Time Marches On ......

Problem: I have a friend who just turned 60. I'll call him Jonald so as not to reveal his name.. :o)
Jonald used to live right next door, so I saw him almost every day for 15 years, or so. Now I hardy ever see him; he's always on the go. But, I get these odd phone calls every now and then saying things like, "Hey Ron, I need to park in your driveway for a couple of hours". The car will magically appear and be there for awhile. Then I'll get another call, "Hey Ron, I picked up the car, just to let you know it was me who took it, so you won't report it stolen", (heh, heh, as if I was really watching it). Anyhow, he's like a phantom; I never see Jonald. It's tough and unsettling. I don't know if I miss him or if I'm just going through some weird withdrawal. But all this is beside the point. The PROBLEM is, this 60 thing. It's got to be driving him nuts! Everybody hates aging, but for someone like Jonald who is so incredibly busy, time must be flying. He's running as fast as he can but he never seems to catch up. He's gotta wonder where the time is going. I can't help him with the aging process. All I can hope to do is try and cheer him up.....

Solution: 10 things to help cheer up poor OLD Jonald:

1. Just because you're 60 now doesn't mean the chicks will lose interest. You see, they were never really interested in your looks. It was always the money.
2. You're one of the few people I know that can actually still blow your own horn and get applause.
3. Same goes for the singing. Most of us sound like wounded mammoths when we try to sing. Not you. You still sound almost good.
4. Your new neighbors get to enjoy the singing and playing at all hours of the day (and night), that we no longer get to hear. This one actually benefits them, but it must be very gratifying for you, too.
5. You have the most wonderful kids that I have ever known. What a blessing, but I've always wondered how they got so smart. Oh well, they say it takes 2 to tango.
6. I understand that the Chrysler Executive Lease Program has been extended to allow you 23 new cars per year, up from the 16 that you've been accustomed to.
7. Smyrna has been taken off the list of Delaware land designated as Flood Plain. So, if the creeks don't rise, it really might not be a bad place to retire.
8. You're a full 10 years older than you need to be to get Senior Rates at all the Comfort Inns - Worldwide!! Think of the travel opportunities! Be careful though, the same is not true for Motel 6. You'll have to wait 5 more years for that.
9. At your advanced age you have only slightly less hair than me! I hate to mention this, but I'm 6 months older. Sorry.
10. You still have us, your ex-neighbors right up the road, in case you need anything. As soon as you let us know exactly where you live we'll know where to send the Meals on Wheels people.

Now that's sure to cheer him up...........

Autoruns Made Easy

Problem: Recently I had the need to use an Autorun to launch an HTML file from a CD. As you probably know, this is rather messy; the autorun, of course, expects you to launch an executable, not an HTML file. There are some sites on the internet that have some code to help resolve this, but it's easy enough to make an executable to launch the HTML file, yourself.

Solution: I created an AutoIt script with the following one liner:

RunWait(@ComSpec & " /c " & 'myHTLM.htm', "", @SW_HIDE)

I named the script file autorun.au3. Compiling the script into an executable is a simple right-click-and-choose-Compile Script. This created an executable named autorun.exe

Then I named my HTML file myHTML.htm and put the following 2 lines in an autorun.inf file:
[AutoRun]
open=autorun.exe

Burn the whole mess on a CD and that's it. Easy as cake, eh? .........

Grey Screen of Death

Problem: What the HELL is going on????? I've had to rebuild my machine 4 times in the past 4 months. This time it was a solid grey screen right after Dell's spash screen, early in the boot sequence. And you thought only Macs got the dreaded Grey Screen of Death; Hah! I assume it had to do with some driver load problem; I was able to see some of the drivers load by trying a Safe Mode boot a few times.............. I know, I probably cause some of the problems myself with all the registry hacking, but this is getting to be a bad habit.

Solution: Anyhow, I couldn't get by it; had to do another rebuild. Rebuilds are becoming a routine thing for me. I have no idea what normal users do when they have these problems (some of them call me, oddly enough). I shudder to think what would happen if I didn't have another machine in the house to back up my data. There, I said it again. Getting the picture yet?

