iP3K

Back in 2000 I bought myself a scanner. It was only $99 CND and found it to be quite useful from time to time. It’s nothing fancy but I really have a practical use from the HP Scanjet 2200c. I remember back then was the time Windows XP became available and the documentation for the scanner informed me that drivers for Windows XP were available through their website and all.

Years have gone by and I still use this scanner and since it’s fully functional there is no need to purchase a new one, or those fancy printers that are multi-purpose. When I first started to test Windows Vista (before it’s release), the drivers worked with any trouble until a certain build and then my scanner became inoperable on Windows Vista because the drivers were not recognised. HP official word is that that equipment is too old anyway and they won’t bother to make new drivers for it. So for sometime I plugged my scanner into my Windows XP laptop instead but I know eventually all my systems will run Vista.

Today I found a post on an Dutch forum a way to trick Vista in accepting the old drivers. Don’t connect the scanner yet. First you need to find the HP PrecisionScan LTX software and drivers available via HP’s website. You need to extract the files out the executable and run the setup.exe as a Windows XP Service Pack 2 compatible program (right click the file, then proprieties, compatibility tab). Once you’re done installing the program you’ll need to browse to the folder were it was installed (inside the Program Files folder), there should be nine executables in there. Change all of their compatibility mode to Windows 2000. Once it’s done plug the scanner via USB and Windows Vista will recognise the hardware and use the drivers already installed.

On my first attempt the HP PrecisionScan LTX crashed and could not initiate a scan, it was partially expected from what I could decipher on the forum post.

[UPDATE]: It seems I was too quick to rule out HP’s software. I’ve tryed it again and it works like a charm. The following options are viable alternate scanning software but I’d better stick with the original now that it is working

The final step is to find a scanning software that is compatible with Windows Vista, like VueScan and use it. I can confirm I’ve been able to scan documents and images without trouble. However since VueScan is a paid software I’ll try and run XSane instead; it’s open source and worked wonders with my scanner when using Linux.