We had a Pentium 75Mhz running Windows 95 to which we added a HP ScanJet 5100C colour scanner. We had no problems with this setup until we upgraded to a Pentium III 600Mhz running Windows 98SE. Now I’m having problems installing the scanner. I did something wrong on my first attempt and in attempting to fix it in the Control Panel I think I inadvertently deleted something which I shouldn’t have. Now, every time the computer boots up, a message appears saying ‘Cannot find a device file that may be needed. Registry refers to it but file no longer exists. If deleted on purpose, try uninstalling the software. If you still want it, try reinstalling it’. The file being referred to in the error message is ‘Hpsjvxd.vxd’. Having followed the error messages instructions a hundred different times I still get the message. I have been able to install the scanner but there is an error message regarding its drivers not being correctly installed. I have downloaded the latest drivers from the internet but when attempting to install them nothing appears to happen (no error message though). In short, I cannot use the scanner. Any ideas?

For the time being, let’s ignore the error message you are getting on startup as this will be fixed in the course of making the scanner work. Firstly, the HP scanner needs two applications to be running in order to scan correctly. These two applications are ‘STIMON’ and ‘HPSJVXD’. Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and see if these two applications are running in the background. Judging from the error message you are getting, one or both of these applications are not running in the background. To remedy this problem, go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Run’ and type ‘msconfig’ in the open line, followed by pressing ‘Ok’. The ‘System Configuration Utility’ should now appear. Click the ‘Startup’ tab and in the list on that tab look for ‘HPSCANMONITOR’ and ‘STILLIMAGEMONITOR’. If one or both of these items are there, place a check in the box next to it/them. However, if one or both of those items are not there, you will need to extract them from the Windows 98SE CD.

If you need to extract the two items from the Windows 98SE CD, go through the following procedure. Go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Run’ and open ‘msinfo32′ (without the quotes). In the window which appears, click the ‘Tools’ menu > ‘System File Checker’. The ‘System File Checker’ window will now open. Click to enable ‘Extract one file from installation disk’. In the text box next to ‘Specify the system file you would like to restore’, type in the name of the file you wish to restore. If you are missing HPSCANMONITOR you will need to extract the files HPSJVXD.EXE and HPSJVXD.VXD and if you are missing STILLIMAGEMONITOR, you will need the file STIMON.EXE. Bear in mind that you can only extract one file at a time, so if you are missing all the files you will need to repeat the extraction procedure three times in order to obtain the three files. Once you have specified the file you wish to extract (either HPSJVXD.EXE, HPSJVXD.VXD, or STIMON.EXE), press the ‘Start’ button. Another window will now appear asking for the location of the file on the Windows 98 CD and where you wish to save the file too. In the ‘Restore from’ text box, type ‘D:win98′ and replace D: with whatever is your CD-ROM’s drive letter. In the ‘Save File In’ text box, type ‘C:windowssystem’ and make sure that you change C:windows to whatever is the path of your Windows directory. Finally, press the ‘Ok’ button to extract the file from your Windows 98SE CD (NB: If you are prompted to overwrite any files on your computer DO NOT overwrite them and press ‘Cancel’. If any of the files are already on your computer, there is no need to overwrite them). You will need to repeat this procedure to extract any other files you need.

Now you will need to configure these items so that they load on startup. To do this, go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Taskbar & Start Menu…’ (or alike). In the ‘Taskbar & Start Menu Properties’ window which appears, click the ‘Advanced’ or ‘Start Menu Programs’ tab (depending on your version of Windows). Click the ‘Add’ button and in the ‘Create Shortcut’ window which appears, click the ‘Browse…’ button. Go to the ‘C:WindowsSystem’ directory (or whatever your Windows directory is named) and find the file you want to load at startup. The two files you want to load at startup are STIMON.EXE and/or HPSJVXD.EXE (depending on whether either or none of these programs was in the ‘System Configuration Utility’ ‘Startup’ tab). Double click the file you wish to load at startup and it will automatically be placed in the text box which specifies the location of the file. Click ‘Next’. The wizard will now ask you for the folder into which you wish to place the shortcut. Find the ‘Startup’ folder and double-click it. Finally, you will be prompted to name the shortcut. There is no need to change the default name. You will need to repeat this procedure if you need to configure another one of the above files to load at startup.

Once the wizard routine is complete, reboot your computer and try out the scanner. If the scanner gives an error message such as ‘Unable to open scanner. Make sure no other scanning applications are running…’ then press CTRL-ALT-DEL and make sure that no other applications are using the scanner (except STIMON and HPSJVXD of course). As a final word, if after following this procedure your scanner still does not work, please contact me again and I will try to find some alternative solutions.