[XEyedBear]

Should this post be in the Win Vista forum ?

This is a request for guidance on how to find the cause of an application hang rather than a direct solution (of course if you have that I would be most grateful).

I’m running two instances of Nikon Scan 4.0.3, running in Win Vista SP2 compatibility mode under Win 10, on two differently configured computers (both OS Version 10.0.19042.2.0.0.768.101; OS Build 19042.804; Version 20H2). On one computer, (a test system of limited CPU, RAM and HDD) it runs without an application fault. On the other computer, (the ‘production’ system, with lots of resources), the application hangs if there is any attempt to set the applications’ preferences.

My first idea is to see if there are differences in the services settings between the two computers but that seems to be an awful lot of work doing an ‘eyeball’ comparison, especially when switching the one monitor between the two systems. Is there any guidance on what services are most likely to be used by that application ? (The application was withdrawn by Nikon around 2007 so there is no service support for it).

What process should I follow – if it is possible – to determine what differences between the two Win 10 installations is causing the application failure?

The failures appear in the Event Viewer > Summary of Administration Events with ID 1002. The Event Properties window (General and Details) for a typical instance describes the Hang Type as ‘Cross Process’.

Looking at the Control Panel > > Security & Maintenance > Reliability Monitor > Application Failures shows Critical Events as: “Nikon Scan Application; Stopped Responding and was closed”. No Action is listed. The ‘Problem Details’ page for a sample event gives a lot of information under ‘Problem Signature’ . One entry says :

“Waiting on Application Name: Adobe CEF Helper.exe”

If I attempt to start this Application I am told it cannot run because file libcef.dll is not installed. I can find 4 instances of this file, all in the current path. Other Adobe apps which do depend on Adobe CEF Helper, like LightRoom, run without problem. Moreover, I can see Adobe CEF Helper running (4 instances as background processes) in Task Manager I have no idea why Nikon Scan – written long before Chromium was available – would be dependent on Adobe CEF helper. What is going wrong here?

 

[spunk.funk]

The 4.0.3 software is only for the Nikon 5000. For the Nikon 9000,
Try an older driver on the troubled machine https://www.nikonimgsupport.com/eu/BV_article?articleNo=000006470&configured=1&lang=en_GB#:~:text=Nikon Scan is Nikon's own proprietary software for,please follow the links for detailed compatibility information.

 

[XEyedBear]

The 4.0.3 software is only for the Nikon 5000. For the Nikon 9000,
Try an older driver on the troubled machine https://www.nikonimgsupport.com/eu/BV_article?articleNo=000006470&configured=1&lang=en_GB#:~:text=Nikon Scan is Nikon's own proprietary software for,please follow the links for detailed compatibility information.

With respect to your wide experience on this forum, I would like to disagree with you. On the URL which you have quoted it is possible to click on the 'Nikon Scan V4.0.3 - Windows Vista only' link, taking you to:

https://www.nikonimgsupport.com/eu/BV_article?lang=en_GB&articleNo=000043174

which specifically states (under the 'About this Software' heading) that V.4.0.3 supports the COOLSCAN V LS-50 ED - which is the model I am using.

 

[spunk.funk]

That is what it says, but if it ain't working, then try an older driver.

 

[XEyedBear]

That is what it says, but if it ain't working, then try an older driver.

All the application functions, aside from being able to modify application preferences, work as expected and produce the same result as running the application on my test system, in the absence of any driver modification. However, I have tried the oldest driver I can find (12/2009) but the issues with the application hang is still there. This doesn't surprise me as I cannot imagine there is a dependency on the device driver when trying to write to a data file using system services. The device driver deals only with those I/O operations which interface with the scanner hardware, surely ?

 

[XEyedBear]

All the application functions, aside from being able to modify application preferences, work as expected and produce the same result as running the application on my test system, in the absence of any driver modification. However, I have tried the oldest driver I can find (12/2009) but the issues with the application hang is still there. This doesn't surprise me as I cannot imagine there is a dependency on the device driver when trying to write to a data file using system services. The device driver deals only with those I/O operations which interface with the scanner hardware, surely ?

This topic can be closed now. I found the cause of the problem: Adobe, who were running software on my computer, phoning home without my permission and without my knowledge - essentially spy-ware. I hope that tools like 'malwarebytes' will, someday, start to identify and help eliminate all Adobe spyware from our computers.