I can't find Autosize in ScanBar

By default, Autosize is not available as size selection in ScanBar for some scanners. The reason is that the built-in Autosize function in many scanner models is not as reliable as the "Detect page size and crop automatically"function in PixEdit. Instead you should therefore select Max size in ScanBar, and then enable "Detect page size and crop automatically" on the General tab in After Scanning in PixEdit.

To enable display of Autosize in Scanbar you need to change the following registry setting from "0" to "1" as shown below:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Techsoft\PixEdit7\EnableCanonAutoPageSize = 1

If you choose to use the scanner's internal Autosize function by changing this registry setting, you may still want to enable "Detect page size and crop automatically" on the General tab in After Scanning in PixEdit for maximum reliability.

How to start PixEdit as a service

For advanced PixEdit users and system integrators, please have a look at the following article from Microsoft:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/137890

In general, we don't recommend running PixEdit under a service. You will not be able to reconfigure PixEdit or correct possible errors when running in this mode as easy as when running PixEdit with a full user interface. However, if all you want is to let PixEdit's DocServer watch a number of folders for incoming documents, process them with predefined after-scan profiles and store the results elsewhere, starting and running PixEdit in this way may be acceptable. Possible process errors must in this case be handled by manipulating the “Not processed” folders. When reconfiguring profiles, you first need to stop the instance of PixEdit running under the service and then start PixEdit manually to reconfigure. Then stop the manual instance and restart PixEdit under the service to continue processing.

How to create a PixEdit log file

Summary

Hit F11, then right click the output window and check all options. Specify a log file name, for example pixeditlog.txt. Work as normal in PixEdit until you have logged the incident you want to diagnose. Then e-mail the log file to support@techsoft.no together with any additional information such as scanned files and/or descriptions you think may be relevant to solve the case.

Detailed description

PixEdit features logging capabilities. The log file capability is especially useful for diagnosing scanner problems and performance problems, as well as for debugging your own application using the COM programming interface in PixEdit. The following information is for advanced users, support personnel and programmers who write their own PixEdit based application. During logging, PixEdit displays and writes significant amounts of information to the output window. This activity may slow down the execution speed and logging should therefore not be used during normal document production.

Warning: Information produced during logging contains details about your system configuration, possible account names (but not passwords), IP addresses, hardware configuration, installed software and other types of information that may be regarded as confidential. If asked to provide log information to PixEdit support personnel or others outside your organization, you must first manually delete information in the log file you consider confidential.

To enable logging in PixEdit, hit the F11 key on your keyboard. The output window will open and start to log all PixEdit basic activity. To maximize the detail level, right click the output window and check all options. In order to log as much information about your scanner installation as possible, use Scan, Twain Advanced and then click Select source. Select your scanner from the list and then click OK.

By default, PixEdit will log activity and system information to the output window only. By right clicking the output window and selecting Save, you may save its content to file later.
In some cases however, you may want to log each generated information line directly to file. This option is useful in case you are diagnosing a PixEdit application crash, preventing you from saving the log later.

Error message when having more than 100 documents open at the same time

By default, Windows allows applications to use 10.000 so called GDI Objects. If you open more than about 100 documents at the same time, Windows may refuse to give more GDI objects to PixEdit. This situation will result in one or more error messages.

There is a way in Windows registry to allow more GDI Objects. Change the value

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\GDIProcessHandleQuota

from 10000 to 65500. More details from Microsoft at

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724291(VS.85).aspx

To further maximize available Windows resources, you may consider to increase HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\USERProcessHandleQuotato a maximum of 18.000. More information can be found at

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms725486(VS.85).aspx
 

These two changes will dramatically increase the maximum number of open documents before an error occurs. The PC must be rebooted before these changes take effect.

Related information here: PixEdit displays "Out of virtual memory"

Scanning performance and antivirus software

Important This article contains information that shows you how to help lower security settings or how to turn off security features on a computer. You can make these changes to work around a specific PixEdit performance problem. Before you make these changes, we recommend that you evaluate the risks that are associated with implementing this workaround in your particular environment. If you implement this workaround, take any appropriate additional steps to help protect your system.

