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Barryng
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Barryng asked on

Need Windows 7 compatible TWAIN drivers for HP scanning application, PrecisionScan Pro 3.02. W7 Drivers not available from HP

The scanner (HP Scanjet 7450C) appears normally in the Device Manager. It works properly using both a third party scanning application (VueScan) and the native scanning application in Nuance's Paperport. Niether uses a TWAIN interface. However, whenever PrecisionScan Pro starts, an error message is displayed stating "Sorry, the scanner could not be initialized (Scanner not found)".

Running PrecisionScan Pro in XP or Vista compatibility mode does not help. I have downloaded the Vista 64 bit driver from HP but it will not install. The install dialog states that the existing driver is a better driver.

I  believe this is a Windows 7 compatibility problem with the TWAIN drivers provided by HP.

It is important to for PrecisionScan Pro to work properly because it is used by Paperport and provides much functionality that is not available from the Paperport native scanning application.

HP stated they will not provide Windows 7 support or drivers for this scanner because it is not a current product. This is frustrating as there is nothing wrong with this scanner and an equivalent replacement is over $700.

Any help would certainly be appreciated.
Barryng
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Answer
Barryng replied on

ArnoldGuy, I eventually did find a workaround solution and it includes running virtual XP.

It is important for us to use PrecisionScan Pro because it allows much greater productivity and scan adjustments than does the minimal Paperport native scanning function. As a result, this problem has caused a significant disruption over the past two weeks.

The Vitual XP solution works but unfortunately forces a number of undesirable compromises. First, I could only get PrecisionScan Pro to play nice with the scanner under the 32 bit version of W7. I had to do a second clean install in less than two weeks and now am limited to 2 GB of memory (wasting the 4 GB memory I just bought). Both Paperport 11 and 12 are unstable under Virtual XP when working with documents on a real (not a virtual) drive. They both crash if I only click on a thumbnail of a document that resides on a real drive. Strangely, if I load a document residing on the virtual drive into the viewer immediately after starting Paperport, it becomes mostly stable. Paperport is annoyingly sluggish under Virtual XP, sometimes almost to the point of being unusable (especially after scanning 20+ two sided pages). It also has some strange behavior like frequently not showing desktop thumbnails correctly. In other words, we found a workaround but it is a pain to use and requires us to run the 32 bit version of W7. Although I do not frequently scan documents directly into Microsoft Word, Word will also not see the scanner and I get the same error message that PrecisionScan Pro gives.

My wife and I are both extremely offended by HPs behavior over this problem. To say I am angry would be an understatement. I certainly do not expect HP to provide free support for a six year old scanner. However, since this scanner works as good now as the day we purchased it and still suits our needs very well, I tried to initiate a pay per incident support call.  HP responded by bluntly telling me they would not provide any support, paid or otherwise. The supervisor then went on to say we needed to buy a new scanner. We have a small real estate business and simply cannot afford to trash perfectly good equipment. The problem is almost certainly a TWAIN driver issue because the scanner properly installs as shown by the Device Manager. Therefore, I cannot understand why it would be difficult to resolve. Actually I do understand and that is what upsets me. It has everything to do with forced product obsolescence. I look around this room and see four other HP products including a Laserjet printer, a fax/printer/scanner, and two other color printers and I feel betrayed by a company that has had many years of loyalty from us. This does not include the HP color printer and fax/printer/scanner we were forced to replace last year when we purchased a Vista computer and found no Vista drivers were available.

Sorry for ranting but this is going to eventually drive us to buy a new scanner and an equivalent replacement is over $600.00.  Good customer support is every bit as important as the quality of the product. I think HP makes an excellent product and that is exactly why we have always purchased HP products over the years. However, their customer support, by what I believe to be intentional design, simply sucks.
ImpalaJag
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ImpalaJag replied on
I got the same error message with my ScanJet 5370C and Vista.  I had been playing with Vista for a couple months to get all the bugs worked out for Win 7 which I pre-purchased and I noticed when I had installed ANY portion of HP's drivers/software I got the error.  After doing a complete reformat and Vista install I just installed VueScan, which I had to purchase to get my scanner to work since HP wants us to buy new hardware, and did not have any issues from that point on.  I installed Win 7 Pro (fresh install & format) and again installed VueScan and it's been working fine so far.

Russell
Barryng
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Barryng replied on

Thanks for the suggestion. I was ready to purchase VueScan this morning but discovered VueScan does not come with TWAIN drivers. TWAIN drivers are needed so it integrates with Paperport. Paperport allows choosing between the native scanning dialog or any other scanning software as long as it use a TWAIN driver. PrecisionScan Pro gives much more control over the scanning process so we have been using it to scan documents into the Paperport data base. I will now have to use the native Paperport scanning function but I doubt it will allow the flexibility and productivity PrecisionScan Pro does.

