Brother printer/fax won't scan
 

Hi,
I hope someone can help me. I have a Brother MFC420CN printer/fax machine with scanning capabilities. The printer works fine but I can't get the scanner to work. I have no idea what is wrong.. When I try to scan from Windows word using the insert tab I get "unable to scan" I hope someone can help me. I want to scan a picture into a file to email.

Did you install the scan software (My Brother came with Paper Port)? The printer driver and scan driver are different.

I would suggest a System Restore to clean the thing out then re-install, but I notice you had this probelm a few weeks ago, so it may not be feasible. The other option is uninstall your Brother drivers and reinstall - but when you reinstall, disable your firewall/antivirus (and disconnect from the Internet during this time).

printer won't scan
 

Hi,

I reinstalled the printer driver and the scanner driver and the scanner now works. Thanks Es*** UK!!!

this works in most situations, another peice of software overwrites or corrupts a driver some how, and be re-installing it, the "new" driver is given preference in windows.
I recently had to do this with my sound driver after installing a tuner card... seems teh 2 use the same location/file for the driver, but system can't use the tuner driver while my tuner card can use my system audio driver :)