Windows Vista forum: Invalid Handle error

Hey Glenn,

I'm running into this same issue. Where did you obtain the driver and how large was the file?

Joe

Ho there...

Sorry you guys seem to be having this trouble too - I have a C7180 and exactly the same is happening - works fine installed using XP drivers from HP site on my wife's laptop, but the same old story applies when using the Vista driver for me. It's very annoying as the facility is an excellent one (so my wife keeps reminding me!!). No luck with HP, they simply referred me to a number of troubleshooting pages which even if you read between the lines gives not even the faintest glimmer of hope of a resolution. After playing and increasingly frustrating game of email Ping-Pong with HP yesterday, they have assured me that their R&D department are looking in to this. To be honest, I don't hold much hope in a resolution from HP this way, but can only dream that the fix will be provided in a later driver edition.

There is a Hotfix available on the HP web site now, but this did not resolve my issue, which is the same as the one which you are experiencing.

What is even more annoying is that the size of the XP driver is significantly larger than the Vista one and when you use the share features on the printer, the XP drivers give so much more functionality, but the Vista driver just dumps you in to HP Photosmart Essential evey time.

Scanning and printing.... great - additional features - I wouldn't know.

If anyone else has had any luck in resolving this issue I would be really grateful indeed to learn how.

All the best

I have the same problem with the HP 3210 on all my Vista PCs.

However I came over a workaround which suggests that it shouldnt be a huge problem for HP to fix.
By chance I ran Total Commander (v 6.56) and it recognises, reads and writes from the cards like a charm.
Perhaps you could mention this to HP. It might speed up their R&D a little (I wish).

Further to my earlier post, I have also been exchanging emails again with HP today - we have come full circle and they have pointed me back to the Troubleshooting app and an on line help page which we have probably all found previously. I doubt that HP's R&D section are too bothered about this issue.. after all, they've got our money already.

Keep the ideas coming everyone - we must work towards a solution to help HP out!

Cheers

Same issue here.

Did spent one hour chatting with a HP technician and she was not (yeah right) aware of the issue. Found out this post after. All VISTA users are probably experiencing this issue.

HP YOU NEED TO PROVIDE USERS WITH AN UPDATE ASAP

Hi Richard

unfortunately no information or further advise from HP - not good enough really as these printers are not cheap to purchase or run, so a working driver for an OS that's been out for some time now is really not too much to ask.

Any updates or further advice always welcome...

On the one hand, I'm glad I'm not alone, but on the other - HP seem to have swept this under the carpet.

Cheers

Don't know who is to shame, Vista or HP...

Anyhow, you are not the only one who took the decision to revert back to XP.

Vista suck. Simple as that.

HP released a patch on the driver page for your respective printer. That resolved the issue for me and my HP 3310. HOWEVER...if this does not work there is a rather simple work around if you know how to map a network drive.

If you put a card in the memory card reader and map a network drive to a level lower than the drive letter, see below:

**Bare with me, I am doing this off of memory with nothing in front of me**

a ) If you right click on my computer and select 'Map Network Drive' and click on the drop down menu for the drive letter, it should give you the path that Z is pointing to ( EX: \\AB123456\something ).

b ) Write that down, copy it, whatever...

c ) Select an unused drive letter and in the Folder part, enter the same path but append DCIM to it ( EX: \\AB123456\something\DCIM ) and click OK.

This is a work around I came up with and works just fine. So first, hit up the driver page for your printer on HP.com. If that doesn't work, try my work around. When I get home tonight and if I remember, I'll try to make a better step by step guide.

Happy Trails,

Joe
joebowls@comcast.net

Hi all....

This is fantastic news and worked perfectly for me. It's such a relief. No doubt there will be some happier HP users with this news. It's amazing how this issue can turn in to such a headache isn't it. Regardless of which model you are using and have this problem with, you can't help feeling that the product is incomplete without its full functionality - I feel less robbed by HP now that we have this solution.

Now, HP, how hard can it be to fix the driver to incorporate this change to the default drive map to make this and other affected models a great out of the box product. I'm just stunned that HP's solution is to ignore this issue.

Thanks again to joebowls and robholding for the postings.... Just brilliant news.

Cheers

Still no fix from hp, but this workaround worked for me too!

