I needed to scan something in to my computer and I realised as I switched my scanner on that my newly installed copy of Vista hadn’t seen it yet. “No problem” I thought, it’ll either find the drivers itself or I’ll put the CD I got with it in.
It failed to find the drivers both on the web and on the CD. “Strange” I thought. I assumed it would be using some standard means of communicating with the computer (TWAIN) that Vista could easily handle. So I went to Epson’s web site to get the latest driver and realised there weren’t any for Vista (yet there were for some of their other scanners). It’s not an ancient scanner, probably a couple of years old so I was surprised I couldn’t get it to work.
After a reboot I was greeted with this friendly message:
Not very reassuring and in all the years I’ve been using Microsoft Windows, this is the first time a piece of hardware has failed to survive an update. May it rest in peace…
Of course, I also have a server running Windows 2003 lying around so I plugged it into that and the scanner worked as sweet as a nut. But it’s interesting to see that underneath quite a lot clearly has changed in Vista and the days of Microsoft’s legendary obsession with backwards compatibility may be starting to fade. Either that or Epson haven’t updated their drivers yet and I’m just getting burned for being an early adopter!
The thing is, if Microsoft start to ditch Windows’ legendary backwards compatibility then what are you left with?
Microsoft is in damned if you do, damned if you dont situation
Leave in full backwards compatibility and people bitch about bloated legacy code
Remove bloated legacy code and people bitch about lack of backwards compatibility
remember how people refused to upgrade from 98 to xp because it cost too much/used too many resources and would need a $5000 computer to run/didnt run games well/would not work with all your (now) 20 year old hardware
same thing this time around
however I would now like to see people still use 98 because games run better on it, and if your hardware wont run on xp, it sucks, give it a year or 2 and this will apply to vista, in the mean time see if there are any solutions on the net or third party drivers available
bah john, im disapointed in you.
I thought, nah, john would have tried that of course but apparently now, the results on the first page for google query “epson perfection 1250 vista” tell you how to get it working
now just to make it even easier for you here is a site that explains how, about 5 posts down 😛
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winvista/t1152270342
the explanation is too verbose to paste here
Yeah, I guess they are indeed between a rock and a hard place!
I did try what’s suggested on the page you’ve linked to but I couldn’t get TWAIN to install – the installer kept dropping dead half way through! (The advice was for a beta version of Vista). My first action was to search Google for a solution but sadly I still couldn’t get it to work. And life’s too short for me to keep banging my head against a brick wall!
ah, well you have restored my faith in you john, good work 😛 and good luck
Tsk, tsk. You know what I’m about to say don’t you?
Ha ha ha, you weren’t about to offer another platform as an alternative were you? 😉
I have an old Canon Scanner, an N67OU, perfectly adequate in the past, but even with the new drivers fitted, it clashes with Vista, and I think the whole business is an outrage, Microsofts arrogant monopolising on Operating Systems and imposing on its customers the necessity to buy new equipment. Vista is also very slow, slower than 98 or XP, and I had no choice in the matter, as I needed a new computer. I think I am being driven to Linux or some other less hectoring, less messy system, with its hundreds of updates. It is more like schizhophrenia than computing.
My external keyboard, Lexmark printer and even USB hub wont work on Vista, now after reading your page I guess my Canon N67OU scanner wont work either !
Did you ever get it working on Vista, or is it a case of buying everything new to work on it?
Sadly I didn’t get it to work with Vista. I took a more extreme measure in the end and hooked the scanner up to my server at home (which runs Windows 2003) and whenever I need to scan something I do it on that. Not ideal but at least it works!
Sounds like you’re much unluckier though, my scanner not working is nowhere near as painful as your printer, keyboard and USB hub! Come back XP all is forgiven!
Hey, Guys! Must buy new copier / scanner and read all your comments and can so appreciate your fiasco! Does anyone know of a printer/scanner that is “easily” (only seeking probabilities considering the use of the word easy!) Anyway….Vista and Scanner’s….is there a recommended machine?
Thanks…
Probably your best bet is to have a look at Microsoft’s hardware compatibility guide:
http://winqual.microsoft.com/hcl/
Ironically it seems like if I’d bought the scanner above or below the one I did it would have been fine!
I tried the Microsoft hardware compatibility guide address today.
MS sez it is “temporarilly unavilable”.
Hmmm.
I haven’t seen the “blue screen of death” for years until today when I tried getting my older Lexmark X73 to run in Vista. I really thought that kind of thing was in the past. I’ll be clutching on to XP for a long time after it is no longer supported. Fi to MS and Vista, and double fi to the manufacturers who haven’t updated their drivers.
I have a HP 7780 4 in 1 with a high cap double sided mag which is almost two years old. it has been a work horse in our home based engineering business. we recently replaced a dell XP computer with HP vista. All was well untill we tried the scanner the only thing that worked were the error messages. 5 weeks and 23 try this pages later we have gone from try this to try this again. we have plugged in to a dell laptop and a dell desk top both with XP Pro and it works fine. we will swap vista for xp