Reader Reports: (most recent first)

" In reference to the reader Steven M. and his problem getting a computer with a Canon N670U to sleep properly:

I have the exact same scanner, with the latest versions of the same two software packages installed on my dual G5, and it doesn't seem to have any problem sleeping. The two factors that might be different, though I haven't tested it, are these:

1) I have the scanner plugged into a USB hub ($20 Radio Shack powered hub), which might make a difference.

2) The CanoScanToolbox software installs two separate processes that monitor for scanner button pushes; one is for the N670U, and the other is for the 1200-series model from the same era. I deleted the one for the scanner I don't have, which might be the cause of the reader's problem--it's looking for a scanner that isn't attached, and I believe will spit a bunch of errors into the Console log.

The N670U listening process also seems to cough up some annoying log errors when the system wakes from sleep, but they stop eventually.
Hope that's of some use, and thanks for the great resource to hardcore Mac users.
--Marc M "

" Canon N670U here on a Dual G5 2GHz, scanner works as expected with the Canon software as well as the Photoshop plugin. Both CanoScan_N670U_v7010X.app.sit and CanoScanToolbox4110X.app.sit are installed.
Absolutely no sleep problems here running 10.3.1.
J.N."

" I had a similar problem with my Canon LiDE80 scanner. It was also a problem with 10.2.7. I solved the problem by going into my accounts preference and then into the Startup Items tab and removed the software from auto starting when my computer starts.
That does disable the buttons on the front of my scanner but the scanner works perfectly while using the CanoScan Toolbox software and my computer now deep sleeps and wakes from sleep just fine. Hope this helps.
Wayne S. "

" I work for an apple specialist, and all of our 10.3 machines with scanners will not sleep. I have had customers report the same problem.
the computer can still be put to sleep, but will not do it on its own. The computer will dim the screen however, at the set time to auto sleep.
Adam M. "

I set all my systems to never sleep (although I do set the display to turn off after several minutes of inactivity to save the backlight on notebooks). I use the sleep menu option to put them to sleep when needed.

" I have had the same issues with a Canoscan N670U on my G4 (450mhz/AGP) since somewhere in the 10.2.5 era; I did not even bother trying to install the Canon drivers in 10.3. With the drivers installed the computer would refuse to go into "Deep Sleep" and would more often then not fail to turn the monitor back on after going into power save mode.
The only way to solve the problem was to use the shareware driver VueScan instead of the Canon Drivers. VueScan may be an extra expense but it saved me the hassle of waiting for Canon to get their act together and allows me to use similar settings for my negative scanner.
John K "

" The software installs two button listeners in your account startup items. One is for your scanner and the other is for another model. I don't know why they install both but these items continually poll until they find a scanner.
Unless you have both models plugged in at least one will never find it's mate. They continually log their unhappiness to the console which can prevent sleep as well as very quickly fill up your log files. I suggest removing one or both from your startup items. They only watch for button presses from the front panel on the scanner which I never use anyways.
Hope this helps.
Mark "

" This is interesting to me as I have a heavily upgraded AGP G4 system, which I will outline below to give a reference point & I have ZERO problems with sleep, & in fact, I have spent COUNTLESS hours during various upgrade projects, making sure everything was deep sleep compatible.
Equipment is as follows:
Original G4/450 AGP.
Upgraded to 1GHz G4 Sonnet processor replacement UG card.
I also have the following PCI cards added or upgraded.
Radeon 8500 AGP slot (replaced Rage 128 OEM)
ACARD ATA/133 RAID card w/2 Maxtor 120GB 7200 RPM ATA/133 HD's striped into a bootable array. Adaptec 2930 SCSI PCI card ROM v4.3 (prior to 4.3 they did not supportt deep sleep) (noted last year or two ago in the news/FAQ, 2930 requires chip ROM updates, not a flash rom.-Mike)

"CLEAN" 10.3 to 10.3.1 OS X on bootable RAID volume, hand reintegrated from previous Jag system (yes I do this for a living or I would never advise someone to do that). Original ATA/66 bus has 1 master and 1 slave 20GB drives each (non-RAID) ATAPI/33 bus has Apple OEM ZIP & DVD-RAM drive

Aside from a plethora of USB devices I also have the Canon 670U flatbed USB scanner. What I did was something a "little" bit different than the official posted installs per Canon's OS X version matrix page..
First I installed the Canoscan Toolbox app from the 9900F scanner, which yields a newer Canoscan app, (CanoScanToolbox4121X.app.sit)
THEN, I installed the posted 670U driver, which finds the newer Toolbox app's plug-in folder & installs into it.
I do have the button watching activated, though I hardly use them.

