Scanning over network

[Bill]

I think I'm having a senior moment (or day).

I need to scan a document onto a PC to send in an email. The scanner is not handy re the PC's.

The printer/scanner is connected over the network. It prints fine from the pc's on the network.

Try what I may, I can't seem to scan over the network into any application on any pc.

The Dell 1765 instructions have got me flummoxed, mainly referring to usb connections. I've installed a thing called Dell Quick Launch which has a scan button on it. "Clicking" this does nothing.

I've tried from W7 and W10 no difference.

Can anyone confirm whether what I am trying to do is likely to be possible?

[newshound]

I am sure it should be possible, I have a Brother all-in-one that prints and scans fine with only a wifi connection.

However I do find that some of my numerous network devices stop connecting from time to time. I have yet to find a decent "guide to networking" either as a book or an online resource that is not either too simple (Home Networking for Dummies is hopeless) or too difficult, assuming a relatively high level of starting knowledge.

There are lots of tools built into Windows: ping, arp, tracert, ipconfig, netstat to name but a few.

[spuorgelgoog]

A first glance suggests you need to set the Dell up with a server to upload the scanned file to, either FTP (eg if you have some FTP space on a webserver) or SMB on a local network.

Somewhere about page 260 in the manual.

Another option might be to scan to a USB pendrive plugged into the device, then take that to the computer.

Owain

[NY]

Bill, how do you initiate the scan? From a "Scan" button on the printer or from a "Scan" option in PC software? I've found that the latter is more reliable and less error prone. I wonder if it's worth first of all trying to get it to scan via USB (even if it means temporarily moving the printer/scanner into the room with the PCs) to prove that the scanner works at all, before reverting to network connection. And maybe remove and re-install the printer and scanner driver to re-make the connection between PC and printer via network.

One thing you may find (though if you can consistently print, it may not be an issue) is that most printer drivers assume that the printer is always on the same IP address, whereas routers assign IP addresses at random (eg in the order that devices first request an address after the router is rebooted). You may want to set the printer to a static (fixed) IP address instead of using DHCP, and make sure that the router's DHCP is set to exclude that address from the DHCP "scope" (pool of addresses from which IPs are allocated when a device requests one). Alternatively you may have a router which has "Address Reservation" whereby a specific device (identified by its MAC hardware address) is always allocated the same IP address by DHCP. All of that may well be a red herring since you can print reliably.

One word of warning: if you use the PING command from a CMD prompt on the PC, as in "PING 192.168.1.10" if that is the printer's IP address, you may find that you get no reply. Occasionally I find that some network devices work absolutely fine but for some perverse reason don't respond to pings. I wish I had a pound for every time I've said "can't ping the device so it must be faulty" and found after a lot of faffing around that it works perfectly apart from the diagnostic ping :-)

[Bill]

In message , newshound writes

Hang on.... I think I've got something going!

I found a menu in Photoshop that let me put in the IP address of the scanner, and it burst into life. I'll use it this way for now, as it's urgent I get copy invoices off to the "children" before they bankrupt me.

The Dell AIO device is the model with everything except wireless. The wifi section of the manual seems fuller than the ordinary networking part.

I, too, find networking in Windows a black art. Sometimes the printer appears in the list of networked devices, sometimes not. I use Scotties Lanscan often, but am totally confused by the way I have a workgroup with its own Master Browser, but the router sets itself up on its own workgroup and declares it is the master browser. I haven't found any way to change this yet.

Thanks.

[Bill]

Thanks - as I reported elsewhere, I've got it going.

I did try ftp to its server, but just got Connection Refused.

Not sure about smb - I thought this was set up, but, for example, Paint just has the scanner import greyed out.

Hadn't thought of the pendrive. Might try that sometime. Thanks.

[Bill]

Thanks. I've managed to get it working via Photoshop so all is OK.

I still don't know why other programs couldn't find it. For the record, ping works fine to it and it's set to a permanent IP address. I've reinstalled the software on both computers.

If I have time, I'll try to poke around and see what is going on in Photoshop that other programs don't do

[Iggy]

replying to Bill, Iggy wrote: See the bottom of page 247 in the manual (

you need to select the computer where the scan is going from the scanner. This and I presume you have Paperport or Dell Scan Center and the 1765 itself installed on the PC. If not, then you're snookered until you do.

[Brian Gaff]

Some scanners have two sorts of driver, one is the now old Twain and the other tends to be bespoke to the device, and I've had issues in the past where some software, seeing the twain driver have attempted to use that as default with the usual result of cannot find scanner or paper feed fault or sundry other strange errors or sulk modes.

Maybe Photoshop knows more about your scanner than you do, so to speak. Brian

[Bill]

Thanks for the reply. The printer came without the Paperport CD, unfortunately, and it can't be downloaded from the Dell site. Somewhere I have an old copy of Paperport, probably from the Windows 95 days, but I assumed it was too old. I also tried WSD, as shown on the subsequent pages of the manual, but, in spite of it being enabled on the scanner, it didn't appear on the machines across the network.

It seems there is a layer of obscurity that I have been unaware of in all this up to now. I suspect that if I identified a port on the IP address that connected to the scanner, rather than the printer, part of the device, I might be able to communicate with it directly.

Anyway, thanks again for the reply. Shame you are accessing this through that dubious hub interface rather than usenet itself, but it's good that you are here (wherever that may be). :-)

[Bill]

In message , Brian Gaff writes

Arrrgh, yes we are being taken over by machines or software. The older I get, the less I seem to know.

"Devices and Printers" shows the fax and printer bits of the Dell, but not the scanner, and it seems that none of the 2 other scanner aware applications I've tried seems to see the scanner over the network.

Photoshop seems to be using TWAIN. It says "Not Responding" while it's scanning. Just teasing, I suppose.

[Iggy]

replying to Bill, Iggy wrote: Been there. I'm glad you got it going with Photoshop.

[Chris Green]

It's perfectly possible to disallow ping (often done with the WAN side of routers). However I don't think I've ever come across device with a wired interface on my LAN that doesn't respond to ping.

[Tjoepstil]

there is no requirement to respond to ICMP packets, Its optional.

[whisky-dave]

Unless you want OCR, have you thought about taking a picture of the document with a smartphone or tablet, that is usualy good enough for alot of things.

[Tim Watts]

Yes - I think there is a standard for scanning over IP (I forget its name and "how standard" it actually is over different vendors).

If you have a smart printer (with a display and keypad) these usually support "scan by email", "sometimes scan to fileserver (SMB, NFS or FTP

- options vary a lot) and often the "Network scanner" mode. If you have a "black box" unit (without more than a couple of buttons) options tend to be limited, though sometimes it's worth pointing a web browser at the printer to see if it can be operated over the web.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

My Epson does using the supplied Epson software from any of my PCs.