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View Full Version : Miscellaneous i-option registration: HUGE caution when dealing with problems on this.


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Stirton.M
01-29-2011, 12:24 AM
Seems the other day, my supervisor was dealing with a customer who owns a couple C652 series machines fully loaded, including the i-option kit with the OCR capability.

Customer was complaining about that machine appeared to be locked up with a scan to SMB job in the queue, nothing could be printed.

The boss did a couple tests with a blank page and found it took 5 minutes to send this through. Upon consulting with me a day after, he now knows that he should have used something with text on it for that test. The OCR function was scanning the entire page, looking for text of any kind, so it was indeed taking a long time. Subsequent tests on a control machine at the office verified this behavior, and it was determined this is simply a function of the option, that the user has to exercise patience.

There are methods to reducing the process time, but regardless of which setting, it can take up to a minute or more per page on full colour, even more if the resolution is high. Using compact PDF will increase the process time. Best results are 200dpi, black and white, normal pdf, text parallel to main scan (letter for example, fed short edge first in doc feed).

Regardless, the boss thought that perhaps the reason for the delay was corrupted memory on the machine. So he removed the 1GB memory module that enables the OCR function from the machine, to take the ram back to the office and test it on a demo room machine. Naturally, the machine popped an error message about the missing memory. And like any good tech would do, the boss disabled i-option, similar to disabling the hard disk option if you remove the hard disk for some reason.

A note about i-option for those of you uninitiated with it.

The option requires an internet connection when installed (pretty obvious really), but when the option is first enabled, the installer has to go through an activation sequence of entering codes from the option setup kit, the machine's provided code as well as the machine's serial number, provided to a server that Konica Minolta owns, enter server returned code on the machine, to activate the product, all done from tech rep security mode. Kind of like one does when installing windows, though quite a bit more involved. The option is then locked to that machine.

The issue however, is that if a technician deactivates the option, they have to log on to the activation server, provide the serial number of the machine and go through yet another sequence of codes provided by the machine and the server to deactivate the code.

I will say this just once.

DO NOT DEACTIVATE THE OPTION!

It was assumed at the time this was done that reactivation would be relatively simple, basically just perform the series of steps done when first activating the option.

This could not be further from the truth as we learned, the hard way.

Trying to reactivate the option has turned quite literally into a royal pain in the ass. The server, where one would go to provide the details for activation, first asks for the serial number of the machine, nothing else. Providing that information and pressing the submit button in the browser, a returned message indicates that this machine has been deactivated, and there is no way to go further.

There are several other options available for the activation process, but these involve "repair" of the i-option, for example, if the NVRAM was damaged and required replacement. I am not certain if this would have been the choice to dealing with the specific thing the boss was attempting to try, that is, having the machine operational without the memory for the option installed.

Regardless, even "repair" button was not available on the copier in security mode, so going further in that direction was fruitless.

So that being said, after spending several hours trying to deal with the issue and several dropped calls to tech support (the location I was at had shitty cell phone reception), even local tech support could not offer a solution to how to get around the problem on the activation server regarding the machine serial number.

Currently, the problem ticket has been elevated to SSD for resolution. Hopefully they can remove the references to that specific machine from the activation server, but this is unknown yet whether or not it is possible for them to do this.

Though not many customers have this option, I thought it would be beneficial to the community to know before hand what kind of nightmare disabling this option can bring and prevent others from doing the same mistake.

When I know more about the problem resolution (if any either way), I will post the results.

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