Now one question I have re: the post, & the sleep problem. Is the computer just not going to sleep on it's own per the Energy Saver setting, but if you manually select sleep from the menu or using the key combinations it WILL sleep, or will it not sleep not matter what you do to try and make it sleep? (I don't know - personally I keep all my systems set to never sleep unless I select it. I do have LCDs set to turn off after few minutes of inactivity (to save the backlight, vs running a screensaver.). I don't have any sleep issues with my N656U in 10.3.1 but I loathe background USB processes polling devices so I don't have that feature running.-Mike)

I manually put mine to sleep when done and wake it up when I need it and for a machine that has been Frankenstein'd as much as mine has .... I have at this point in timeabsolutely no problem putting it to sleep, or waking it up from sleep. (Though with the ACARD ATA RAID card, you have to wait for both volumes to spin up for a few seconds before the control is returned to you, otherwise in that brief few seconds, it appears the computer has locked up......

Worthy of note, Apple already had the latest ACARD drivers in Panther (v1.52 if I recall), that fixes the ACARD's sleep problem, my Adaptec card has ROM 4.3 which supports deep sleep, USB card shows as a high speed USB card in the new Profiler window, and is running driverless (10.2.8 and later have native USB 2.0 drivers for some chipsets like NEC-Mike) and also has no sleep problems.

Hope this was not TMI, but since I have a 670 Canon myself and 10.3.1 and everything is working, I wanted to provide some detail about what I did (not as a result of sleep problem BTW, in other words, that was not the reason I went for the newer v of the Canoscan Toolbox, I just like to try to be on the bleeding edge)....
Regards.
Randy "

(the first reader comments from earlier today)

" Mike just a few other things I noticed with 10.3.1
My canon scanner Canoscan N670U will not let my computer go to sleep, even if you unplug the scanner computer will not go to sleep, but if I delete the scanner software computer sleeps as expected. The 2 software packages from canon are the current software CanoScan_N670U_v7010X.app.sit & CanoScanToolbox4110X.app.sit, if anyone has a work around please let me know.

The scanner problem is not hardware problem but software tested with eMac 700, Imac 700, Quicksilver, Dual MDD, stock Cube all with the same outcome computers sleep until canon software is installed even if scanner is never plugged in.

I have a combo firewire400/usb 2.0 hard drive that I use to do backups using folder syncronizer x 3.4.1, when I did the 10.3 Install starting fresh from format drive and then did a backup the backup drive would not boot but all the data was there, after 10.3.1 update computer now boots from firewire drive but still will not boot as a usb 2 drive.
Steven M. "

Until this mail I had forgotten that I had installed software for my USB bus powered Canon N656U scanner on the PB G4/800 either just before or after updating to Jaguar. (So long ago I can't remember, I think it was the first release of their OS X compatible driver for this scanner.) I've not used the scanner in a long long time but after this post today I tried connecting it to the PB G4 (running 10.3.1 now) and I do not have any sleep problems even with it attached. I just tested in Photoshop 7 - scanning is still working. (Using PShop import plugin "CanonPI CS-U 3.8x".) I exited PShop and then put the system to sleep (Entourage, IE, Safari and Preview still running) and woke it up - no problems other than having to disconnect and reconnect my Logitech cordless mouse (no drivers for it installed though) - repeated sleep/wake tests after that are OK.

*But* I don't think I installed or enabled the software feature that monitors the button on the scanner, as I did not want software like that polling the device in the background. (I didn't care about the scanner button functionality and remembered the issues with some HP AIO devices/communications manager from the past).
I asked Steven to check if he had any canon/scanner related items enabled in his login/startup items and to disable those as a test.

Before Canon released the N656U OS X driver, I tried VueScan software in OS X which worked well, but cost about 1/2 as much as this scanner did. If Canon had not released the N656U drivers I would have purchased VueScan though and it's a cleaner install than most mfr's software/drivers. (VueScan is very popular and updated often - search Macupdate or Versiontracker for reports on using it.)