Using the Canon 8400F Scanner on Windows 11

Here’s a quick guide on getting the drivers to work for the CanoScan 8400F on Windows 11

The CanoScan 8400F Scanner is nearly 20 years old now, it was annouced in late 2004 and if you want to get a brand new scanner of this calibre you’re looking at well over $1200AUD for an Epson Perfection 850. Sadly my CanoScan 8400F is having a whole host of issues now and is on the way out, so I’ll have to replace it soon.  I did find installing the drivers on Windows a bit difficult, so I figured I’d post some quick notes on how to get it working.

You’ll need to download both the CanoScan Toolbox (Version 4.9.3) and the CanoScan 8400F Drivers (ScanGear CS 10.231a) for Windows 10 64bit.  Here’s a link to the Canon page with both.

When you install the drivers, it will extract some files and then disappear – it works, it just doesn’t tell you.  If for some reason it didn’t work, you can use 7zip to extract the installer to get to the .inf files to manually install the scanner drivers through the Device Manager.

Installing the CanoScan Toolbox seems to work as per usual.

Here’s the trick though!  You need to add the Twain driver path to your environment variables.

To do this, you’ll want to go to:  Settings -> System -> About -> Advanced System Settings -> Environment Variables -> Scroll down to “Path” under System Variables and click on Edit -> Click on “New” and enter the text: C:\Windows\twain_32\CNQ8400

Hit okay a few times and reboot your computer.

Now you can open ScanGear and scan away!

 

Posted by duck in How-To Guides, Intermediate, 0 comments

Setting a Blank DHCP Searchdomain on OpnSense

Super quick one because it took me way too long to google the answer…

How to tell Opnsense to not send through the searchdomain setting with DHCP – this stops it from interfering with domains that have no TLD (for people with funky LAN setups)

 

Problem: I use pihole for my network, I have my DHCP server telling the clients to use pihole for the DNS. But if I try to resolve something that has no TLD (eg. trying to resolve rin instead of rin.com) – it will instead try to resolve rin.localdomain.

If you suspect this is happening to you, on Windows or Mac, you can run the following:

nslookup
> set debug
> yourdomain

You’ll get a result like below, where it’s appending .localdomain or whatever domain your opnsense router has set in it.

If you look in the opnsense router settings under the DHCP server settings, you can either set it to blank, which will set it to the domain of the router, or you can enter a domain in there. You cannot enter “.” as a domain either.

Solution:

You have to set the DHCP server settings manually using their options, the options are

119 – Domain Search

15 – Domain

Set this under Additional Options as below:Hit Save and Reload the service, then renew your dhcp lease on the client.

Thanks to this Reddit post for the solution.

The real TLDR here though is don’t use TLD-less domain names, but I like them, so I will keep them. 😛

Posted by duck in Advanced, IT Issues, 0 comments

Thermaltake Riing Fan Rewiring and Pinout

I needed a 120mm fan for my 3D Printer that I was messing around with and found some Thermaltake Riing Plus fans I had lying around, but I needed to control them via a standard fan header rather than using the special 9 pin plug they have. Here’s a quick run down to change the pins around to use it as a standard PC fan, as well as how to wire up the LEDs to work with WLED (on an ESP8266/ESP32), Marlin on an Ender 3 (SKR Mini E3 V1.2) or to a 5V Motherboard RGB header.
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Posted by duck in How-To Guides, Intermediate, 0 comments

HP Chromebook 14 G5 Trackpad Failure

I have a fleet of about 200 HP Chromebook 14 G5’s that I manage at my job (among other models of machines) and I’ve been having this common fault with the trackpads where they will stop working or stutter around. I thought it was an interesting problem so I’ve decided to document it a bit more in detail here.

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Posted by duck, 6 comments

Rubber Band Cars STEM Project

About the project

This is a project I worked on with a group of students at both the schools I work at. The original goal was to have the students at both schools build the cars then meet up and talk about their cars and have races to see whose car can go the furthest. Sadly COVID-19 resulted in us being unable to meet up, but we still built them and had in school races anyway!
The basic principle is the Rubber Band cars are planned on paper, designed in TinkerCAD on the computer and then 3D Printed and assembled by the students.
A little bit of background on me:  I’m the Technology Officer in two primary schools and I’ve been doing this job for 11 years now. My background is in IT and I’m a tech enthusiast – I’ve done a bit of everything! I’m not actually a qualified teacher, so I do my planning alongside the teacher who I’m working with to make sure that it ticks all the boxes.

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Posted by duck in Intermediate, School, 2 comments

Where to get games for PC

There’s a boatload of different ways you can buy/rent PC games these days. This guide is a quick rundown of the different places you can get games from and how to score yourself a good deal too!

I cover Games Launchers, Stores and subscription services.  Please feel free to leave a comment if you think I’ve missed something!

Also: Everything should be up to date as of December 1st 2019 and any pricing listed is in Australian Dollars.

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Posted by duck in Beginner, How-To Guides, 0 comments

Firefly 2019

In August 2019 we ran an event at my Primary School called the Firefly Arts Festival.
It was a one night event where we show off artwork created by the kids as well as an art installation by each year level, most of the installations featured light.
For a quick summary of the night, watch this video!

For more details, read on…

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Posted by duck in School, 0 comments

Dymo LabelWriter Region Locked Labels

I recently bought a Dymo LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo and was having trouble using non-genuine labels with it.
Turns out: There’s a US and an international version of the Dymo LabelWriters, and the labels aren’t compatible across the two!

Read on to see about my adventure….

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Posted by duck in IT Issues, 2 comments

Corsair Void Surround Review

Super fast review here, I got myself a pair of Corsair Void Surround headphones from work to try out and figured I’d post my findings here.

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Posted by duck in Reviews, 0 comments
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