Scanner driver, old scanner, new OS

[Philip]

I just gave a friend my old Plustek OpticFilm 35mm scanner but he could not get it to work as the only drivers Plustek has on their site are for up to Windows 7. He uses Windows 10.

Can anyone suggest a work-around in this?


Philip

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[alexvaras]

A virtual machine with windows 7 would solve the problem. Or a dual boot computer, or maybe a usb drive with windows 7.

[Philip]

Oh, nice ideas! I will pass them along. Thanks. (I don't know how computer-savvy that friend is, but it may work for him.)

[PFMcFarland]

They told me down at the computer shop that if I wanted to use the Office files from my old XP Pro computer they would have to install Win 7 first. Seems that is the break point from the 32bit only Windows to the 64bit versions. Likely the driver for your old scanner is 32bit.

PF

[Bennybee]

I've had nothing but troubles with virtual machines to use my Kodak Pakon F135 scanner on Win (the Pakon requires XP Professional).
I ended up buying a used laptop with XP Pro for $100, just for that. No issues anymore.

[alexvaras]

Yeah, I agree with the small laptop solution
VM can be a nightmare unless you know what are you doing.

[Captain Slack]

Have you tried Vuescan? It has built-in drivers for a lot of older scanners that won't work on modern OS's.

[Philip]

Thanks for these suggestions, too.

The old laptop may in fact be my friend's way to go. But Vuescan might work too. (I actually poohpoohed Vuescan to him beforehand because of my experience with it -- I could never get the setting exactly right; when i switched the Epson softwrae I hardly ever made mistakes.

[melek]

I've run into this problem in the past with two scanners. Alex is right. A virtual machine is a good option.

VMWare Player works very well. You can run Windows XP (or any version of Windows, DOS or Linux in the virtual machine). You can then have the VMWare session control the USB device, whether it be a scanner or CD drive.

There also is Oracle's VirtualBox, which I like but is more complicated to get to control a USB device.

If you need a Windows XP Pro install disk, let me know.

[Philip]

Thanks for all these comments and suggestions. My friend (who now has myold scanner), and I have a mutual friend who may be able to set up a virtual machine for him. So I think, one way or another, he'll get it going.

If not, I may spend a few days doing his slides on my Epson V700.