HP 3100 with winfax BSOD errors

[cameramonkey]

Ok, this is about to drive me insane.

I have a client that recently upgraded his office PC. Its a fairly simple setup. Bear in mind this worked for years without a glitch on his old setup running 98 and the then current versions of all the items below.

Here is what he has now:
Brand New Dell Dimension 4600 w/xp pro.
Symantec antivirus 2004
Winfax Pro 10.02
ACT! 6 (or whatever the current version was 4 mos back)
HP laserjet 3100 all in one (older parallel multifunction) with the most up to date drivers.

The user regularly receives multipage faxes (contracts, etc) that are printed out by the HP unit. As part of his routine, he marks up the docs, then opens winfax, chooses send from scanner, and proceeds to scan in the document for the return fax (he wants an electronic copy in winfax for his records). JUST as soon as you close the scanner interface, and the twain system starts to copy the pages into winfax, the system would BSOD with a stop 0x00000008 error. That’s usually a memory error, so we replaced the memory. No luck.

It seemed to work fine on faxes under 6 pages or so ( at this point in time)

We tinkered a bit, and found that if you disabled the HP monitoring software, it would reduce the amount of errors for a while. If you turned it on, it would ALWAYS crash. That’s why I believe it’s a printer/scanner driver issue.

We reinstalled the printer drivers. No luck. Reinstall winfax, no luck.

Upgraded to XP SP2. Now it gives us a Bad_pool_header (stop 0x19) at that same point in the process, and now it does it on almost all outbound faxes, no matter how many pages.

The only thing I can come up with is it’s a scanner driver issue since the printer was retired before xp came out, and they haven’t seemed to update the drivers since the 2000 version. I hate to tell him blindly to go out and spend $300 for a new all in one printer when that might not help. But since the error seems to be tied to device drivers, that’s the only way I can think of to change drivers.

The user is also reporting absolutely no other errors or problems of any kind. It only errors out when doing this specific task, and always at this exact stage of the process. Never any other time.

Anyone else have any ideas?

 

[mattjurado]

I think you hit the nail on the head...

Add 1 notoriously invasive software (winfax), to another (hp all in one software), and you're asking for instability. Winfax has never been a nice product. Have you checked HP's site for corporate drivers, so you can dump their monitoring software?

Matt J.

Please always take the time to backup any and all data before performing any actions suggested for ANY problem, regardless of how minor a change it might seem. Also test the backup to make sure it is intact.

 

[cameramonkey]

Yeah, I looked into it. the drivers are so old. that there is only one set... its business only, and it always includes the hp fax crap.

And to make matters worse, not only do they not have updated drivers, but you cant download ANY drivers. you have to order them on CD.

Now to thier credit, they pretty much only charge s&h, but still.


so the consensus is that this sounds like a printer/scanner driver issue, and to replace the printer?

 

[mattjurado]

Yes, but I would let them know, a newer printer might have similar issues! Winfax wasn't really desined for this configuration, it was originally designed for using a modem to fax. The other options that have been added over the years are just add-ons.

Matt J.

Please always take the time to backup any and all data before performing any actions suggested for ANY problem, regardless of how minor a change it might seem. Also test the backup to make sure it is intact.

 

[cameramonkey]

Well, I see your point. he still uses the modem to actually fax. he just uses the scanner on the fax machine to get the pages loaded.

I just find it odd that the old version worked flawlessly, then with either XP or the latest version of winfax, it "broke".

 

[mattjurado]

Yup, driver sets work differently.

Matt J.

Please always take the time to backup any and all data before performing any actions suggested for ANY problem, regardless of how minor a change it might seem. Also test the backup to make sure it is intact.