Slow Boot and Logon

Problem: The user reported that her machine was taking a very long time to initialize. She was running XP on a late model Dell system. It was taking up to 30 minutes to get the logon prompt and then another 15-30 minutes to paint the desktop after logon. Even booting into Safe Mode took a long time; the driver load sequence hung for about 10 minutes (would have been a hint for a less dense technician). Once up, I ran a virus scan and found nothing. I ran Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D which cleaned up a few things, but didn't solve the problem. THEN I noticed that a Cruzer 128MB flash drive was in a cradle, attached to a USB port.

Solution: I removed the cradle from the USB port and rebooted. The system came up immediately. Further investigation showed that the cradle was purchased with a different flash drive, from another manufacturer. The machine would boot fine with the other flash drive in the cradle; it only had a problem when booted with the Cruzer drive plugged in.

Someone with more time, or better sense, than me will have to figure out why this caused a problem. I assume it was some driver incompatiblity or loading problem during the boot sequence. The Cruzer drive worked fine when plugged in after the system was up.......

Incredimail Backup?

Problem: Back on December 19, 2004 I endorsed Incredimail for its ability to create a backup file for transporting to other machines or for disaster recovery. As you probably know, Outlook Express doesn't do this. Well, I had a chance to use my Incredimail backup to restore after a disaster the other day, and guess what. It didn't work! I got some bogus message that told me the restore failed and to check my disk space. I had plenty of space so that wasn't the problem. So, all my messages and contacts were gone; such is life. Then I remembered that I had saved my contacts in a separate file. The separate file was a simple csv file created by Incredimail. I imported the file and guess what. IT DIDN'T WORK EITHER! However, not all was lost..........

Solution: I browsed the csv file and saw that some of the contacts were stored differently. That is, some of the data was apparently in the wrong columns. I manually corrected this and tried the import again.................... You guessed it; no good. It was time to switch to my old friend Outlook Express. I imported the contacts from the csv file into OE with no problem. Once I verified that all the contacts were there, I imported them from OE into Incredimail.

No Connectivity

Problem: Background - A customer running XP Pro-SP2, with DSL installed at home could not access the internet; the LAN connection was reporting "Limited or No Connectivity". After much effort, and switching DSL modems, the DSL technician asked the customer to back out SP2; he was concerned that SP2 was not only reporting the "Limited or No Connectivity", but also causing it. This didn't solve the problem so the customer decided to cancel DSL service and try cable. Unfortunately, the cable technician couldn't gain access to the internet with the customer's machine, either. So, the machine was left running XP Pro with SP1 installed and no internet access.
Enter yours truly.....
The few times I had seen the "Limited or No Connectivity" situation before turned out to be network hardware-related (bad wires or ports), so I really didn't believe the machine or software really had a problem. But, since this was a brand new cable installation I gave the cable company the benefit of the doubt; the modem seemed to indicate no problem communicating with the cable service.
I tried:

1. Re-installing SP2 - No help
2. Running an XP Setup Repair - No help
3. Changing from the cable company-supplied USB connection to a known good Ethernet cable - No help
4. Installing another copy of TCP/IP - I thought this worked because the "Limited or No Connectivity" indicator went away and the connection seemed to be good, BUT we still couldn't get to the internet (throughout the process ipconfig showed the dreaded 169 address, meaning no address was being assigned by DHCP). Anyhow, no help
5. Moving the machine to another location with a known good cable connection - No help
6. Installing an SP2-related hotfix reported as a possible solution, and an associated registry fix (see:KB884020 and Reg Fix) - Sorry, but this didn't help either.

Solution: I had run out of time and patience and so had the customer, so we saved all her data and started from scratch. I wiped the hard drive, re-installed XP, then SP2 and all the current Windows updates. This allowed us to get on the network and back in business.

I hate to get to this point; we really didn't "solve" anything. But, sometimes you pass the point of deminishing returns and find that it's less expensive and less trouble to just rebuild the system. At least we didn't lose anything but our precious time..... :o)

Outlook - The Other Enigma

Problem: A user (Jill) wanted to share multiple Outlook calendars owned by another user (Jack). One calendar wasn't enough for Jack; he had to have a Vacation calendar and a Moose Lodge calendar in addition to his Default calendar. All the Microsoft documentation around calendar sharing fooled me into thinking that we can only share our default calendar. Well, the doc is wrong. One of my colleagues had to deal with this before, and gave me some hints so I didn't go completely crazy trying to make this work...

