My Epson Perfection 1640SU scanner recently started behaving slightly less than perfectly… I had a pronounced light vertical line appearing down the length of each scanned image.
Really annoying.
Here’s how I diagnosed and fixed it…
Firstly I just tried power cycling the thing, hoping it maybe was some kind of glitch cured by the standard fix. No joy.
A quick Google brought up no immediate suggestions, but the overall consensus was that vertical lines like this are either caused by bad pixels on the CCD or a fault in the calibration.
Faulty pixels seemed unlikely to me – the line down the pages that were being scanned was a couple of millimetres wide, and detail was visible within it, but everything was just a lot lighter.
I figured it was therefore calibration that was the issue. From the little I’d read from Googling the issue, it appears that the scanner does some kind of “white balance” before each scan. Maybe there was dirt on wherever the scanner CCD was calibrating?
Getting into my scanner was easy – disconnect the mains (of course), three screws on the back, two at the front and the top pops off reasonably easily. Looking underneath the top, I could see that the glass extended a little under the case, at the top, where the CCD normally sits when it’s not scanning. There was a piece of white plastic or card under the glass (not visible from the outside) where presumably the CCD did its white balance calibration before each scan.
And lo, and behold, there was a little blob of dirt, which looked exactly lined up with the vertical line on the output. Quite how it got there was anybody’s guess, as it was sandwiched between the white plastic and the glass. And the glass is glued into place. Maybe it was always there and just recently shifted. My theory was that scanner was calibrating itself, and the CCD’s exposure was bumped up on that section because the dirt was making it think that that section was underexposing.
So as the glass was glued in place, I figured my best bet was simply to stick a white strip of paper along the top of the glass where the CCD comes to rest, obscuring that pesky piece of dirt. Worth a try, I thought.
Problem solved. Reassembled the scanner, no vertical lines at all any more.
Thanks a lot, I had a vertical line problem scanning photo negatives @4800dpi. After scanning a plain white background the scanner apparently recalibrated and vertical lines are gone. I am using an Epson Perfection V330 Photo. AFAIK it recalibrates automatically. Thanks again for the hint, I already thought my brand new scanner was foobared :)
Many thanks! for your guide. I had to buy a new scanner due to the slow speed of my old one. Unfortunately cash was tight, as always! Anyway after purchasing a secondhand canoscan 4200f off a guy on amazon I thought great I’ve got myself a great scanner at over half the price.
Unfortunately, after cleaning the ‘like new’ scanner I notice brighter horizontal bands were evident down my scans! After panicing!!! and alot of fiddling about I have fixed the problem, thanks to your advice, others were useless. As you say the scanner calibrates on a white strip, mines hidden just before the glass window. Unfortunately moving the glass and sorting the strip only made it worse! however like yourself I placed a strip of white card across and now it works fine.
Many thanks for your help, it means more than you know :) Tony
Many thanks for this helpful tip. I am using an old Epson Perfection 1650 Photo to scan some of my slide collection (not really sufficient resolution but I’m reluctant to buy another scanner when this one works so well). After successfully scanning a number of slides, on a recent session I started to get the light vertical line you describe. I noticed that on the slide holder there was a cut out at the inner end where I assume the scanner was calibrated against the backlight in the lid as you describe. I checked the glass for dust and I found a slight speck of dirt in that area. After cleaning the glass, everything seems to return to normal. A small problem, but one which caused me to think I needed to replace the scanner!
Same here, Epson V330 Photo. Developed a number of vertical bands on film negatives, cleaning the calibration area and also the light diffusor of the TPU made them go away.
Thanks for the advice. Blue streak on scans from my Epson V330 were sorted by simply switching scanner my scanner off and on. Glad I hadn’t tried to strip the machine!
Hi Martyn,
Thanks for this VERY useful info! I opened up my Epson v200 as i had 3 vertical lines appearing in scans. On very close inspection the glass was dirty above the calibration strip; i cleaned the strip very carefully then reassembled. It now scans beautifully again.
