$50 dollars broke my Epson Stylus NX415 printer with scanner

[toomyg]

Here is a strange one I have an Epson Stylus NX415 printer with the scanner built in and Saturday 2/19/11 I was playing a round with the scanner on my printer I put a 50 dollar bill and went to scan it and it did a windows popped up saying something like it is illegal to print money and in the window was a link to the laws of counterfeiting money, I was not really making fake money just messing around but now my scanner don't work it will scan half way throw a document and stop and freeze my computer up till I turn printer off and back on. I removed the drivers for scanner and printer and reinstalled but no luck it still won't scan has this happened to anyone else or heard of it happening? if so is there a why to fix it?

this sucks and just warning anyone with a newer printer/scanner like this "Don't scan money on it"

[quartet-man]

Would maybe going back to a restore point work?

[David M]

I would call Epson and be honest about what you did. There may be some sort of lock or code you need to unlock the tool you use for your new enterprise. Just don't call the Secret Service asking for tech support.

[quartet-man]

I don't know, unless you can keep it anonymous, I think I'd rather replace it than get on a list of suspected counterfeiters.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Scary.

[glc]

I just did a little Googling, and it looks like this may really be a hardware lock that only Epson can unlock - and there's a good chance that they will contact authorities if you ask them.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Just buy another scanner, man. Epson just proved that you can't trust companies anymore (did they ever tell anyone that such locks were in place?); they might be very nice and "accept" that you acted in good faith, and then still ring the authorities.

Have peace of mind and get another multifunctional; Epson even, all other companies are most likely doing the same thing, so there's no reason to change.

[David M]

If you want anonymity, call from a phone booth or one of those cash cell phones that drug dealers use. You can give HP the model number but NOT the serial number which might possibly get traced back to you.

That's a good thing to know though...never copy currency on a copy machine, even if you are just experimenting and never intend on using the copy as currency. I have also always wondered how close it looks, but I sure as hell am never going to try it now.

[Nuclear Krusader]

It is companies' policy to ask for everything. I had a customer come to the shop who wanted to replace a dead PSU in his HP desktop. He rung HP and they asked for the serial number, fine, here it is, then started asking for all kinds of personal information, which he refused to give because, heck, "all I want to know is if you can sell me a power supply! This isn't warranty I'm asking for! I'm going to pay for this, just sell me the part, why do you need to 'verify' (know) all this info about me!?". Well, since he refused to give personal info, they refused to help him. He came to the shop and within 30 minutes walked out with his computer sporting a new PSU.

There is no such a thing as annoynymity anymore. In the case of Toomyg, he's lucky it's an Epson machine that "broke", with HP is even worse, what with their stupid HP Customer Participation Program that gets installed by default when you load the drivers for your device and all, who knows what kind of info it's sending HP over one's permanent connexion to the Internet?

[David M]

You just know they are using it for marketing for themselves and so they can also make money selling your personal information to people who pay for peoples personal information for resale to others.

Just don't buy anything HP since they behave like Facebook when all you need is a little help. Many of these companies privacy policies boils down to one word....None.

Just say no to personal information predators. There is no sense in making their lives easy.

[toomyg]

Yea I think I will scrap the scanner and just use the printer it works really good and just buy a scanner if I ever really need one, But it would have been nice if there was a warning of something about scanning money that it will disable the scanner or something

[toomyg]

Originally Posted by Nuclear Krusader Scary.

Yea I wonder now if there is something in the print/scan driver that will contact anyone cause of this? I'm not worried they can come here then maybe I can take there picture and print it off on the epson printer, LOL


I used too have a visioneer scanner (I know I didn't spell it right) that used too scan really good and clear but I had to throw it out cause no drivers for vista on up were supported

[Nuclear Krusader]

Visioneer's the right spelling. Yeah, lots of good hardware having to be chucked because the manufacturers are either out of business or won't write drivers for old devices. I almost threw away my LaserJet 1012 when I downgraded to Windows 7 because HP won't write drivers for it and the generic drivers that come with Windows suck. Fortunately, it's natively supported by Mac OS X, so it was saved from the dump. And it's a very good printer.

[glc]

I have an old Visioneer that still works great, but it's not even fully supported in XP, much less Vista or 7. I have it connected to an old Win2K box to use it.

[kilgoretrout]

Have you tried your Epson Stylus on another box? Also, there are linux drivers available for your Epson if you want to experiment and conclusively determine if this is a firmware lock:

[SOLVED] Ubuntu and Epson Stylus (NX-415) - Ubuntu Forums

[toomyg]

Originally Posted by kilgoretrout Have you tried your Epson Stylus on another box? Also, there are linux drivers available for your Epson if you want to experiment and conclusively determine if this is a firmware lock: [SOLVED] Ubuntu and Epson Stylus (NX-415) - Ubuntu Forums

Well I fell stupid but still wonder cause I have 2 laptops and there both windows (win7 and win xp) the printer works on them but NOW my desktop is Vista home and it don't work unless I plug printer into PCI card thats got 4 USB 2.0 ports on it and it works fine but my desktop has 4 on board usb ports 2.0 built in and it will not work on any of them anymore but the other stuff plug into them work fine and my printer was always plugged into mother board ports but ofter the $50 scan I did it will no longer work like this so maybe it is still an issue with the scan I did, well maybe!

