Vuescan and missing scanner driver

[Stan Brown]

Back in October I asked for help because Canon does not have a Win 7
driver for my LiDE 50 scanner. One suggestion given was to install
Vuescan; another was to install a Windows XP virtual machine and run
the scanner in it. The latter suggestion worked, as I reported after
trying it.

Today I thought it would be nice to be able to scan without opening a
virtual machine, so I installed Vuescan as Chuck had suggested.
Apparently he was under a misapprehension. Vuescan does not work
unless it can use the scanner manufacturer's drivers, so it is
useless for my situation. I confirmed this in email exchanges with
the program author, Ed Hamrick, who was prompt and courteous.

I'm posting here for the benefit of others who might upgrade to
Windows 7 and think that Vuescan can handle their scanner without
drivers. (The program's compatibility list does encourage that
impression, and I've suggested to Ed that he might want to make it
more clear that manufacturer's drivers are required with Vuescan.)

 

[Ken Blake]

Back in October I asked for help because Canon does not have a Win 7
driver for my LiDE 50 scanner. One suggestion given was to install
Vuescan; another was to install a Windows XP virtual machine and run
the scanner in it. The latter suggestion worked, as I reported after
trying it.

Today I thought it would be nice to be able to scan without opening a
virtual machine, so I installed Vuescan as Chuck had suggested.
Apparently he was under a misapprehension. Vuescan does not work
unless it can use the scanner manufacturer's drivers, so it is
useless for my situation. I confirmed this in email exchanges with
the program author, Ed Hamrick, who was prompt and courteous.

You might want to try the Windows 7 driver for the LiDE 60. I can
report that it works just fine, but I don't know whether it would work
with an LiDE 50.

 

[Fred]

Back in October I asked for help because Canon does not have a Win 7
driver for my LiDE 50 scanner. One suggestion given was to install
Vuescan; another was to install a Windows XP virtual machine and run
the scanner in it. The latter suggestion worked, as I reported after
trying it.

Today I thought it would be nice to be able to scan without opening a
virtual machine, so I installed Vuescan as Chuck had suggested.
Apparently he was under a misapprehension. Vuescan does not work
unless it can use the scanner manufacturer's drivers, so it is
useless for my situation. I confirmed this in email exchanges with
the program author, Ed Hamrick, who was prompt and courteous.

I'm posting here for the benefit of others who might upgrade to
Windows 7 and think that Vuescan can handle their scanner without
drivers. (The program's compatibility list does encourage that
impression, and I've suggested to Ed that he might want to make it
more clear that manufacturer's drivers are required with Vuescan.)

I have a Canon Lide 30, which I have hardly used simply because I don't need
much scanning. I have been unable to find a Canon driver suitable for this
model on windows 7, neither can I find any freeware driver. Canon told me
it is too old to bother updating the driver. So stuff you Canon - I've found
their products excellent, but they are definitely off my list now.

 

[Char Jackson]

I have a Canon Lide 30, which I have hardly used simply because I don't need
much scanning. I have been unable to find a Canon driver suitable for this
model on windows 7, neither can I find any freeware driver. Canon told me
it is too old to bother updating the driver. So stuff you Canon - I've found
their products excellent, but they are definitely off my list now.

I understand your reasons for giving up on Canon scanners, but I seem
to remember similar stories about scanners from Epson, HP, and others.
They might all be equally bad at supporting their older, yet perfectly
functional, hardware.

 

[Mortimer]

I understand your reasons for giving up on Canon scanners, but I seem
to remember similar stories about scanners from Epson, HP, and others.
They might all be equally bad at supporting their older, yet perfectly
functional, hardware.

Yes I have a perfectly functional Epson 1200 PHOTO scanner that only works
with XP: there isn't even a Vista driver for it, let alone a Windows 7
driver.

The attitude of equipment manufacturers is very poor when it comes to older
equipment. If they can't be bothered to write new drivers themselves, they
should let third party software companies and/or enthusiasts write their own
drivers.

Why should I have to buy a new scanner (which I bet won't be as good as the
Epson) just because I upgrade to a new operating system. Having to maintain
an XP PC, and go through the hassle of connecting it to keyboard,mouse,
monitor and power supply, and going through the rigmarole of booting it up,
is tedious.

 

[choro]

Yes I have a perfectly functional Epson 1200 PHOTO scanner that only
works with XP: there isn't even a Vista driver for it, let alone a
Windows 7 driver.

The attitude of equipment manufacturers is very poor when it comes to
older equipment. If they can't be bothered to write new drivers
themselves, they should let third party software companies and/or
enthusiasts write their own drivers.

Why should I have to buy a new scanner (which I bet won't be as good as
the Epson) just because I upgrade to a new operating system. Having to
maintain an XP PC, and go through the hassle of connecting it to
keyboard,mouse, monitor and power supply, and going through the
rigmarole of booting it up, is tedious.

