HP ScanJet 5370C installation warning

Lee Larson purchased an HP ScanJet 5370C scanner and noted: "The 5370C has an active transparency adapter as a light source to scan slides and negatives. It seemed to be working fine, when I scanned 35 mm slides. But, when I tried to test how well it could scan 35 mm negatives, the option was grayed out in the Scan menu. (This is a mode where the scanned negative is turned into a positive.) It would scan the negatives perfectly as slides, but this is less than useful."

HP Tech Support eventually told Lee: "If you connect the scanner before installing the software, it will sometimes be identified as a 5300 instead of a 5370. But it can get worse. Apparently there's something written into the firmware of the scanner by the software that makes it identify itself as a 5300 from then on. He said the only way to fix it was to send it back to HP for a swap. He also said that when the new scanner came, I should uninstall all the ScanJet software and reinstall it before plugging in the scanner."

Lee got a scanner swap, followed HP's advice and all has worked perfectly since.