Solution: Using the names above, Jack had to give Jill permission to access his mailbox (Not just his calendar!!). He did this by right-clicking his mailbox name in his folder list and selecting "sharing" from the menu. Then he gave Jill the appropriate level of permissions to his entire mailbox. After that, Jack selected each of his calendars one at a time (making sure he also selected his DEFAULT calendar, not just the sub-calendars) and did the following: From the File menu he chose Folder and then Properties for "Calendar" ("Calendar", "Vacation", "Moose Lodge", whatever....). In the Calendar Properties dialog he chose the Permissions tab and gave Jill the appropriate level of permissions for each calendar. With me so far?

Now Jill logged onto Outlook and selected the Tools menu and chose Email Accounts. From this dialog she selected the View or Change Accounts radio button and then hit the Change button. Then she hit the More Settings button and chose the Advanced tab. Finally, she hit the Add button and selected Jack's mailbox. This process added Jack's mailbox to her folder list and listed all of Jack's calendars on Jill's Calendar navigator.

So much for your documentation Mr. Gates.... :o) No, really, if this is documented somewhere, I apologize and would like to know where it is. If I could find these things I wouldn't have to waste my time writing, and your time reading these stupid notes with the goofy examples and sexist color coding.

Everything I Learned in College.....

Problem: My son told me something amazing. All the scientific research that has been done on bumble bees shows that bumble bees cannot fly........ Apparently no one told the bumble bee. The same is true about some over-achieving humans. There are some people who we all know that despite their lack of formal education, perform above all expectations. They seem to just know what it takes to get what they want or need out of life (evidence: Bill Gates). I guess no one told them that they couldn't be as successful as they are without a degree. Or conversely, maybe someone DID tell them, only to be proven wrong.

Anyhow, success is not a problem. The problem is that some of these over-achievers are constantly badgered into getting a degree anyhow. "Gotta get that piece of paper! It'll look great on your resume." Pressure drags on for years, perhaps their whole life. My point is that a degree doesn't guarantee success and neither does success depend on a degree. It can mean different things to different people.

Solution: I think everyone should decide for themselves whether to go to the trouble of getting a degree; and it IS trouble. Those who don't have a degree but are meeting their own career expectations should feel good about their success. At any rate, it might be a help for me to list everything I learned in college. The list might not seem like much to you, but each of these items have been very meaningful to me. If you think they would be useful to you, maybe a degree could do the same thing for you (remember, no guarantees!!). Here's a list of everything I learned in college:

1. My diploma isn't printed on a sheep skin. It's just ordinary paper. Well, not ordinary; it's kind of wrinkled and old looking, like they couldn't find any new paper. Anyhow, it's not sheep skin; I think I would know that.
2. How to deal with tedium. Not everything was tedious, but college sure had more than its fair share.
3. How to follow rules. Rules, rules and more rules. I had to learn that if I wanted/needed something from somebody (like a degree), that THEY get to set up all the hoops. No matter how many hoops, or where they're placed, when they're placed, etc. I have to first find all the hoops and then jump through them.
4. How to deal with bureaucracy. I never mastered this but I learned enough about it to get by. That's all we need sometimes isn't it?
5. How to deal with egos, mine and others.
6. It doesn't matter how long it takes to get through college. I'm an odd case; it took me 20 years off and on to finally get the degree. I never saw the light at the end of the tunnel until the final year, but somehow I knew it would be there.
7. Perseverance. Enough said.
8. Your major doesn't matter as long as all the courses add up to a degree at the end. Of course employers seem to filter out resumes based on majors, but it really doesn't matter. You're better off not working for an employer who does that, anyhow..... ;o)
9. In general, other people value my degree more than I do. This goes especially for people that don't even know me. Strange but true. On the other hand, since I already had a job while I was going to school, the people I wanted it to mean the most to, my employer(s), couldn't have cared less.
10. Getting a degree is a lot of work. It's quite an ordeal, but don't let anyone fool you into thinking it's any more than that. It doesn't begin to approach what I would call true human suffering, no matter what you study or how long it takes.
11. I'm incapable of original thought. It's all been done before. As hard as I've tried I've never been able to find any subject that doesn't have a gazillion things already written about it. That's why you find these new PhD candidates studying the mating habits of Peruvian piss ants. (Geez, I gotta find something no one has ever done!) Sorry, that's been done, too.
12. It's literally impossible to know everything; corollary: it's okay to say "I don't know." I left this for last because it was my most useful lesson. It has saved me immeasurable time. Since I now don't have to know everything, I can equate that to mean I don't have to know anything........... (just kidding .. :o)

So anyhow, that's what college did for me and I wouldn't trade it for the world. However, since obtaining a degree has to be an individual effort, I think it also needs to be an individual choice.

