Your scanner is recognised on the SilverFast welcome screen but as soon as you hit the "Start"-button, a message comes up saying that there is a problem regarding the communication between SilverFast and your scanner?

Windows seems to behave erratically regarding the handling of imaging devices since the latest Windows updates (effected are Windows 10 as well as Windows 11 systems). We have reports from our users regarding this behaviour and have also been able to reproduce this here in our test center.

Since we did not change anything about the scanner detection in SilverFast and the issue occurs independently from a SilverFast update / installation, we think that this behaviour is related to changes inside of the Windows operating system itself.

Please make sure to have the latest scanner drivers installed - or even better: reinstall them from the support website of your scanner manufacturer.

Some people say, that their scanner can be started correctly if they switch on the scanner before they start up the PC. Others report, reinstalling the scanner driver after a Windows reboot solves the issue. At least until the computer is shut down and then switched back on again the next time. Often it already helps to unplug the scanner from the USB port and then reconnect it...

Our favourite fix is, to stop the "Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)" Service using the Windows Task Manager -> "Services" and then start SilverFast again.

Please open the Windows Task Manager, click "More details" in the lower left corner and then navigate to "Services". Here, search for the Service Description "Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)", right-click it and stop the service.

No worries, it will be restarted as soon as another imaging device requires the service again. This does work on all our test systems and for all scanner models effected by this issue.

PS.: this solution applies to SilverFast 8 scanning software products as well.