I've converted over pretty much completely to Windows XP and the (newer) Athlon box. But, my elderly but perfectly good Umax S-12 flatbed scanner remained attached to an ISA SCSI card in the old machine. I wanted to run Linux and GIMP on the old machine, and had some old photos to scan, so installed SuSE 8.1. SuSE did not like the ISA SCSI card, so I went out and bought a $40 PCI card, (the others in the store were very much more expensive, wonder why?). That worked, but still did not see the scanner. Convinced myself it was the outdated SANE drivers in SuSE, so downloaded them, which needed the new GTK+ libraries, which install in non standard directories... Gave up. Bought copy of new RedHat Linux 9. Loaded it. It does not support the new SCSI card. Re-loaded SuSE and spent about an hour patching from their web site. Successfully made one scan! Crappy whitepoint. Tried to adjust... Froze. Not me; the machine. Can make one scan following a cold restart. Can't adjust whitepoint. Put new SCSI in new Windows XP machine. Lost driver disk. Downloaded from web site. Installed fine. Detected scanner. No driver. Checked Umax website. WinXP not supported. Checked newsgroups. Opinions agree that old Windows drivers still work. Downloaded. Installed. Froze. Endless loop; restart; detect new hardware; freeze. Disconnected scanner. Ran SCSI diagnostics. Seem OK. Uninstalled Umax driver. Tried film scanner with Nikon software (used to work). Operational phrase is "used to..." Forgot to buy alcohol tonight after work. ______ What did I learn from this? a) Don't try to upgrade. If some old hardware still works with some old software, just keep it, and keep adding on storage rooms to the house. b) Linux is very close to being a viable consumer system, and some of the "free" software is very nice. But 98% functionality isn't good enough. [And yes, I did Read the Fine Manual!]Not to say Windows is perfect; the above story certainly indicates otherwise. Maybe time to go back to the wet darkroom...

Try this. Install SCSI card Install Scanner Install Scanner Software Goto Start Menu Goto Accessories Goto Compatability Wizard Select Win 98 or whatever. That might fix your problem. Bsteph

That may help. Thanks.

what a horror story! hope bsteph's suggestion helped :]

Ick.....sounds positively hair ripping.... I'll have a drink for you......

Why do people upgrade to Windows XP? first it takes 1.43 gigs just to install the dam thing. gives you all this stuff you don't need, as it's own propietory video editor and photo editor, which suck. "if it comes with it it's for a reason..." to annoy the hell out of you is the only one I can come up with. Windows 2000 is 4 years olds and still cost $329.00 for the proffesional version while windows XP pro only cost $129.00... and you wonder why? once you install XP is a half bitch around the world to even try to remove it. I have tons of programs I can't install on our video department stations because XP does not support the drivers for our Canon XL1s DV video camaras and the rendering stations for special effects. But XP is what these systems came with so we have to run everything from our servers. If worst comes to worst, and if you still have your old system you could use that as a storage drive. scan the images onto that system and retrieve them to your new station via networking cards. a good set along with 2 cards and a 20 foot roll of cad cable should be no more than $50 unless you want to go wireless which should run you near $120. It's a hassle to have to scan on one location and then run to another to work on it. or just sell you old gadgets on E-bay and buy a compatible XP scanner. ALot of companies have not and are not realeasing driver updates for XP anytime soon.... sorry your stuck if nothing else works.

and to proof my point of being stuck... mister Bill "The Devil" Gates seems to be telling us something... WINDOWS CE... WINDOWS ME... WINDOWS NT... Why does that spell out "CEMENT"???? Means by from me and your Asses are stuck! After last years monopoly, Bill had to get (XP) X-tra Pay...

OK. I used to use only win 95 for quite some time. Last I heard was that 98 was pretty safe. XP. For me XP installed the easiest than any of the other setups. XP pro cost in the $300 - $400 range to my knowledge. Yes some of the free stuff is horrible. However that is why I buy better stuff. The stuff packaged with XP is a lot better than what comes with the old Windows stuff in my opinion. I agree it is a larger program and in typical windows fashion it tries to take over your system. Which is why I turn a lot of the junk off. However for what I get over win NT, or win 95 I think it was a good investment. Some people don't have updated drivers. XP has older windows compatability settings. That solved 75 percent of my problems. New drivers solved all the other ones. EXCEPT for TWO programs. Which apparently belong to companies which no longer exits. =:-( Personally I long for the old days when reports were typed and hand written reports were fine. I learned how to use a slide rule. What's wrong with them!!! And the abbacus is the bomb. Children in China are still taught how to use them. Remember when there was no photography! One was rich and had a painter come buy to take your likeness. Sigh those were the days. =;-)

Misha: I recently "retired" my old workstation and replaced it with a new Dell Precision workstation. My scanner was attached to the old machine (Microtek with SCSI card). I'm pretty much past the point in my life when screwing around inside the guts of my computers qualifies as a good time. If I have to open the case, I get pissed off. My solution: dump the old scanner and get a new USB 2/Firewire scanner. Now my scanner can be quickly attached to any of my systems without screwing around with installing a dedicated card in each system. And my mother-in-law is excited to get a "new" computer. Scanners are cheap. Make your life easier and just get a new one. Chances are it will be better than the one you had before.

I remember Alpha complaining about how he had to prematurely retire his 2 really good Nikon scanners just because he upgraded to XP. Since Nikon discontinued the product they do not offer patches to OS upgrades. Sux dunnit? :-(*

That sux big time! I guess you could have a partition with with the operating system teh scanner used to work with and then give the rest of the harddrive space to XP. so you will end up with 2 versions of windows in one PC. And to Bsteph, you are correct teh price for the pro version of XP is $299 we got our version at $129 since we buy with multiple license releases...

jhostick -Thanks for the advice. Looking at the specs on new scanners, it seems I can get better performance with something <$100 than I had with my elderly $600 box. Since I do not use a flatbed very much, or need one for scanning negatives, this seems a much healthier route. Question -One of the things I do like with flatbeds is scanning 3D objects. My old scanner had a pretty deep DOF. It also was about 6 inches thick. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the newer, thinner, scanners have less DOF. Anyone know about this? Doruk I guess would really be the one to know?