HP Support Forum

[#1]

I upgraded to Snow Leopard downloaded the latest HP driver for my Scanjet 2400.  Suddenly my Macbook Pro fan seems to run a lot?!?  I checked the Activity Monitor and the new HPShortcutManager is maxing out my CPU!  This is very repeatable...even if I stop the process it starts back up again--even if the scanner isn't connected.  I checked the MacRumors forum and there was a note there describing the same problem in 2007 and saying it was a long-known problem back then!  Anybody have a work around?

[#2]

I can see the same behavior. Usually it seems to happen when the Scanner was idle for a while - in my case however it is the HP Scan program that takes over both CPU cores. 

I tried to reach someone from HP using the chat on the support website, but on the weekend there is no support available. I will go and try next week again.

[#3]

Some experimentation results (in this order):

1. turn scanner of (hardware switch)
2. kill HP Shortcut Manager Startup process using activity monitor
3. kill HP Shortcut Manager process in activity monitor
4. turn scanner back on
5. open hp scanjet preference pane
6. deactivate the shortcut buttons
7. (I also set the lamp to "extended on")

Scanning worked almost immediately after that, only a very slight delay (with 100% CPU though; seems like bad programming to me from what I can see in a process sample taken with activity monitor).

[#4]

Wow, you mean they're continuously polling the scanner buttons?  That's archaic in a multitasking world!  I'll check back and look for what you find out from them.

[#5]

I have the same problem and that is since I installed the long awaited driver for my scanjet. First HP waits half a year to provide us a driver and than they make us download something that is worse than a virus.

Anybody with good advise about how to manage this problem? Your are welcome.

Hans

[#6]

I couldn't find the shortcut buttons on the preference pane on my mac running Snow Leopard.  What I did disable was all smart friends which was located on the top hp scan menu bar under the help menu.  Have to wait and see if that disables the shortcut manager stuff from starting.

[#7]

Under "Other" in System Preferences you should see "HP ScanJet".  Click that.  On my system it always says that System Preferences must quit and reopen, to which I click "OK".  It should then reopen and display the HP Scanjet preferences.

In the far right of the dialog, under the search text field, you'll see a pulldown with a cog icon on it.  Pull that down and select "Deactivate Scanner Buttons".

Note that any time I open the HP ScanJet system preferences, it restarts the HPShortcutManager process that gobbles up the CPU.  So after updating the preferences, open Activity Monitor (or use the terminal) to kill the HPShortcutManager process.  BUT, if HPShortcutManagerStartup process is running, kill that first, otherwise HPShortcutManager process will be restarted right after you kill it.

Seems like HP needs to do a little more QA.

[#8]

Same problem. HP Shortcut manager using up cpu and causing my Macbook pro battery to drain.

Remember to remove HP shortcut manager from the startup items. Go to system preferences - accounts- login items  and then delete hp shortcut manager startup.

If you do not delete from startup/login items problem will keep occurring everytime you startup!.

Next scanner I buy, may not be HP unless they resolve this.

[#9]

As an experiment, I did a completely clean install of Snow Leopard on a MacBook, ran the 10.6.2 combo updater, and then installed HP_Installer_Scanjet_v2.4.3_Ph3.

Upon rebooting, with the scanner disconnected, Activity Monitor showed a CPU usage of 1.0% approximately every three seconds for the HPShortcutManager. 

Now, an hour and a half or so later it's up to 27% CPU every three seconds, and still climbing.  This shows up quite clearly on the CPU usage graph.

With our Scanjet 4850 scanner connected it drops down to a steady 0.3%.  Disconnect it, and back up it goes.

It would be interesting to know the programmer's reasons as to why this manager requires such resources when there isn't even a scanner connected.

[#10]

Today I downloaded updated HP_Installer_Scanjet_v2.4.3_Ph4 (released 3/16/10), CPU usage still increases over time with scanner disconnected.

To use my HP scanner I installed the package, manually uninstalled everything in the System Preferences, Applications and Library/Application Support folders (leaving just the libraries and no background processes running), and use VueScan instead (for our ScanJet 4850, VueScan requires those libraries).