Summary PixEdit does indeed drive scanners at its maximum rated speed on all resasonable modern office computers. However, some virus-scanning programs may slow down the data transfer between the scanner and computer, forcing PixEdit to wait for scanned pages to arrive.This article provides an overview of how to reconfigure virus-scanning programs that are known to affect PixEdit's document scanning performance.

Symptoms After having started the scanning process, the first document sheets are scanned at normal speed. After a few sheets however, the scanner starts to feed each sheet slower, or starts to introduce a pause between each scanned sheet. Typically, each pause is in the order of 1-5 seconds.

Reason The text file TWAIN.LOG, generated outside PixEdit's control by the twain driver,  is constantly updated by the twin driver and therefore frequently analyzed by antivirus programs during document scanning. The result is greatly reduced scanning performance.

Known antivirus programs that affects scanning performance

- Trend Office scan / Trend PC-Cillin / Trend Internet Security

- F-Secure 

- Norman Antivirus

Solution  Configure your antivirus program to exclude the file TWAIN.LOG from antivirus scanning. The exact procedure will vary, depending on the antivirus manufacturer. Please refer to the documentation following your antivirus program for details of how to exclude a file from antivirus scanning.

Techsoft is not aware of any security risks in connection with excluding TWAIN.LOG from antivirus scanning.
 

Older USB 1.0 devices

Older USB 1.0 devices connected to the PC may also affect scanning performance Connected USB 1.0 devices may force modern USB 2.0 interfaces to reduce transfer speed in order to be compatible with older equipment. If your USB 2.0 scanner is connected to the same USB hub as your USB 1.0 devices, scanning speed will suffer. You can verify this situation by clicking F11 in PixEdit to open the log window and check for any performance warnings.

PixEdit displays "Out of virtual memory"

This is normally caused by too many open documents at the same time, even if you have a lot of memory in your computer. Starting from version 7.8.10, you can have more documents open at the same time without making any changes to your computer. If you have an earlier version of PixEdit, you may consider upgrading your license to version 7.8.10 or later.

Starting from version 7.8.10, you can increase the maximum number of open documents even further by using the methods below:

Windows XP

In boot.ini, append the following statement to your boot specification: /3GB. More information can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx

Windows Vista

Click the Start button, then type "CMD" and hit enter. The command line prompt should open. Then type "bcdedit /set increaseuserva 3072" 
You need to reboot your computer before these statements take effect.

I get an Internal Error message during installation of PixEdit

You have an older version of PixEdit that must be uninstalled. Click Start button, Control Panel and choose Add/Remove programs. Scroll down to Techsoft PixEdit 7 and uninstall. Then start the installation of PixEdit again.

Missing files?

If you get an error regarding missing files on the distribution CD, please contact support@techsoft.no

Performance problems or Program Termination after extensive use

If you experience reduced PixEdit performance after extensive use on Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Microsoft Server Server 2003 , you need a patch from Microsoft.

The Microsoft hotfix is not available on the Techsoft web site, you must contact Microsoft locally to get the fix for your language. When contacting Microsoft, please request hotfix KB 319740.

If you don't want to install this patch from Microsoft, you must wait until XP Service Pack 3 becomes available or use the following workaround suggested by Microsoft:

Workaround

If this GDI leak is seriously degrading performance, you can turn off the new user interface theming in Windows XP. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. Click Appearance and Themes, and then click Display.
3. On the Themes tab of the Display Properties dialog box, click Windows Classic in the Theme list.
4. Click Apply, and then click OK.

For more information about this problem, please visit

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;319740

Error message: The ordinal <X> was not found in the DLL “MAPI32.DLL”

PixEdit 6.2 and later utilizes MAPI (Mail API) for certain functionality related to scanning and post processing. Some non-Microsoft mail clients incorrectly overwrites the standard stub MAPI32.DLL and this may prevent PixEdit from running correctly. If you encounter an error message when starting PixEdit saying that “The ordinal <X> was not found in the DLL “MAPI32.DLL””, it is likely that you have this problem.

