Brother MFC3420C

[mrt]

Purchased a Brother MFC3420C all in one printer-fax-
scanner. Loaded software on a Sony Vaio RS420 computer
running XP. Connected MFC to PC. Printing and faxing
work fine. When I try to scan I'm given the following
message = "unable to initialize scanner". Device driver
tells me the device is there and working properly, yet no
programs will list the MFC as an option to use.
Connected my Sony laptop running ME to the MFC unit, and
ME recognizes and can access the scanner feature. Brother
has been unable to resolve the problem. Can you help? I
have downloaded the most recent drivers from the Brother
website and they do not help. Unit has been uninstalled
and re-installed multiple times.

 

[Stelios Koulouris]

Try to use a different USB port. Sometimes it helps.

 

[beeruby]

We bought a Brother MFC 3820CN.
Worked JUST FINE with an old Win 98 PC.
But would not work as NETWORKED(router) with a Win XP PC.
Finally got it to work as USB connection with the Win XP.
Waiting for Brother to call me back with help, which I do not expect t
receive.... hahahahahaha
BeeRub

beerub

 

[mrt]

Thanks for the response. I have 12 USB ports and a hub
with 6 ports. I've tried more than half of them. Nothing
works.

 

[mrt]

What did you do to get it to work as a USB connection?

 

[beeruby]

USB port:
Uninstalled all the Brother Software using the Win XP remover: Brothe
and PaperPort and printer.
Rebooted the PC without the USB cable connected.
Reinstalled the Software this time as a USB printer.
At the requested time connected the USB cable.
This time the Win 98 PC uses the printer from the network setup and th
Win XP PC from the USB port.

Brother Network support did call back:
Stepped thru a long long series of removals, including stuff in th
REGISTRY (Can't list coz was too long).
At the end A L L I S W E L L !!!!!
PRINTER WORKS FINE AS A NETWORK PRINTER: all functions are workin
fine. Brother does not support both USB & Network cables connected a
the same time, but may work fine after all.

Note: had to remove all previous software from an
HP printer that was interfering with scanner.

Happy go lucky,
BeeRub

beerub

 

[East Coast]

I got a Brother MFC-3820CN. I believe it is very much the same as the
3420C except it is a flat-bed. On the LAN (ethernet with Linksys
router, no central server) I tried to get it to scan over the network
to a Windows 98 SE. It was very odd, it acknowledged that it was
connected properly, since the SCAN TO button did make the right
program run on the Windows 98 SE system, but it would hang and not
scan. The scanner never scanned, it just said "Connecting to PC" on
the MFC display and then must have timed-out. This annoying problem
caused me to have to reboot the Windows 98 SE system each time. After
doing the uninstall and installs, including latest stuff from the
Brother web site, I decided perhaps it was their programs provided
somehow. So I went into Settings in the Camera and Scanner and did a
Test and it showed the scanner worked fine. So I then decided to
install an old copy of Adobe PhotoDeluxe and see if it would allow me
to do scans. I installed it, it worked! As a by-product, then Brother
software the Paperport showed the Brother MFC-3820CN as a scanner
device! So now I can scan across the LAN to Windows 98 SE.

The only other thing, is that the Brother MFC all-in-one (I think
that's what it is called) comes up, does the scan, but then exits when
it is done. I have not been able to locate on the hard disk where it
saves it, or if it even does save it. I was expecting it to call up
Paperport to do this there, but it doesn't. I can bring up Paperport
and manually scan into it by clicked on SCAN. Anyone have any ideas
about this? Or have this working? How should it really work?

I don't know if this is in the documentation, but I found out while
you can't do a PhotoCapture from the SmartMedia cards in the MFC
across the LAN, you can put the card in and then do an FTP to the IP
address of the MFC. You can then do a GET to get your JPEGs. However,
it doesn't support MGET for some reason. From UNIX, I'm thinking of
creating a shell script to do this, so it can do the multiple GETs.
Oh, and you can also TELNET into the MFC too for display some
settings. Looks like you could change them too, although I didn't mess
around with it.