HP Envy 4500 won't scan a whole document

[blueboatanchor]

I've had this Envy 4500 for over 3 years and all features always worked fine with my Sony Vaio winders 7 laptop: printer, copier, and scanner. It connects wirelessly to my laptop just fine. But about a month ago, when I tried to scan a document, instead of creating a one page scan of the doc, it created half a dozen pages, each of some portion of the document. It was obviously recognizing patterns on the document because each page contained some logo or other graphic article from the doc. The other day, I did a copy of some document and noticed that it copied the document just fine; so clearly, the scanner itself is working right. But when I tried to scan a FEDEX receipt, it created two scanned pages: one with only the name FEDEX showing, the other with only their oddball nuclear logo showing; the receipt itself did not appear on either page. I tried turning the receipt upside down and the same thing; and I tried moving the receipt to the other side of the plattern, and the same items were shown on the two resulting pages from the scan. I have not changed anything with my laptop whatsoever other than the infrequent oddball microsoft update; and this did not start after I did any update at all. Also, I have not been able to install your Scan Doctor; the installation seems to stall just before it finishes and I immediately get a microsoft error indicating the software did not install properly. I tried this four times with the same results.

[Betty0610]

@blueboatanchor

Welcome to the HP Support Community.

Are you using the HP Smart App on your PC? If not, you may try and install to see if that works: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c04675142. If yes, uninstall and reinstall it.

If the issue still persists, let's do a root uninstall and reinstall of the software:

Unplug any USB cable, if any, before doing this.

1.) In Windows, search for and open Programs and features

2.) Select your HP Printer

3.) Select Uninstall

4.) In Windows, search for and open Devices and printers

5.) In the Devices and Printers windows look for your HP printer. If you see it listed right-click on it and choose 'Delete' or 'Remove Device'

6.) Open up the run command with the "Windows key + R" key combo.

7.) Type printui.exe /s and click Ok. (Note: there is a space in between “printui.exe” and “/s”)

8.) Click on the "Drivers" tab

9.) Look for HP Printer driver. If you see it Click on it and click Remove at the bottom

10.) Select Ok

11.) Select Apply and Ok on the Print Server Properties windows

12.) Close Devices and Printers

13.)  Open up the run command with the "Windows key + R" key combo.

14.) Type c:/programdata and click Ok. Go to Hewlett Packard folder, remove any printer related folders & files.

15.) Restart the computer.

Once done, please download and install the software from here:

https://support.hp.com/in-en/drivers

Let me know if this helps.

If the information I've provided was helpful, give us some reinforcement by clicking the Accepted Solution and Kudos buttons, that'll help us and others see that we've got the answers!

Thanks!

Have a great day!

[blueboatanchor]

That "HP Smart App" says that it is for W10, not W7. The minimum system requirements also call for W10. Is there a W7 32-bit version; and if so, how can I download and install it WITHOUT having to log in to some microsoft web site, as the W10 version tries to have me do? I do not like joining up with any of those sites since they always send spam and cookies to keep track of what people do, are doing, and want to do... plus what they've bought, want to buy, and are in the process of buying. This is all invasive and should be outlawed by the feds. Thanks.

[blueboatanchor]

Other than installing that "HP Smart App" on my computer, I just followed all the other instructions to uninstall the printer and all its drivers, then reinstalling again from https.support.hp.com/in-en/drivers. I had a feeling this would be futile as I noticed both the file name, EN4500_198.exe, and file size, were identical to the previous version of this file last installed (apparently during an update from hp) on 12/9/19 at 8:30 PM. The installation went smoothly wirelessly except that at the very end, there was no notice on my screen that anything had been installed or even happened. I waited 15 minutes for any other installation to complete, then tried printing. To my great delight, it printed right off, wirelessly! So I tried scanning that old FEDEX receipt again. To my chagrin, the same thing happened: two scans were posted to My Documents, one of the FEDEX name, the other of the "nuclear" logo. I can't find a way of attaching either file above other than via a picture. Nothing seems to have changed on scanning; yet, it still copies a whole page just fine. What now?

[Betty0610]

Let's try a firmware update: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c02919168

Let me know if this helps.

If the information I've provided was helpful, give us some reinforcement by clicking the Accepted Solution and Kudos buttons, that'll help us and others see that we've got the answers!

Thanks!

Have a great day!

[blueboatanchor]

The printer claims it already has the latest updates. Truly, I'd never explored the front panel before, restricting my curiousity to only those few things immediately needed to know to print, scan or copy; so it took some time to find my way around the menus. I ran Printer Info and it says it has firmware version MKM1FN2025AR, FW Patch Version 0. I noticed it's set for automatic updates, apparently from the factory as I'm sure I never enabled that. I also ran across the "reset to factory defaults" key, so I pressed that but nothing has changed: it still creates several smaller scans from a large page. When I scan the printer alignment page, all that shows up in the scan jpg is a picture of the printer with its cover open: nothing else on that page appears in the scan (see the first photo below). Yet, when I do a color copy of that page (which has all the alignment marks plus the abovementioned printer picture plus text telling that page must be scanned for best print quality, I get a perfect color copy. So the scanner itself is definitely working just fine; but something has happened to the "smarts" that causes it to only print certain graphic items that it scans to a fresh scan jpg. I have uploaded pictures taken of my monitor showing what these scans look like; the first is from the printer alignment page, the next two are from the one FEDEX receipt I was trying to scan to send to someone else.

I hate to say it again, but: Now What? 🤔

[blueboatanchor]

Uhhh. those "caution signs" I see above in place of the pictures I did successfully upload are not what the pictures showed; perhaps my pix were too large size-wise?

[Betty0610]

Does this only happen with this particular FedEx document?

[blueboatanchor]

No; see the first photo above, which shows a printer; that came from the scanned Envy 4500 printer alignment page, which has the printer down in the lower left corner and otherwise has a bunch of alignment lines above it, and other groups of artifacts by which the printer self-aligns. Any document with some sort of graphic image will have only that graphic image appear in the scan. BUT... I just discovered... if I scan a document that only has text, the whole document appears, complete in color if there are hyperlinks. But documents with any sort of graphic item will lose all the text, and the graphics items are all that appear in the resulting scan(s). For example, I just scanned the Printer Status Report, which I can print from the front panel. This doc only has two graphic items in it, both illustrating the amount of ink remaining in the two cartridges. Surprise, surprise: the two resulting scans for this doc ONLY show the ink tank remains... that is, one is of the color tank, the other is of the black tank. The first picture attached here shows the Printer Status Page, with the two ink tank levels circled in red. The next two photos show what resulted from scanning that Printer Status Page: just each of the two ink tanks.

What now? Thanks.

[ShlomiL · Accepted solution]

Hi,

May you scan from the printer front panel?

what exact scan shortcut is used?

Open the HP Software on your PC and select the required scan shortcut, make sure the Paper Size is set to the expected size and not to Auto Detect, which will result in auto-cropping of items in the original.

Shlomi