mustek UB plus scanner

echo

it's a few years old and hardly been used-and has always been temperamental.i re-installed it a few months back and it took me a whole day.it's not been used for a few weeks and i've gone to scan and the damn direct scan icon has the dreaded red cross across it.nothing has been moved,everything is plugged in ok and i'm just wondering what the hell i can do cos it's driving me nuts.doesn't need a new driver btw.

Nilrem

Does it show up properly in device manager?

I had a couple of similar make cheapy scanners a while back, and one of them developed a fault that sounds similar - it turned out the PSU for the scanner was playing up and wasn't supplying enough power for it (it had enough for windows to know something had been connected via usb, but not enough for it to work).
If you can try to unplug and double check the power connections (if the power cable is slightly dodgy it might not be making the connection properly if it's been knocked at all*).

If it's powered by USB try it in a different port, preferably without anything in the port next to it - one of my scanners is powered by usb (rather than a separate adaptor**) and is a bit picky about where it's plugged in (and what else is plugged in on the hub/port next to it).

It's also worth (if you've got an image editing programme installed) trying to access the scanner via the TWAIN input/driver rather than the "direct scan" or similar front ends.
Most scanners are twain compliant, but seem to have a little able to make things easier/largely automated - so sometimes you can scan via something like Paintshop Pro (import/scanner option) but not the scanners bundled application if it's become corrupted for some reason.



*A bit like when a pair of headphones start to go and you only get sound from one ear unless you fiddle with wire.

**Canon's LIDE series have several with only the USB cable, which works well but can be picky due to the limits of the USB spec (500ma current per port, and some ports don't quite deliver that).

echo

thanks for replying.i'll have a go when i get chance.it's plugged into the back of the tower case but not into a USB port.

echo

WELL.not with it these days.the cable that i'd checked was actually the monitor and the usb cable HAD come out the back