For whatever reason, windows 7 security does NOT allow access to the root of the memory_card, however you can access the DCIM directory using the unc
\\192.168.2.251\memory_card\dcim

your address will be different. You need to know what the IP or dns name is for the first part. HP uses memory_card as the share name, but nearly all cameras use the dcim director.

Good luck,
THEBEAR
~LarryPatrickJohnsonATgmail.com
remove the AT and the ~ if you wanna contact me directly

Okay so after reading this thread I am thinking, WOW there are a lot of people at HP that have ZERO CLUE..
Of course they are most likely from India... anyhow I lost my HP job doing helpdesk to someone overseas in India.

I think it's because I began learning too much and got too many certifications ..... too useful.. BAIL ME OUT!

Way off topic but I thought I'd add to the already lack luster reputation of HP.


Here's the fix:
in vista/7 :
hold window key press R
(click START>RUN) if you don't have run enabled in start menu then click start and in "search bar" type
\\ip.add.of.printer\memory_card
BUZZ!! doesn't work.
To fix:
type \ip.add.of.printer\memory_card\DCIM
You are now in business without even mapping.
If you want to map it simply right click the folder you see and select "map network drive"
for me it was "101HPAIO"



So here's the skinny:

1)This has NOTHING at all to do with drivers or ANY software known to man. PERIOD. Folks, we are talking about a network browse from one machine to another... PERIOD.

2)This has EVERYTHING to do with which areas of the SHARE can be written to and also how Vista/7 exploit communications to shares.

3)You cannot connect to the ROOT, but you CAN connect to anything beyond that. Why? See below.



Don't believe me? Buy a blank hard drive. Put it in your computer. Install XP Pro.
DO NOT TOUCH IT. No updates NOTHING! install NOTHING.
hold down window key and press R (or click start>run)
at the run prompt input this:
\\192.168.1.24\memory_card
(where 192.168.1.24 is the IP address of your printer)

Now remember, you've installed nothing, no patches, not a single driver, etc...
You can't even print to the thing yet!!!
But wait here you are looking at all of the scans on your printer's memory card ? HOW?
Well because it publishes that card as a shared volume (CIFS) across your LAN.

Now, enter vista... Basically it's both HP and Microsoft's fault.
HP: Can't be totally blamed. At the time the printer was made (and the way they wrote the firmware design for network sharing) Vista didn't exist, therefore they couldn't foresee the changes in way user's machines would try to browse the share.

Visat and 7 are identical in this fashion. They are incapable of doing what's called an anonymous network communication. In other words, there is such a network user as "anonymous" It's technically NOT a user account it's a method of net share authentication.

If you can pretend that the printer is an XP workstation for a second:
Let's say you have a folder "memory_card" and you decide to share it.
When you setup this share there are two aspects for permissions.
1-the share permission itself
2-the NTFS permissions
Now the printer does NOT share in this way but work with me here...
The problem is the same as if this printer shared using NO credentials and READ ONLY for the share but the NTFS portion from root down had "authenticaed users"

When an XP box browses to the root, it's doing so without providing any credendtials. It's simply throwing a path request. When a vista/7 box tries to browse to it, it does two things, 1 it tries to secure the connection, then it fails and falls back to an authenticated connection. If you specify nothing it will use the account your logged in as. If you choose to map the browse and select "use other credentials" no matter what you use, it's going to try and ask the printer to authenticate. The problem is, the way they designed the printer, it doesn't share that way. (NFS)
It shares using CIFS. So when you try to hit root, you're providing credentials. Since the printer ignores this (BUT STILL OFFERS ACCESS) It's windows 7 that rejects the offered folder. It feels it's contents cannot be trusted.
For your protection it's blocking the access. Invalid handle is a reflection of this. The transaction handle was not of the type 7 accepts.

Don't be mad. This is protecting you from a lot of things namely a DoS attack.
Now why then if you add DCIM does it work?
Simple, because now you've gone beyond the "C$" portion of the share and are in the logical portion of the share.
This is something tangible that 7/vista can deal with.
It now has source info that it can "trust" because THERE in DCIM it sees "permissions"
If HP had made the share to include IDENTICAL "permissions" on both the root string (C$ equivalent which is "memory_card") or Microsoft had relaxed security on network communications then this would not have happened.