Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Fingerprint Readers or ID Scanners stop working

If your Fingerprint Readers or ID Scanners seem to stop working after a while, and you need to reboot to "get them back", don't blame Dazzle. What happens is - the USB ports on computers "go to sleep" to save power. You need to turn off this feature.

Right-click My-Computer(XP) or Computer(Vista or 7), and select Properties.
If you don't see Device Manager, Click Hardware
Open device manager.
Look for Universal Serial Bus and double-click it to open it up.
Look for the USB root hubs.
Double-click each one.
Select the Power Management tab
Clear the box that says "allow computer to turn this device off to conserve power"
Do this for all USB root hubs.

Note that some older computers do not properly manage the USB ports in standby, and if that is the case this won't help. You can try a BIOS update for your computer which may fix it.Also make sure your computer itself isn't set to go to sleep or standby modes