Does it Ping???

Problem: (This one was handled by a colleague while I watched over his shoulder. I'll change his name to protect the innocent). Harry got a call about a slow computer. No need for details; we like to start from ground zero; they say it builds character. Anyhow, Harry found that the machine was relatively new, containing 1 GB of RAM and a 2+ Ghz processor. Initial testing showed that it was responding very slowly, especially while opening web pages. Harry checked for viruses, spyware, adware, space on the C: drive, all the usual suspects. The only thing that looked suspicious was some adware (79 objects discovered by Ad-Aware). He deleted the objects but saw no improvement in response time. Further investigation showed that the slow response was definitely isolated to network operations. Local tasks were screaming.

Harry opened a web page and watched it slowly paint the screen. While it struggled, he opened Task Manager and noted that CPU, memory and network activity were almost bottomed out. The page finally painted; Harry was just waking up when I got back with the coffee. Not sure how long it took. Harry even checked the TCP/IP settings in the registry but found nothing out of order for this machine (I won't go into detail on this because I'm not sure what he did). Anyhow, we suspected a network problem but couldn't prove it. This is the kind of problem we like to throw over the wall, but we knew our Networking friends would throw it right back. After all, it did Ping and it did eventually paint the web page.

Solution: Harry wanted to know if the network packets were being fragmented, causing the transmissions to take longer. He used 2 flags on the Ping command, -f meaning don't fragment this packet, and -l nnnn to specify a packet size. The max packet size he could use was 1500 (actually 1472, excluding the 28-byte header). The -f flag shows an error if the packet breaks up. Well, it didn't, but he did find something very interesting. By sending the larger packet size, he could see very erractic responses times to the Ping. Some of the responses would come back within a "normal" time, interspersed with responses that timed out. This is something we didn't see with the default 32-byte packet. The Ping responses were consistently inconsistent. Well, we know that this isn't true and complete network analysis but we felt that it helped our case. It did; our Networking guys investigated further and found a bad port on the router. Once plugged into a different port, the machine was fine.

Non Privileged Administrator ??

Problem: The user reported that she was no longer able to access any of her files on her (XP Pro) system. I asked if she was able to logon. She said no; she told me that she had been logging on without a password and that now her userid was requiring a password, which of course, she didn't know. I had her hit Ctl+Alt+Delete 2 times to show the logon prompt, and logon as Administrator (I assumed that the Admin account had no password either; it didn't .... :o)

Now here's where it gets weird: I asked her to check the user accounts to see if her regular account had administrative privileges. She went to the User Accounts dialog and reported that her regular account was not even listed. Furthermore, she reported that the only user listed was Administrator and that it was designated a "Guest Account"!!! We then went to the Computer Management dialog to check the Local Users and Groups. Believe it or not, the Administrators group was not in the Group list! Now THERE'S something you don't see every day. This was major corruption of some sort so I decided to have her get out the XP install CD and run Setup to do a Repair. I walked her through that whole process successfully, but when she logged onto the newly repaired system we found that nothing had changed; the repair option didn't fix the Administrator account.

Solution: I had her run Setup again, but this time install a fresh copy of XP onto the same partition, making sure not to overwrite anything. She was then able to logon to the new system and take control of her files.

Never fool yourself into thinking you've seen everything ......

The Enigma Called Outook Express

Problem: The user reported that she could not see all of her IMAP folders in Outlook Express. I asked how she knew that some were missing. She said that she had accessed her business email from home and had created some new folders on the server, so she knew they were there, but Outlook Express at work didn't show them. I was able to logon to the email server with another email client, and sure enough saw the new folders.

Solution: I selected the mail server in her folder view and displayed the synchronize page. Next to the Synchronize button there's an IMAP button which shows the IMAP folder configuration page, where All folders are listed under one tab and Visible folders are listed under another tab. As you might have guessed, the lists were the same, and neither list had the new folders. The buttons to the right of the lists are named Show (to show hidden folders), Hide (to hide visible folders) and Reset List. The Reset List button causes OE to go out to the server and refresh the list of All folders. After the "All" list was refreshed, the new folders were there and I was able "Show" them on the "Visible" list.