Thanks very much for posting this article, much appreciated.
Best Regards,
Gareth(mrmorodo)
A lot of thanx!!! i have a old pro scanner who had the glass broken and i fixed it with another new. I put some glue on the white stripe and I thought the scanner were broken because it showed the vertical lines. Now, I replaced the white stripe and it works like new!
The callibration story seems to ben totally correct. By sheer luck did I have a white paper under the glas of my V330 Epson while the frame for film was also in place. I wanted to test the lamp in the cover. So the scanner went beserk, had to pull the power plug and brought it back online, with the white paper. It obviously callibrated when starting up and oh wonder, I lost that pesky darkgrey stripe in de middle of my pictures.
Thanks for explaining this to me, I almost thought my curses were working on the scanner.
I occasionally have linear vertical banding that is perfectly straight when scanning 6 x6 negatives on my Epson V500; the streaks continue throughout the scanned negatives. During “Preview” scan with Vuescan, it could be seen beginning before the sensor got to the negative area. It occurred with either Epson’s scanning program or Vuescan, and cleaning the glass surfaces made no difference. Reinstalling driver made no difference. Negatives were without visual evidence of scratches or other defects. I scan strips of 4 negatives, so that means 2 are not in the scanning area of the negative holder; the unscanned negatives should be towards the front of the scanner, as there is a small cutout at the back of the negative holder that I guess is used for sensor calibration. Turns out when I inadverdently left that area covered with negative–when I had the strip sticking out of the holder the wrong way– the vertical bands would appear. Reorienting the film fixed the problem for me. Such a simple cause, but so much frustration.
Thanks for sharing the info! I have a big amazing new HP MFP and I cleaned the glass over the calibration strip and BOOM, little annoying lines are gone!
Many thanks for sharing. i was looking all over the web for a solution. My Samsung scx -3206w was working find until weird white line starting appearing on the scans. After reading your solution, i used a pen light and looked at the edges where i felt the CCD was calibrating, and right there i found a blob of dust. i cleaned it with a fine cloth and everything is back to normal! the scans now are as perfect as it was before the problem appeared!
My Epson 1640US had the same issue. I disassembled it. The glass is fastened to the case with double-sided tape. With gentle pressure, it separates from the case top and slides out. You can then clean the white-strip calibration area as well as the glass.
There’s a thin edge of double-sided tape where the lip of the case top meets the glass. It’s apparent that over time, pressure separates it from the glass, allowing any bit of dust to land in the calibration area, and dust also reduces the overall effectiveness of that bit of tape.
Instead of full disassembly, next time I think I’ll just press on that area of the glass, and blast it with canned air to dislodge any dust.
Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!
Thx. I have another scanner (canoscan3200F) which showed me a bunch of vertical lines after wet cleaning.
Canon had told me that the read unit was defective :-/ they dont know their own stuff.
Thank you so much. My Epson Perfection 3590 developed a white streak. After reading your tip, I suspected a small piece of paper had slipped beneath the front margin/frame because I was scanning old flimsy documents. I took a postcard and slipped the corner under the frame. Out popped the offending article! No stripping, no cleaning. Brilliant!
Thank you for this information, after reading through all the tips I cleaned the whole scanning bed including under the lid with glass cleaner & no more stripe…got to love the internet & people who want to help others!
Thanks for the help! There was a long band made up of elliptical rings in a series, running vertically down my film scans. Tried a host of things, until I finally took your advice, removed the lid, and cleaned the hidden white strip underneath the glass. Though I never could see any dirt or anything else on it, my cleaning it seems to have done the trick. You’ve saved me a lot of grief and potentially the cost of a new scanner.
Huge thanks for this tip.
I have a Perfection 3590 which I had given up on because of two pixel line discolouration.
New calibration strip, ‘new’ scanner and no expense. How good is that. Very grateful.