Hook both the computers to a KVM. Problem solved!

But, yes why don't they provide support for W7?

The answer is simple. They want more lolly from you!

Reminds me of Cabaret, that wonderful film. Money, Money, Mo-ney...

 

[Ken Blake]

I have a Canon Lide 30, which I have hardly used simply because I don't need
much scanning. I have been unable to find a Canon driver suitable for this
model on windows 7, neither can I find any freeware driver. Canon told me
it is too old to bother updating the driver. So stuff you Canon - I've found
their products excellent, but they are definitely off my list now.

Bear in mind that essentially every manufacturer does the same thing.
They don't spend the time and money it takes to create drivers for
older equipment to run under a new version of Windows. The only real
difference between one company and the next is what they might
consider so old that it doesn't pay to write new drivers for it.

 

[Stan Brown]

[Vuescan doesn't work without manufacturer scanner drivers, which
don't exist for Canon LiDE 50 on Windows 7]

You might want to try the Windows 7 driver for the LiDE 60. I can
report that it works just fine, but I don't know whether it would work
with an LiDE 50.

'Twas a good thought, Ken, and worth trying. Unfortunately the LiDE
60 driver couldn't talk to the LiDE 50 scanner. When I tried to
select a TWAIN source in Irfanview, none was available. (The scanner
still showed as "unknown device" in Windows.)

So I guess the virtual machine is the only solution for me -- not
ideal, but very much better than nothing.

 

[Stan Brown]

Bear in mind that essentially every manufacturer does the same thing.
They don't spend the time and money it takes to create drivers for
older equipment to run under a new version of Windows. The only real
difference between one company and the next is what they might
consider so old that it doesn't pay to write new drivers for it.

There's something to that, certainly.

On the other hand, my Brother HL-5250DN printer is older than my
scanner, and Brother has full Win 7 support for it, in 32-bit and 64-
bit versions.

I'd have been *really* ticked if my printer wouldn't work in Windows.

 

[Jeff Layman]

Back in October I asked for help because Canon does not have a Win 7
driver for my LiDE 50 scanner. One suggestion given was to install
Vuescan; another was to install a Windows XP virtual machine and run
the scanner in it. The latter suggestion worked, as I reported after
trying it.

Today I thought it would be nice to be able to scan without opening a
virtual machine, so I installed Vuescan as Chuck had suggested.
Apparently he was under a misapprehension. Vuescan does not work
unless it can use the scanner manufacturer's drivers, so it is
useless for my situation. I confirmed this in email exchanges with
the program author, Ed Hamrick, who was prompt and courteous.

I'm posting here for the benefit of others who might upgrade to
Windows 7 and think that Vuescan can handle their scanner without
drivers. (The program's compatibility list does encourage that
impression, and I've suggested to Ed that he might want to make it
more clear that manufacturer's drivers are required with Vuescan.)

I have an old Epson Perfection 2450 scanner used for many years (and
still used) under XPH 32-bit.

Last year I got a Win7x64 laptop. Despite much searching, I found that
there was no 64-bit driver for the scanner. Various, somewhat
complicated, fixes did not work, so I downloaded and installed VueScan.
I tried it as a simple photocopier and it worked without problem.

There are numerous references to using VueScan with a 64-bit OS when an
original driver does not exist. For example, see:
http://ddisoftware.com/tech/computer-software/canon-scanners-64-bit-os-and-vuescan/

 

[Ken Blake]

[Vuescan doesn't work without manufacturer scanner drivers, which
don't exist for Canon LiDE 50 on Windows 7]

You might want to try the Windows 7 driver for the LiDE 60. I can
report that it works just fine, but I don't know whether it would work
with an LiDE 50.

'Twas a good thought, Ken, and worth trying. Unfortunately the LiDE
60 driver couldn't talk to the LiDE 50 scanner.

I was afraid of that.

 

[Ken Blake]

There's something to that, certainly.

On the other hand, my Brother HL-5250DN printer is older than my
scanner, and Brother has full Win 7 support for it, in 32-bit and 64-
bit versions.

Yep, as I said, "the only real difference between one company and the
next is what they might consider so old that it doesn't pay to write
new drivers for it."

I'd have been *really* ticked if my printer wouldn't work in Windows.

My standard advice to anyone contemplating a Windows update (Windows 7
or any other version) is to *first* find out what drivers are not
available, and therefore what hardware you will have to replace.

Here's my canned post on the subject:

"Whenever you change to a new version of Windows, you need to install
drivers (software that provides the interface between the hardware and
Windows) for printers, scanners, video cards, etc., that have been
written for that new version of Windows. And also note that you need
different drivers for a 32-bit version of Windows and a 64-bit
version.

