ESS firewall suspected of disabling multofunction scanner

Here is my tale of woe.

I have a Canon Pixma MX850 multifunction printer/scanner/etc. accessed by ethernet network (i.e., both my computer and my printer are connected by cable to the network router). Before June 23, it worked properly on all functions.

On June 23, ESS self-installed the fouled-up version that cut off my internet access (actually, it cut off _all_ network access, inet and local). After several days of sweat, frustration, and occasional panic, I discovered a note on the ESET knowledgebase describing the internet problem and "fixed" it by uninstalling ESS version 3 and upgrading to ESS version 4.

So far, so good, but . . . now, the scanner on my Canon MX850 cannot communicate with the computer. Signals from the computer to the scanner get through: the scanner warms up, feeds the original, even moves the scan bar into position; but the scanner cannot send data to the computer: as soon as the scan begins, the process hangs, and eventually the receiving app stops with a "cannot connect with the scanner" message.

Looks like a firewall problem, and ESS is the only firewall I have enabled.

I have tried turning the firewall off, but that doesn't solve the problem. I am too old and ignorant to parse the firewall's rules, but I tend to doubt that that would help, if turning the whole blessed thing off doesn't help.

Any advice?

My ESS version is 4.0437.0
Firewall module is 1050 (20090625)
running under Vista Home Premium with SP1

Many thanks.

 

If disabling the firewall doesn't make any difference it must be something else that is preventing the printer from coimmunicating with the computer. Try disabling real-time protection just to see if that helps.

 

I would agree, except . . . the problem created by module 1047 could not be fixed by disabling the firewall--not on my computer, anyway. It required uninstallation of ESS altogether to get network access back.

In other words, sometimes fiddling with the settings is useless, if there is a bug iin the program.

 

Okay, ESS is cleared of responsibility for my Canon scanner problem.

I uninstalled ESS 4.0 completely, and the problem continued. Eventually, re-installing Canon's network driver fixed the problem. What caused the problem remains unknown, but ESS apparently was not the culprit.

However, ESS 4.0 dioesn't escape criticism. While it was installed, many processes ran much slower than before. I replaced 4.0 with version 3.0.684, and desired speed returned. I suppose that 4.0 was virus-checking more actions than 3.0 does, and I suppose I could tweak settings on 3.0 for greater security, but I need the speed . . . so version 4 stays off my system until I see more favorable reports than I am seeing now.