Microsoft has created a fix for this called FIXMAPI.EXE which can be found in your \<windows>\System32 directory. Run this exe and check that PixEdit runs normally afterwards. You may also want to verify that your mail client is working properly after the fix.

Installing and running PixEdit on a Citrix server
- may also be relevant for other types of Terminal servers

Running and installing a Windows application on a Citrix server often requires special care. This article describes some issues that you should be aware of when installing and running PixEdit in a Citrix environment.

Registry replication

A Citrix server replicates registry information to its clients. This feature enables a server operator to easily deploy settings and configurations to a group of users. When you install an application on the server, changes in the registry that are made by the application installer are recorded and will be replicated to the users that are given access to this application. And if you run the application during the installation procedure on the server, any registry changes the application makes will also be recorded and replicated to the clients.

PixEdit stores a lot of information in the registry. Some of this information may be useful to replicate to a group of users and some is not. The information that is recorded by the PixEdit installation program is necessary for PixEdit to run properly, so it should be left as is. But, as an administrator, you have to make a choice of whether or not you want to preset any of the dynamic settings in PixEdit. You may do this by running PixEdit during the installation procedure on the server and go through whatever dialogs you want to. Remember, if you do this, all your settings will be recorded and replicated to the clients later. If you want only some settings to be replicated, you must manually remove the other keys and values from the registry on the server. Most of the PixEdit dynamic settings are stored under

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Terminal Server\Install\Software\Techsoft\PixEdit6]

Note that techsoft provides no official documentation of all these settings, and they are subject to change without any notice. If you decide to edit these settings to accomplish a certain setup of PixEdit for your clients you must therefore develop this by experimenting on your own. However, you may consult Techsoft if you need explanations of specific registry values.

If you want each client to have entirely his own setup of PixEdit which is preserved between each session, then do not run PixEdit during the installation procedure on the server. This type of configuration is generally what Techsoft recommends to avoid problems.

Workspace, menus and toolbars

If you run PixEdit during the installation procedure on the server, it also stores its workspace configuration including menus and toolbars in the registry. This configuration is not compatible between versions of PixEdit and may not be compatible between clients. You should therefore avoid replication of the Workspace registry keys from the server to the clients.

If you experience problems with menus and toolbars when running PixEdit on a client, it is most likely caused by a replicated Workspace from the server. To remove the PixEdit Workspace from the server you must delete the following key (and all its subkeys) from the registry on the server:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Terminal Server\Install\Software\Techsoft\PixEdit7\Workspace]

License issues

When running PixEdit from a Citrix server, you must ensure that the use of this software is compliant with our license agreement. PixEdit has a per-user license agreement, and we do not count simultaneous users. We count users that have access. Thus, as an administrator you are responsible for seeing to that the number of users that have access to PixEdit from your server is no greater than the number of licenses you have aquired.

IBM Kontor 2000 (K2000) issues message "DDE Maximize" error message when connecting to PixEdit .

This problem can be resolved by making PixEdit Version 6 and 7 compatible with PixEdit version 5 registry settings by downloading and executing the following files:

(If your firewall software prevents you from downloading the REG files, you can download the ZIP file instead, unzip and double click on the extracted files.)

Installing SCSI

Many of the scanners supported by PixEdit uses SCSI boards where communication with the scanner goes through the standard ASPI protocol, the most widely used method of high-level applications to use SCSI scanners and other SCSI devices. When this protocol is used, PixEdit does not (and does not need to !) know what type of SCSI interface board you have, how many, which board the scanner is connected to and so on.

When installing a SCSI board low-level drivers (hardware drivers) for the board will be installed but you will typically have to install the ASPI layer software from an additional diskette or CD supplied with the board. You may also download the ASPI layer from the following sites:

http://www.adaptec.com/

http://www.tekram.com/

http://www.symbios.com/

http://www.asus.com.tw/

How to create a barcode job separation sheet using Microsoft Office and VBA

The following small macro in Excel will create and print a barcode separator sheet using the content of the active cell in a spreadsheet: