I'm trying to set up SMB scanning on a 2560 for demo in our office. For some reason, I keep getting a 2101 communication error. I am running Vista on a laptop. I am able to scan to another PC successfully running XP.

One other thing - When I am able to scan successfully, it is only with IP addresses. Host names will always fail.

Any thoughts on what might be generating this error code and why I can't scan via hostnames?

Thanks

I removed my DNS settings and now everything is working.

My DNS is the same as my gateway. Is that normal? As soon as I put the DNS back in, back come the 2101 codes.

Yes your DNS and gateway can be the same.
DNS is the Dynamic Name Service server that can take a name and returns the ip address associated with that name. The gateway is generally the router address to get out of the local network subnet (ie.. internet access). So if the router has the DNS IP address programmed in it, than you can point to the router to connect to the DNS server.

That makes sense, but what would cause the 2101 error code. If DNS resolves names to ip addresses, why am I able to Scan to SMB via hostname without a DNS entry in the copier? When I put in the DNS address (as I see it in IPconfig - 192.168.1.1 - I get the 2101 error code.

The hostname works without the DNS settings because there is another Name Resolution at work: NetBIOS (aka NetBEUI).

I just watched a 250ci try to resolve names for a scan; hopefully the 2560 is the same. It started by trying the DNS server, but that server had no clue about my laptop because it's a cheap netgear router. Then it tried NetBIOS which uses a local broadcast, so no server needed (but a WINS server can replace this). It found my laptop and connected fine.

I still don't know what would cause a 2101 with DNS settings unless the DNS server is giving out the wrong IP address for your hostname, but that seems pretty unlikely.