Our Paperport data base is almost 30 GB so we do a lot of scanning and therefore prefer the heavier duty software. That is why I am trying so hard to find a solution to this problem. You cannot imagine how frustrating it is to have a perfectly good fast high quality expensive scanner with a 50 page document feeder and suddenly be abandoned by HP over something as trivial as a driver. I guess HP knows what they are doing as they are obviously very successful. However, this, and an exactly similar problem when we had to trash an HP color printer and an HP Fax/printer/scanner last year after purchasing a Vista computer, has certainly done an excellent job of alienating us. We have a small real estate business and simply cannot afford to replace perfectly good hardware as quickly as HP is forcing us to.
kenr64
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kenr64 replied on

I have a similar situation with a Visioneer Strobe XP 450 scanner, which has worked flawlessly and still does with Paperport 11 on an XP computer. It will not work on Windows 7, even with an upgrade to Paperport 12. According to the windows 7 compatibility page it is listed as compatible. Visioneer says, however the 64 bit Vista driver will not work (with wn 7)  and they have no plans to create one. I tried viewscan & it just freezes after a simple scan.
ArnoldGuy
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ArnoldGuy replied on
Just a thought,

  If you are running Win7 professional you could download the VM and XP and try running in the XP instance.

Cheers,

  ArnoldGuy
Barryng
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Answer
Barryng replied on

ArnoldGuy, I eventually did find a workaround solution and it includes running virtual XP.

It is important for us to use PrecisionScan Pro because it allows much greater productivity and scan adjustments than does the minimal Paperport native scanning function. As a result, this problem has caused a significant disruption over the past two weeks.

The Vitual XP solution works but unfortunately forces a number of undesirable compromises. First, I could only get PrecisionScan Pro to play nice with the scanner under the 32 bit version of W7. I had to do a second clean install in less than two weeks and now am limited to 2 GB of memory (wasting the 4 GB memory I just bought). Both Paperport 11 and 12 are unstable under Virtual XP when working with documents on a real (not a virtual) drive. They both crash if I only click on a thumbnail of a document that resides on a real drive. Strangely, if I load a document residing on the virtual drive into the viewer immediately after starting Paperport, it becomes mostly stable. Paperport is annoyingly sluggish under Virtual XP, sometimes almost to the point of being unusable (especially after scanning 20+ two sided pages). It also has some strange behavior like frequently not showing desktop thumbnails correctly. In other words, we found a workaround but it is a pain to use and requires us to run the 32 bit version of W7. Although I do not frequently scan documents directly into Microsoft Word, Word will also not see the scanner and I get the same error message that PrecisionScan Pro gives.

My wife and I are both extremely offended by HPs behavior over this problem. To say I am angry would be an understatement. I certainly do not expect HP to provide free support for a six year old scanner. However, since this scanner works as good now as the day we purchased it and still suits our needs very well, I tried to initiate a pay per incident support call.  HP responded by bluntly telling me they would not provide any support, paid or otherwise. The supervisor then went on to say we needed to buy a new scanner. We have a small real estate business and simply cannot afford to trash perfectly good equipment. The problem is almost certainly a TWAIN driver issue because the scanner properly installs as shown by the Device Manager. Therefore, I cannot understand why it would be difficult to resolve. Actually I do understand and that is what upsets me. It has everything to do with forced product obsolescence. I look around this room and see four other HP products including a Laserjet printer, a fax/printer/scanner, and two other color printers and I feel betrayed by a company that has had many years of loyalty from us. This does not include the HP color printer and fax/printer/scanner we were forced to replace last year when we purchased a Vista computer and found no Vista drivers were available.

Sorry for ranting but this is going to eventually drive us to buy a new scanner and an equivalent replacement is over $600.00.  Good customer support is every bit as important as the quality of the product. I think HP makes an excellent product and that is exactly why we have always purchased HP products over the years. However, their customer support, by what I believe to be intentional design, simply sucks.
OldwornoutMVP
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OldwornoutMVP replied on

HP is not alone. Many of the scanner mfrs had successful scanner models that are no longer supported by the mfr after just a couple of years.  On top of that, the software you have been using is also no longer fully compatable.  This issue has been going on for years, with the scanners, drivers, and software usually not supported after just a couple of years. Perhaps you need to maintain a p/c in a dual boot configuration, or even an older P/C expressly for scanner use.