A VERY PRECIOUS tip! I have an old UMAX Scanner (SCSI) bought in 2000 and it had that annoying vertical lines and some vertical irregular shades. Well, when I realise that the problem was due to some dirt and condensation in the calibration strip I got hands to work. Result: a perfect scanner, just like it was when I bought it!
This gave me another idea. What if I put a strip other than bright white? e.g. yellowish or so. Wouldn’t be a way of correcting the gamma color of the scanning? I didn’t try it yet, but in spite of some software do gamma correction easily, this should be an interesting experiment. (for compensate gamma color on cheap scanners…)
Anyway, many thanks for the tip!
I simply lifted my scanner lid and tapped it all over to loosen any muck. Then I cleaned to two glass surfaces (flatbed glass plate and overhead lamp diffuser) …. and magic! It worked! Many thanks for the super advice.
Thank you for the very useful tip, which helped me fix the vertical lines problem on my own Epson 1640 scanner. As another commenter suggested, I also pried loose the glass from the double-sided tape and cleaned underneath.
By the way, a service manual for the 1640 is available online by searching. It provides some illustrations of the disassembly procedure.
Nearly 4 years after your post & you are still helping people…like me! Thank you very much. Found a tiny scrap of paper under the white strip of my Canon MG5150. Sorted!
I find that I have to clean the glass after 3 or 4 passes, both the top and bottom for slides.
Thank You, I read the posts and what a blessing I cleaned my screen with glass plus and the streaks appeared and I was like NOOOOOOO!!!!! after researching and reading the posts I was YYYYYYYYYYYYYeeeeesssssss!! Thank You Jesus and thank you for the solution to my problem.
What I did was I just ran a white sheet of paper through the scanner and everything was back to normal. Thanks again!
Hi Martyn,
I badly needed to clean the underside of the glass of my venerable Epson 1640SU Scanner as it had developed a very obvious haze over the years. Thanks to your own and the other comments here I decided to have a go at opening it up today. I am delighted with the outcome and it is now performing as good as new again.
For those who, like myself, are a bit wary of attempting this job, I wrote a detailed description of the procedure I followed for my own benefit in future and will be glad to post it here if anyone is interested.
Absolutely brilliant!
I was able to clean the small dirt mark off the glass. Don’t know how and when it got there but everything is 100% great.
Thanks!
Thank you very much. Epson V550. Problem solved!
thank you so so so sooooooooooo much
thank you! this saved the day. I have a genius 1200xe that I have to run thru virtual machine with winXP as it is not compatible with win8. On top of everything I had long blue stripes. Now works like new. Opened the thing, and also gave a good cleaning to the whole glass. Saved my day!
OMG! Thank You times a million. Getting into my old Epson CX5500 was a challenge. I used a super soft, long & clean taklon art brush to clean the scanner light thingy & Wallah no more bright blue stripes, that covered almost all of the area of my scans.
I’ve got one og this red/green vertical lines.
i covered with a new white paper the calibration zone. Appeared other lines, probably my new paper is not clean. i put it out.
i notice an effective dot of dust in calibration original paper and it seems exactly the same position i see in the photo.
i clean the LAMP with compressed air and…
the lines disappeared !!!
This works for my Epson perfection V200.
I hope this help !
Great post and comments. I have a Perfection 4490 Photo, and blue/green/red lines started appearing on all my images when I was scanning slides. I read the comments, and just put the white cover in, that one uses when scanning photos, changed the setting from “Positive Film” back to “Photograph”, unchecked “Thumbnail” [using the “Home Mode”], and scanned the white cover. Then I went back to “Positive Film” and “Thumbnail”, and voila! It had re-calibrated, and the lines are gone!!
As far as I can tell, yours is the only post which reveals how to solve the vertical line / band problem (and I’ve had this problem big-time). My scanner is a Canon LIDE 25, but it works on the same principle regarding the white calibration strip under the glass.
