ScanJet 4200 carriage problems

[tknofile]

Welcome brave nerds of the world;

I am elbow deep in a clients HP Scanjet 4200c (USB). The client transorted it without the carriage locked and now gets an error message "The scanner carriage is locked..." when trying to scan even though the carriage is most definitely unlocked at this point. There is no sign of physical damage inside the unit. My guess is that the carriage needs to be "re-homed" or the drive belt retensioned but I can't find any information on working on this thing anywhere. I've tried all the obvious (manually freeing up the carriage, etc.).

I know calling HP is the obvious thing to do, but I've been down this road before and I'm pretty sure they'll offer to depot this $99.00 scanner for a mere $160.00. I'm no Einstein but I can do the math on that one!!!

 

[ANFPS26]

I had one of these and I had nothing but trouble with it. There used to be a help forum on HP's support site for this scanner. Thousands of people wrote in the forum about problems they had. I used to practically live in that forum to keep the scanner working. I'm sure you have done the obvious and engaged and unengaged the lock switch on the bottom. I used to have to lift the front of the scanner up about a foot and slam it down on the table to get it working again. Sometimes I would prop it up on it's rear to get it to initialize. I paid $199 for that thing and finally replaced it with a $30 dollar Visioneer that I bought at Big Lots. I would reccomend, if the "brogan maintenance" doesn't work, to replace it. It's an old scanner and there are a lot of cheap ones out there that are better. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing....."