I also used to see the same issues with large format printers for drafting use. In one case a P/C with win 3.11 was maintained expressly to be used to drive an HP printer/plotter, since there was no driver support for later windows versions.


I was also most unhappy to find that a multifunction had only basic drivers included in win 7, and they did not support the document feeder. Fortunately Epson recently released a revised driver set that re enabled the document feeder.  I suspect that all that was really needed was a registry value change to make the driver shipped with win 7 utilize the document feeder.
Barryng
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Barryng replied on

...all that was really needed was a registry value change...
My thoughts exactly. My instincts tell me this would be a very simple problem to fix for the developer of the software, if they wanted to. That is exactly why I feel so frustrated.
m_spike
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m_spike replied on

I've been in the business of selling TWAIN scanning tools for 10 years or so, and I'm afraid I have somewhat the same impression of HP - of the scanner vendors I am familiar with, they seem the most aggressive at abandoning scanners and drivers - which is to say, their customers - whenever there is a new version of Windows.  It's particularly obnoxious in the case of Windows 7, because there is no change to the driver model from Vista to Win7 - no significant code changes should be required.

I can tell you why I think they do this, and what the solution is...

Why: It's not (just) greed encouraged by brand strength. It stems from the fact that HP ships a different TWAIN driver with each model of scanner, and they have done this for more than a decade.  Every HP scanner model comes with a TWAIN driver that is different from every other model.  (Also, in our experience, each driver has different bugs.  HP scanners generate more unique problems for our customers than all other scanner vendors combined.)  Now - imagine what that means when Windows goes through a major update: They don't upgrade one core TWAIN driver and combine it with a set of 'config' files to cover the product line. No! Instead they have to pull from archive, understand, modify, debug, test, and repackage dozens, and dozens, and dozens of individual TWAIN drivers.  That's if they even have the code for the driver, and didn't just buy it along with the hardware from a supplier in Asia.

So instead of updating one driver because it benefits them and all their customers, they update only the drivers that will produce income to offset the cost: Those that are currently shipping.  If you own a discontinued scanner they already have your money!  I know, in theory, long-term, it hurts their brand and market - but in practice, they've been doing this for years without feeling the pain.

Solution? Unfortunately: Don't buy HP scanners. HP has nothing you cannot get elsewhere. Our favorites: Fujitsu, Canon, Epson, Panasonic, Kodak, Visioneer/DocuMate.  If you look at Fujitsu's TWAIN driver download page, you can see them supporting some models across 6 and sometimes 9 versions of Windows: From Win95 to Win7:
http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/peripherals/scanners/support/downloads_twain.html
They don't list Windows 7, but I installed their 64-bit Vista driver on Windows 7 and had no problems.

Vote with your wallet.  Not to hurt HP, to save yourself pain.
spike _/\_
spike _/\_
Barryng
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Barryng replied on

m_spike, thank you for your excellent comments.

When starting PrecisionScan Pro, the following "Script Error" message is displayed:

Line:  17
Char: 1
Error: ActiveX component can't create object: 'Chassis.ChassisHelpObject'
Code: 0
URL:   mk:@MSITStore:C:\Program%20Files\Hewlett-Packard\PrecisionScan%20Pro%203.0\gtf.chm::/guidedtf.htm

Would someone with better knowledge than me be able to make sense of this message and possibly have some idea what to try to fix?
hershey444
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hershey444 replied on

This lack of twain support is very discouraging. Is TWAIN old technology?   I have an HP all-in-one that is LESS THAN A YEAR OLD and I am having troubles!!!    I don't really understand the technology that well to know how scanners work and how it interacts with the OS. Is there a non-TWAIN technology that scanners also use?

Trying to look at the big picture,  I can sorta understand the lack of support temporarily.    HP produces a product FOO that works with existing X Y Z Operating Systems that exist at the time the product FOO is introduced.   So, later on Operating System BAR is invented.   I can sorta understand that FOO may not work with BAR.  After all, BAR didn't exist when FOO was created.

However I would think that the manufacturer of BAR (a/k/a Microsoft) should have some responsibility to invent BAR to be compatible with the existing marketplace of scanners, printers, etc.     Plus, all the hardware vendors work closely with MS, so one would think they should all have their act together and figure this all out together.  Too bad they can't or won't.   Maybe in some cases, it will just take some time for hardware vendors to catch up???    The convoluted method from m_spike is so typical hp.  how they succeed with such dumb practices is beyond me.

In any case, I'm going to try the Vista 64 bit  driver to see if it works for me.

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