Cumbersome, but par for the course in this imperfect world ruled by email ....

Black Screen of Death

Problem: The user reported that her Win 2000 machine would not boot to Windows; it stops at some DOS window (?). Anyhow, the boot sequence was stopping shortly after reading the default boot device and then hanging with at Trap 00000006 message; the background of the screen was black. The message also had some flags and Hex code that didn't look familiar to me.

Solution: Rather than hurt my brain trying to figure these things out, I always search the internet to see if anyone else has seen the problem. I'm always amazed at how many times I find a good hit. This time I found a solution by the good people at the Betaone forum. They say "the problem is the result of a corrupt NTLDR file." Their recommendation (I'll give my abreviated list):

1. Load the Win 2000 CD and go into the Recovery Console
2. Run chkdsk /r
3. cd back to the root of the C: drive
4. Ren NTLDR to NTLDR.old
5. Copy D:\i386\NTLDR C:\NTLDR

It worked for me. Thanks, FOX!

Broken Record

Problem: Well it happened again. That's right, somebody didn't heed my repeated warnings to BACK UP YOUR DATA!! This time the person had all her valuable data stored on a flash drive and the thing just died. It's a good thing I'm almost bald. There's not much hair left to pull out.

Solution: Sorry, there is no solution. I can only hope that repeating these sad stories will finally sink in. Who am I kidding? I'm the only one reading this.....

Oh well, Ron, if you're listening, do backups!!
ref:(http://kelleyron.blogspot.com/2004/10/gambling-with-your-data.html)

DAMN it's Cold!

Problem: Just waiting for SP2 to install; sometimes it takes forever so I have time to complain about the weather. It's really cold here; I'm not kidding! I usually don't complain about these things, but I recently took a little trip to Florida and I think it spoiled me. In Florida the temperature was low 80's every day. People were walking around in shorts, riding with the top down, swimming, laying in the sun; in general they were acting like it was Summer time, not the middle of January! The real problem is, I didn't stay there! I had to get home and back to work (such as it is).

Solution: I guess there are lots of possibilities:

1. Stay in the house (not really an option)
2. Carry a hot water bottle (too heavy and the damn thing gets cold, too, after awhile)
3. Dress like an Eskimo (don't want to destroy my macho image)
4. Carry a hot potato in my pants (note to self: if you do this, make sure the potato is in the front)
5. Carry a couple dogs everywhere (not too practical around work)
6. Piped in cocoa (fattening)
7. yada, yada.....
8. yada....
9. Go back to Florida (THAT's the ticket.............)

Hung at the F8 Screen

Problem: The user reported that his machine wouldn't boot. I found that the boot process was stopping at the F8 screen. I was able to change selections with the arrow keys, to select Last known Good Configuration, for instance. But the boot process would not continue.

Solution: The first try was to run XP Setup and attempt a Repair (not the "Repair Console"; I still haven't found much use for that capability!). Sometimes the OS is not corrupted beyond hope and you get the option to Repair the current installation during XP Setup. Unfortunately, this time I didn't get the Repair option, so the OS had to be rebuilt from scratch. Ugh!

Home Networking With XP

Problem: All I was trying to do is share one directory from an XP machine to another user on the home network, running Windows 2000. Both machines were connected to a Linksys router. Simple, eh? That's what I thought.

I did all the normal things:

1. Turned on File and Print Sharing on the XP machine.
2. Made sure both machines were in the same workgroup.
3. Verified that both machines were set to get an IP address via DHCP.
4. The machines were not in a domain but the user needing access to the share had a local userid on both the XP machine and W2K machine (same user name).
5. Unchecked the use simple file sharing box in the folder options, so that we would see the Sharing and Security tabs on the folder and file properties.
6. Shared the directory on the XP machine. Changed the share permissions to allow Everyone Full Control (been burned by that one before).
7. Attempted to set the NTFS permissions, but found that the C drive was FAT32. Ran a Convert to get us on NFTS and then set the NTFS permissions to allow Everyone Full Control.
8. Checked the XP Firewall settings and made sure that file and print sharing was allowed.
9. Yes, I even made sure both machines were plugged into the network.

And..... you guessed it; it didn't work. The W2K user didn't have permission to access the share. It made no sense; Everyone had Full Control.