I have no problem removing the glass and getting access to the inside of the scanner case since I’ve removed the plastic strips on the sides of the glass (this was in order to allow me to place over-sized objects like record covers perfectly flat on the glass for scanning). The glass is then securely held in place on the lower edge with a removable strip of tape.
I own three of these inexpensive – but very good – scanners. The problem has always been the eventual appearance of lines and bands, causing me to find another “used but functioning” scanner. Now, however, all of my scanners work perfectly after the glass over the calibration strip is effectively cleaned.
I’m sure that this sort of “home maintenance” is not what the manufacturers intended or would like to see – in other words, they would rather one bought a new scanner.
Thank you for this tip, I too had vertical lines on my Epson XP850 scans and was beginning to think it would need replacement, however, after reading here I found a tiny black spot in assumed area of calibration strip, this I removed with tissue and now have perfect scans.
Thank you! We got the lines with our CanoScan LiDE 30/N1240U. Put in a white sheet of paper, ran the “Calibrate” option in VueScan, and that seemed to fix it.
Wow had the same problem… Was looking for a new scanner allready until i found your tip… Dirt on the white strip inside…. Bit of white paper over the dirt…. Sorted!
Thank you!
thank you sooo much for sharing – you really saved my day!! and yes, i’ll gladly buy you a beer;
cheers from downunder,
evelyn
Just had the same problem with my Epson V330. Scanned with a piece of white paper in place of the negative and it sorted it out perfectly.
Many thanks for sharing this info, I was about ready to take it apart!
Brill analysis, many thanks. Thought the (Epson V500) scanner was conkingout with a hundred slides to do of my collection of twelve and a half thousand. Suitable cleaning got rid of the red/green stripes.
Thanks SO much for your advice. It worked a treat on my Epson Perfection 1640SU. One thing I found was that when I installed a piece of ordinary white paper to create a new ‘calibration strip’ there were many many more fine green lines. As I hadn’t screwed it back together, I tried a whiter sheet of shiny paper, in this case a piece of white photographic printing paper. This time I also used spray adhesive (prepared outside!) in order to glue down the strip to ensure it was flat and even. Now, all the fine lines are gone!
Greetings. This sounds like the fix I need. Does anyone have a photo of “this white card” that needs to be cleaned or covered over? I am using a Canon 9950F, but I assume they are all the same.
I managed to fix it (knock on wood) by putting a piece of white paper cut to 4×5 in the film holder and running “calibrate” on Vuescan then ran scan and it was gone…without opening the glass for now. Thanks.
THANK YOU! I have an Epson Perfection v33 that had a dirty white strip inside. Cleaning it made the green line in my scans go away!
Hello, could somebody post a picture, I can hardly understand what is described. Besides it seems my scanner doesn’t have any screws to remove. I possess a canoScanLide 70. Do I need to lift the glass to perform the fix ?
I cannot comment on your specific model but a very quick Google brings up this page: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+To+Repair+Jammed+CanoScan+LIDE+90+Scanner/3607 which shows how to disassemble your scanner. Obviously all at your own risk!
But however my question is do I need to dissassemble in order to do the fix?
And I am not sure if I understand which part that must be cleaned is it the white strip that is vertically accross the scabber ? or is oly the glass parts on top that is hidden by the 4 edges.
I just broke the scanner glass on my large format Epson 1640XL trying to pry it up. Great. Now I need a new scanner.
Beware of prying up the glass.
Yeah, prying glass is never a good idea.
The only way I was able to remove the (broken) glass from my 1640XL was to run a very thin putty knife between the glass and metal. On this model at least, it’s not tape that holds the glass in, it’s a quarter-inch flexible adhesive strip.
I ordered replacement glass and was able to reinstall it. Unfortunately, the streaks remain the same, even with a new calibration strip. There must be something deeper inside that’s causing my issue. Too bad.