I have been trying to track a process that was consuming handles on a machine that has Windows 8.1 Pro and I saw that ScanToPCActivationApp.exe was taking a few thousand handles which I saw were pointing to an non existent process.
The process starts with a few hundred handles once the computer starts but when I looked it was over 7,000 handles. Over a course of two days the handles were over 16,000.
On process explorer sometimes I see a spawn process of HPNetworkCommunicator.exe with about that half of those connections. I assume this application is trying to communicate with the printer on a regular basis.
Every time HPNetworkCommunicator.exe is launched I get about 9 new handles then after a while one removed. Seems to me each time the spawn process launches 8 handles are not cleared (after it closes).
I suspect the timer that launches the spawn is on every 60 seconds and the HPNetworkCommunicator.exe tries to connect for 20 seconds then shuts down. So in an hour there are 45*8=360 lost handles which coincides with my assessment of 16,000 handles over about two days.
The multifunction device is POWERED OFF during this and this may be significant. I am using the latest version of the software (or at least it's automatic update says so).
Operating system is Windows 8.1 Professional x64 (en-us)
ScanToPCActivationApp.exe , File Version: 28.0.1315.0000, 2.573.416 bytes
The same behaviour is happening on a second PC I have with Windows 7 Home Premium x32 (en-us).
On Windows 8.1 I am using Comodo Firewall but Windows 7 is without Comodo firewall, so I suspect it is because the device is powered off.
Proof is that when the printer is POWERED ON HPNetworkCommunicator.exe doesn't shut down and handles are keeping steady (even when I power off the printer afterwards).
So this only happens when the computer is powered on and the printer is not. Until I power on the printer I get thousands of handles.
This is consuming computer resources and I would like to see it patched on the next version.