Solution: A little investigation showed that the user wasn't using a password on either machine. We simply gave her a password on the XP machine and she was able to connect to the share from the W2K machine. Go figure......

Dodged Another Bullet....

Problem: I've been fighting an apparent virus for the past couple of weeks. I'm not sure what it was because I've never seen or heard of the specific symptoms before. Suffice to say that the machine was acting wacky. For instance Internet Explorer seemed okay most of the time during normal surfing. However, when linking to a web site from email, occasionally I would get an unknown error message; the message box wouldn't completely paint and then IE would crash. My printer was also hanging and causing the system to dynamically reboot. Somewhere along the line I tried an XP Repair, but XP Setup didn't give me the Repair option. I started saving stuff for an imminent rebuild but the system degraded so much that I finally couldn't even logon due to recursive BSODs. I really needed to save my email, so I couldn't just blow the system away and rebuild without tyring to save the data.

Solution: After numerous tries and failures at rebooting with the Last Known Good configuration, and unsuccessful attempts to even bring the thing up in Safe Mode, I ran XP Setup. I was thinking all was lost and was prepared to blow away the partition, when suddenly a ray of hope appeared. For some reason this time I got the Repair option during Setup. I ran the Repair, brought the machine up and reinstalled SP2. Once the system appeared to be stable, I backed up my email ........ :o) just in case. (The machine seems to be back to normal, but I'm never sure what "normal" is anymore).

NOTE: I'm using Incredimail for my email client. Incredimail has a very slick backup facility which puts all the email data into a single cab file for transporting to other machines or restoring after disasters. It's much cleaner than another very popular email client that most people use, which has no built-in backup/restore capability.

Outlook Signatures

Problem: A user reported that he was unable to insert a custom signature into a note on Outlook. The "Signature" option was not on the Insert menu.

Solution: The whole problem revolves around the option of using Outlook as your email editor vs using Word as the editor. If you use Outlook as your email editor and you want to insert a custom signature, or choose from a list of custom signatures, simply select "Signature" from the Insert menu when composing the note. If you use Word as your email editor, the "Signature" option will not appear on the Insert menu.

Brand-X Strikes Again ...

Problem: A user requested help with the sound on her machine. It happened to be another one of those brand-x machines that I love so much, loaded with parts that I've never seen or heard of. The sound circuits were integrated so I opened the box to determine the manufacturer of the mother board. It wasn't easy but I found the manufacturer's web site and downloaded the audio driver. At this point you're probably asking, "Why is he giving the solution under the problem statement?" Well, because I haven't gotten to the real problem yet :o( .... I started the installation of the audio driver and began to pack my stuff to leave, when the install process abruptly ended and the system crashed. When it came back up, of course the audio still didn't work. In addition, both the CD reader and the CD-RW devices went yellow in Device Manager. I unpacked my stuff and spent the next 3 hours trying to reload the CD and CD-RW drivers. Nothing worked. I had to revisit the machine the next day. You're right, the drivers didn't magically load by themselves over night. Going on advice I found on the internet, I deleted both devices and let the machine rediscover them. Of course the plug and play process loaded the same old driver and I got the same old message: "The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)". Now for the real killer; I deleted the devices again and decided to reboot and let the devices get rediscovered during system initialization. The machine came up as far as the logon prompt and permanently hung (please shoot me ...... now......)

Solution: I decided to try Safe Mode. However, when I hit the F8 key I didn't get the normal black screen with Safe Mode and the other choices. I got another short menu of choices for selecting a boot device. Oddly enough it let me choose the CD drive at this point, so I inserted the XP CD and ran a Setup Repair. This allowed me to logon again (whew), after which I was able to reinstall SP2 and get back to normal. Unfortunately this only got me back to square one, with no audio driver. By this time the user was happy to live without sound. That was good enough for me!

After days like this I always hope it's true what they say ..... "That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger"

Scanner Not Recognized

Problem: On an XP workstation, I was able to install the driver for an HP Scanjet 4570c, but the system didn't recognize it. The USB cable was fine and properly connected, and the device was powered on.

Solution: Disconnect the power from the scanner and then reconnect it. You should immediately see the plug and play dialog and the scanner will show up in the device list.
NOTE: This particular scanner was using a USB extension cable, to further complicate the situation. As it turned out, the device wouldn't work even after the above problem was solved until I removed the extension cable.