It's up to the manufacturer of the hardware to write and make
available for download those drivers. Especially if your hardware is
older, it may well be that the manufacturer has decided that it's not
worth his time and effort to develop drivers for hardware that he is
no longer selling.

Check with the manufacturer or on their web site to see if a driver
exists. If it doesn't, you're out of luck.

So in the future, before you do such an upgrade, be sure that you've
done the appropriate research to find out what drivers don't exist,
and therefore what hardware you will have to replace if you upgrade."

 

[Char Jackson]

It's up to the manufacturer of the hardware to write and make
available for download those drivers. Especially if your hardware is
older, it may well be that the manufacturer has decided that it's not
worth his time and effort to develop drivers for hardware that he is
no longer selling.

Check with the manufacturer or on their web site to see if a driver
exists. If it doesn't, you're out of luck.

An additional tip is to check the manufacturer's web sites in other
countries. Sometimes a newer driver or firmware is available
elsewhere.

 

[Char Jackson]

Last year I got a Win7x64 laptop. Despite much searching, I found that
there was no 64-bit driver for the scanner. Various, somewhat
complicated, fixes did not work, so I downloaded and installed VueScan.
I tried it as a simple photocopier and it worked without problem.

What should we, the poor readers, learn here? One post says Vuescan
doesn't work by itself and needs a proper driver, while the next post
says Vuescan works without a driver.

 

[Ken Blake]

An additional tip is to check the manufacturer's web sites in other
countries. Sometimes a newer driver or firmware is available
elsewhere.

Yes, thanks--a good point. I had that experience once with a scanner
and Windows Vista (I think it was Vista). There was no driver for it
in the US, but I found one on the manufacturer's UK web site.

I've modified my canned reply to make that suggestion.

 

[Ken Blake]

Yes, thanks--a good point. I had that experience once with a scanner
and Windows Vista (I think it was Vista). There was no driver for it
in the US, but I found one on the manufacturer's UK web site.

I've modified my canned reply to make that suggestion.

I couldn't remember the brand of scanner when I wrote the above, but I
just remembered. It was UMAX.

 

[Bob Henson]

What should we, the poor readers, learn here? One post says Vuescan
doesn't work by itself and needs a proper driver, while the next post
says Vuescan works without a driver.

I wondered the same myself - however, I had a look at their website, and
since you can buy a new scanner for not much more than the software, I
decided it didn't matter whether it worked or not.

--
Regards, Bob

Heaven is where the police are British, the mechanics German, the cooks are
French, the lovers Italian, and all is organized by the Swiss.
Hell is where the police are German, the mechanics are French, the cooks
are British, the lovers are Swiss, and it's all organized by the Italians!

 

[Bob I]

An additional tip is to check the manufacturer's web sites in other
countries. Sometimes a newer driver or firmware is available
elsewhere.

And in addition to that, check to see if the "real" manufacturer of the
hardware wrote a driver for the underlying model (for example see
Samsung VS Dell)

 

[Paul]

[Vuescan doesn't work without manufacturer scanner drivers, which
don't exist for Canon LiDE 50 on Windows 7]

You might want to try the Windows 7 driver for the LiDE 60. I can
report that it works just fine, but I don't know whether it would work
with an LiDE 50.

'Twas a good thought, Ken, and worth trying. Unfortunately the LiDE
60 driver couldn't talk to the LiDE 50 scanner. When I tried to
select a TWAIN source in Irfanview, none was available. (The scanner
still showed as "unknown device" in Windows.)

So I guess the virtual machine is the only solution for me -- not
ideal, but very much better than nothing.

Did you have a look around ? There is a report of someone using a
60 driver for the 50 here. This is Vista, but something similar
might work on Windows 7.

http://www.vistax64.com/drivers/96827-canon-lide-50-a.html

You can get USB ID info here, for comparison to the contents of
the INF file. In Linux, they're controlled by the same driver,
but that doesn't mean too much. What the Linux driver choice suggests,
is that both units use a Genesys branded scanner chip inside. Many
scanners are controlled by a single chip, which is why you can find
scanners for so cheap.

http://www.sane-project.org/cgi-bin/driver.pl?manu=canon&model=lide+25&bus=any&v=&p=

Paul

 

[nomail]

I understand your reasons for giving up on Canon scanners, but I seem
to remember similar stories about scanners from Epson, HP, and others.
They might all be equally bad at supporting their older, yet perfectly
functional, hardware.

I've a Canon LiDE 25 which works fine under win7/32.

As far as I can recall the ScanGear CS driver files came on the
Windows DVD but I see they are available on the Canon web site.

So are the LiDE 30 Scanner Drivers for Windows Vista32 and the
CanoScan Toolbox Ver. 4.1.3.6 for Windows Vista32 is listed under
LiDE50. Worth trying with Win7/32 but no good for Win7/64.

Pete