Scanner Wizard. (An error occurred while setting scanner preferences)
Canon blames Windows, HP blames Canon and Microsoft Knowledge Base hasn’t helped yet.
In Acrobat I can choose WIA 8600F but I receive message an unrecoverable error has occurred.
The only major change to the system recently is an upgrade Windows Media Player 11… And this issue started very close to that time frame.
Any advice would be very appreciated.
Jeff,
This is interesting! I’m also using XP on an IBM ThinkCentre, with a recently-acquired Canoscan 8400F; I doubt the software architecture will be very different. And yet mine has only ever offered one data source (the true TWAIN one, without the WIA prefix).
The strange thing is, I have been experimenting with disabling WIA recently, for reasons that you can read about in my recent thread on this forum: “Weird interaction between TWAIN and WIA DSs for same scanner”. Now that ought not to affect the Canon at all, since it doesn’t offer a WIA data source – but it does – in a variety of ways that I haven’t documented systematically, not least because for the most part they are not reproducible. Suffice to say that I have come to the conclusion that for the Canon to work properly, the WIA service needs to be enabled – even though it doesn’t offer a WIA data source.
It sounds like an appeal to Canon Tech support is in order. They have been no help at all so far, but they ought to be able to say whether the Canoscan 8400F and 8600F are supposed to offer both TWAIN and WIA data sources, or just the former. In fact, I’ll do it right now.
I would have copied it to you, but no email address in your profile, so instead I have appended a copy of the email I sent to canon_support@techteam.com.
Andy
Dear Canon tech support,Please see the following link:
http://www.twainforum.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1545
relating to WIA-related problems with Canoscan scanners under Windows XP.
I recently acquired a Canoscan 8600F. In my experience, most scanners under Windows XP will offer two data sources: a TWAIN one and a WIA one (same name, with WIA- prefixed). My Canon only offers me the TWAIN one – but I have found that nonetheless, it only works properly if I have the WIA service enabled. It shouldn’t make any difference!
Jeff, on the other hand, has a Canonscan 8400F, which originally offered both data sources, but recently developed problems associated with the WIA data source.
My question is: are these scanners supposed to offer both data sources, or only one? They are such similar models I imagine both should behave the same in that respect. In other words: it seems like either Jeff or I ended up with a bad installation originally, but who is it?
@Jeff L wrote:
FYI Canon’s Scan Gear software does show the WIA Canoscan 8600 option in their help section.
That reminds me, I haven’t had any reply from Canon yet – I’ve just chased them. But maybe there is a difference between the two scanners, then? I can’t find any reference to WIA in the user manual for the 8400F.
Another week, another studious ignoring by Canon. I’ve just rattled their cage for a third time (via website this time; previously I recycled an email address from which I had received a reply to a previous support query).
Have you made any progress?
Andy
A daft question, probably, but …have you checked that the WIA service is enabled? even if it is, it might be worth disabling and re-enabling it. Disabling and re-enabling seems to cure a variety of situations of type It-Used-To-Work-Before-And-Now-It-Doesn’t …
Start – Control Panel – Administrative Tools – Services. Find and double-click “Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)”. You need to check on “Startup type” and “Service status”. They should be “Automatic” and “Started” respectively.
If they aren’t, make them so, and reboot.
If they are, I would stop the service, then change start-up type to Disabled, then reboot; then change start-up type to Automatic, and reboot again.
Tell us what you found, what you did, and what difference (if any) it made!
Good luck.
Andy
Hi Jeff,
I finally got an answer back from Canon – very interesting – here is what they had to say. So not 100% unequivocal – it’s possible but unlikely that your scanner might have a WIA driver.
From my POV, the interesting new information is that WIA is used to monitor for button presses.
Andy
Thank you for your recent enquiry regarding your Canon product.Please be advised Canon stand-alone scanners use a TWAIN driver. In some cases a regional Canon company may also make a WIA driver available. However, this is not the case often since WIA has limitations which apply to scanning resolutions and not being able to scan film / negative.
The WIA service is used together with other services to monitor button presses from a scanner in Windows XP. This is the replacement for the still image monitor found in Windows 2000.
If you occasional see the scanner as a WIA device in an application then this is most likely an issue with the application being used. We advise you always use the TWAIN listing.
How to make compatible with Linux?
No idea! Never had anything to do with Linux – sorry 🙁