Epson RX640 Scanner... fails on user switch

[shellbryson]

Brand new out of the box RX640 3-in-1 printer. If I cold start my equally new Mac Pro, I can scan fine. Soon as I switch users the 2nd user gets a message that the scan monitor was unable to start the scanner. Switching back to my account again, and I can no longer scan. Restart, and I can repeat it all over again. Tried stripping the Epson driver off the machine, reinstalled, and it fails all over again. Tried with the latest drivers from Epson. Anyone got any ideas? The scanner is totally useless to me in this state, and I'm not a Mac guru so unsure what to try next.

 

[shellbryson]

Well I'll post a solution in case anyone searches )

The Epson drivers do NOT support fast user switching. Something to do with driver communication. If you LOG OFF the current user and log into a second user afresh, it's fine. Which is not a solution really...

VueScan is a good alternative program, if a tad expensive. It works fine and does not suffer this problem.

 

[dale.albiston]

have the same printer, though tied to a macbook pro, not had this issue but then I've not tried the fast user switch thing either.

one question about it though.. how do you set the print quality? e.g. 'draft' etc to avoid burning way too much ink when printing text..?

 

[shellbryson]

have the same printer, though tied to a macbook pro, not had this issue but then I've not tried the fast user switch thing either.

one question about it though.. how do you set the print quality? e.g. 'draft' etc to avoid burning way too much ink when printing text..?

Good question... not done any significant printing yet! I'll have a look and let you know.

 

[dale.albiston]

Good question... not done any significant printing yet! I'll have a look and let you know.

its looking like a driver issue, the printer indicates a somwhat old downloading now, i'll install it tonight and see what happens.

the standard windows trick of just using another driver results in a lot of blank sheets of paper, but no printing.. so i'm hoping this works, otherwise the whole thing may be going back as 'not fit for purpose' since a photo printer that *only* prints in photo mode is somewhat usless as well as expensive to run.

fingers crossed...

I had hoped a move to a mac would avoid this sort of rubbish.. good to know OEM suppliers can screw up *anything*, i looks like the driver shipped is for earlier versions of OSX, and has 'issues' with 10.4, making me wonder how well it will cope with 10.5....