What do you all think?

[toomyg]

Originally Posted by glc I have an old Visioneer that still works great, but it's not even fully supported in XP, much less Vista or 7. I have it connected to an old Win2K box to use it.

Yea glc I wish I would have kept it now cause I got a couple old PC's kicken around it would have worked good on

[Nuclear Krusader]

Originally Posted by toomyg Well I fell stupid but still wonder cause I have 2 laptops and there both windows (win7 and win xp) the printer works on them but NOW my desktop is Vista home and it don't work unless I plug printer into PCI card thats got 4 USB 2.0 ports on it and it works fine but my desktop has 4 on board usb ports 2.0 built in and it will not work on any of them anymore but the other stuff plug into them work fine and my printer was always plugged into mother board ports but ofter the $50 scan I did it will no longer work like this so maybe it is still an issue with the scan I did, well maybe! What do you all think?

Hmm, your post is quite hard to read. So, essentially you've tried the scanner in other machines and still doesn't work? If so, then yes, there's a firmware lock that, well, locked it.

[toomyg]

Originally Posted by Nuclear Krusader Hmm, your post is quite hard to read. So, essentially you've tried the scanner in other machines and still doesn't work? If so, then yes, there's a firmware lock that, well, locked it.

Sorry how I worded that I'm sick from cold and feel like crap at the moment but it works only if I don't plug it into USB ports built into my computer like it always was before, It will work only on other computers and USB PCI card I have on my desktop

[Nuclear Krusader]

Then just don't plug it in those ports and continue using it.

This looks now like a registry lock.

[toomyg]

Originally Posted by Nuclear Krusader Then just don't plug it in those ports and continue using it.

Yea that what I'm doing now but still makes me wonder if that scan I did messed it up with those other USB ports somehow and what if I did a scan of a legit picture with money on it! Will it mess up again? LOL

[Nuclear Krusader]

I suspect this is a registry lock aimed at the base onboard USB drivers. Since the PCI card has its own drivers, it was not affected. You could verify this by scanning the bill again with the device attached to the PCI card... not!

I don't think you could mess it up by scanning a picture with money on it; methinks that it was some of the security features embedded in the bills that are invisible to the naked eye but detectable by imaging devices that triggered this. Since a picture of a bill would not record these, it'd be difficult for such a picture to cause this problem when trying to scan it.

[raftero]

Originally Posted by glc I have an old Visioneer that still works great, but it's not even fully supported in XP, much less Vista or 7. I have it connected to an old Win2K box to use it.

i found a visioneer 2400 at goodwill a year or so ago for $6, downloaded the drivers (don't remember from where) but it has worked very well on windows xp.

[David M]

The newer bills have RFID tags but your printer is older than when the tags were first put in the bills. The bills are also phosphorescent under UV light. I don't know how long that feature has been in bills.

[toomyg]

Just hope after finding out I can use it in other usb ports I didn't wast everyones time on here!

[Force Flow]

As far as I knew, scans of currency were prevented at the software level, rather than firmware/hardware level.

This "feature" got recognition when Adobe Photoshop CS (version 8) prevented you from working with files having a significant portion of a detailed image of currency. Paint Shop Pro had a similar restriction at that time as well. Photoshop CS2 and later will supposedly scan, open, and edit, but not print.

Supposedly, this is how the currency is recognized: http://www.labnol.org/internet/print...hotoshop/7094/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

I've heard of some designers who specifically work with money in advertisements keep a copy of photoshop 7 around to bypass the issue.

[David M]

I remember reading somewhere that advertisers etc can show bills in advertisements as long as they do not show the entire face of the bill. I'm not sure how true that is but I have noticed that they never show the entire face.

[toomyg]

Originally Posted by Nuclear Krusader I suspect this is a registry lock aimed at the base onboard USB drivers. Since the PCI card has its own drivers, it was not affected. You could verify this by scanning the bill again with the device attached to the PCI card... not! I don't think you could mess it up by scanning a picture with money on it; methinks that it was some of the security features embedded in the bills that are invisible to the naked eye but detectable by imaging devices that triggered this. Since a picture of a bill would not record these, it'd be difficult for such a picture to cause this problem when trying to scan it.

Yea Nuclear Krusader I will get right on that and test other 4 USB ports to see if that happens again if I scan a $50 bill.................. LOL

[toomyg]

I know on my old Visioneer scanner I used too scan $1 bills and put my kids faces in them it was pretty cool looking. But I'm not ever going too ever try this again ever ever ever again