Another HP Rant

I was still a few applications short of a full compliment after the reformat of New Year’s Day. Tonight I wanted to scan something, so I decided to install the software suite that came with my HP4850 scanner. Usually I just install the TWAIN driver, but I wanted to do a little OCR work, so I opted for the full boat. Turns out when I say full boat, that is close, it is more like one of those Indonesian ferries that are forever capsizing from overloading. We got an application to control the scanner, a thing that wants to be my multimedia gallery, some other stuff, including Microsoft.NET, all told over 500 Meg.

When I plugged in the scanner it wasn’t recognized. Huh? Turned it off and back on again. Still no joy. It used to work. I tried plugging it into a different USB port on the PC. Nothing. I uninstalled the software and reloaded it. Still unrecognized. I tried to manually install the drivers and it still said that the thing was an unrecognized piece of hardware on my USB controller. I tried using a different USB cable and that didn’t help either.

Don’t ask me why I tried it, or more importantly why it worked, but I decided to plug the scanner into the cheapo 4-port USB hub I have and DING, new hardware found, HP 4850 Scanner. Now all I have to do is to get XP to stop reminding me that the device might work faster if it is plugged into a USB 2.0 port…