Fax and Scan does not launch

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Guest

For a while now I have been able to click the Windows Fax and Scan icon on
the start menu and away I go. I have not added any programs or changed any
settings in months. I have triple checked the entire system for viruses and
spyware. However, as of today when I click the icon I get a User Account
Control pop-up asking me to Cancel or Allow which I never got before. When I
click Allow the box disappears except Fax and Scan does not launch. I
checked the Task Manager and the process is not listed there either. Anyone
got any ideas?
 
William,

When you open the Task manager, were you just checking the "Applications"
tab or did you check the processes tab as well? If you are looking at the
process tab, make sure you hit the button for "Show processes from all
users" and look for the application "WFS.exe".

Is is possible someone set up the events on a scanner to do something if the
user pushes a button? There is code in there that will try to re-use
windows & if WFS is started to do some routing or events, it might be trying
to re-use the WFS from another user session.

I'm less sure about how fax works, but presumably there could be something
in fax that launches the WFS in another user context which could cause the
symptoms you're seeing.

Thanks,
Dan
 
1. I checked "All Users" processes.
2. I found nothing on the scanner settings different from when I originally
set it up.

I decided to check and see if somehow the permissions got changed ('cause I
never used to get a UAC pop-up either). The Trusted Installer has Full
Control, everyone else listed there has only Read and Execute. I'm not sure
if this is what it used to be but even under the System Administrator account
I couldn't edit anything - everything stayed Grey.
 
William,

Let's try taking account elevation out of the picture. Launch a command
prompt (Start | All Programs | Accessories | Command Prompt) by right
clicking on it & selecting "Run as administrator". Then type in WFS.exe.
Let us know what happens.

I'm not clear what's causing the problem yet, but maybe this will give us a
clue.

Thanks,
Dan
 
WFS opens up and runs with no issues.

Dan said:
William,

Let's try taking account elevation out of the picture. Launch a command
prompt (Start | All Programs | Accessories | Command Prompt) by right
clicking on it & selecting "Run as administrator". Then type in WFS.exe.
Let us know what happens.

I'm not clear what's causing the problem yet, but maybe this will give us a
clue.

Thanks,
Dan
Click to expand...
 
So how do I get fax and scan to launch when I click on the icon again? (short
of having to open the prompt and all that). When I log on as the
administrator there are no problems with the icon. I tried launching fax and
scan from within my account directly from the .exe file and that still didn't
work.
 
William,

So I'm unclear on how this might happen, but it sounds like the WFS icon in
your start menu has been hijacked somehow. To be clear, if you run

%windir%\system32\wfs.exe

You get the WFS running correctly?

Dan
 
actually the file location that contains all the files says
C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-f..client-applications_31bf3856ad364e35_6.0.6000.16386_none_d2e185eee3d8c543

when I checked the "system32" location you gave me I found the same files
and WFS started with no problems. So I changed the quicklaunch icon. No
problems now.

Should I do something about the "amd64_" location? I have regularly checked
my computer with adaware, spybot, and avast; nothing about this file or
folder has ever popped up. Plus there are a whole lot of these folders in
the winsxs location.
 
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