Nikon 9000 freezes while scanning.

[scottyb70]

Hi,

Why does my Nikon keep freezing when I get part way into the scan. While I am scanning sometimes I am browsing the internet, and sometimes I just leave the whole computer alone and let the scanner scan without any other applications running. I scan at 4000 dpi with 8 times sampling, Digital Ice set at Light. This also happens when I use Nikon Scan

My computer is
ASROCK Z87 Extreme Board
Intel 4770k overclocked to 4.40 mhz
32MB ddr 3 Crucial Ram
Samsung SSD drive
EGVA GTX 780ti.

Running Vuescan in Windows 7 64bit.

 

[sevo]

First of all, undo the overclocking - I/O operations tend to be vulnerable to that, even more so when a near extinct legacy interface like Firewire is involved. 32MB RAM? Do you mean 32GB? Might be too big, again - the common desktop computer memory size today ranges between 4-16GB, the risk of being the only one with your configuration and hence the first to run into and report a bug increases past these thresholds.

 

[bobkatz]

Hello....your scanner worked before With no errors?.....
Did you change your scanner recently from the usb port it was connected?
Regards.

 

[scottyb70]

I meant 32GB.

Just purchased the scanner recently and only ran it on this computer. I worked fine without use Digital Ice.

 

[jarski]

Bad/outdated Windows drivers perhaps?

 

[EdwardKaraa]

There are too many reasons of course but sometimes it could be something very simple, like fluctuations in electricity. I used to have this problem frequently until I realized that for some strange reason it happened every time my fridge restarted. So I turned off my fridge every time I scanned. It never happened again 😀 True story 🙂

 

[sevo]

Bad/outdated Windows drivers perhaps?

There is no question of getting a good or current Windows driver. The drivers will be whatever there is bundled in Vuescan (at least a decade old, some OEM driver not intended for Nikon but low level enough to work with anything) or the hacked original Nikon driver (barely younger and officially incompatible with anything post Vista 32bit, even though it can be forced to install and works in many cases). Either do work for me, on a six year old Core i2 8GB Win7 64bit system - but YMMV, they might cease to do so in a system with more fancy motherboard, overclocked CPU or a rare configuration.

 

[scottyb70]

Well I did another scan and this happenend. I scanned at 4000 dpi, Infrared clean set at Light, 10 times sampling using Vuescan. When I went to 2000 dpi, it scanned perfect and there were no problems. The only thing I can think of is a memory issue? The Red started when the Scanner started to pause and the Rotating star showed up on VueScan.

 

[Particular]

When I scan color pos/negs in vuescan I save to a raw 64bit RGBI Tiff file (Output | Output With: Scan). I will then later re-process this huge file in vuescan, applying ICE and any other settings, and then saving out the file to my desired format (usually DNG). The processing is done in a batch later with the scanner off. It could also be done on a second faster computer.
The big advantage to doing this is that the computer is not processing the image while the scanner is working. The scan time, and the time handling film are greatly reduced.

In your case, something is clearly not happy between the computer and the scanner, so anything that will lighten the load and speed things up might help. I would also not rule out that the scanner needs service. I was told recently by Nikon in Merrick NY, that they do still service the coolscan 5000, and 9000, but not the older models.

 

[sevo]

Well I did another scan and this happenend. I scanned at 4000 dpi, Infrared clean set at Light, 10 times sampling using Vuescan. When I went to 2000 dpi, it scanned perfect and there were no problems. The only thing I can think of is a memory issue? The Red started when the Scanner started to pause and the Rotating star showed up on VueScan.

The red channel is complete, but less than a third of the blue and green ones had been integrated into the picture. As it is a single pass scanner, it is not as simple as the scanner failing half way into the scan - more as if the software had received none or invalid data for the two channels. It looks more like a driver problem than a interface problem - the latter ought to affect all three channels at the same time. If it is the scanner, it might be very trivial and low level, like the scan line cable or plug partially failing under tension - but it could also be a failure of the controller or memory inside the scanner.

 

[Sparrow]

Has that model got an external power-supply? if it has it might be worth just checking thats working correctly, quite by accident I put a meter on one of mine the other day (I was actually checking the meter was still working after a blast of mains voltage) ... it was fine, but the old 24v Minolta power supply was a few volts short and has a pronounced AC ripple, I don't suppose these things last forever ... I'm surprised its not been a problem

I recall having problems with one of those Ikea timer switches in an adjacent socket ... it or the low voltage lights it was switching would crash things

Out of interest why do you use so many sample passes? that must put a lot more stress on things ... and I've not really seen any advantage in the scan quality from multi-sampling

 

[DrTebi]

Your 32 GB memory is certainly not too much. It will, if anything, only help with the large amount of data you are scanning. Only if some memory is faulty, it could be a problem.

I have a similar system, just upgraded last week to a 4970 i7 and also 32 GB memory. I run Linux, scan with Vuescan, while I am running Windows XP in a virtualbox and edit the scans, all at the same time.

Seriously, I doubt that your "computer power" is the problem. If you would run a system monitor, like you can on Linux with just "top", you would see that the processor and memory are just laughing while your scanning, e.g. they are hardly working/being used.

The bottle neck is the firewire connection. I have had trouble with it as well (I use a Minolta Dimage Multi Pro scanner). I tried all kinds of things, four different computers from PowerPC over Macbook Pro to Linux and Windows. Same problem--the scan would crash at some random points.

What I have found to help, at least with Vuescan, is to delete all your Vuescan settings, and start over. It only takes a minute to reset all your Vuescan properties. This was suggested by another member here, and it worked. Since I have done that, Vuescan works fine again. I should add though, that I don't do multi-exposure scans, as I don't find that they help too much. But I still scan at the highest DPI, which is 4800 for 35mm, orr 3200 for MF.

 

[scottyb70]

I have a feeling it might be the FireWire connection. The card I am using only works when I connect the cable to the Firewire port that is on card inside the computer it won't work on the ports off of the back of the card. I have an older machine that I can try it on will see if that is the problem? I will use the Nikon card that came with the machine instead and that might solve the problem.