plustek opticbook 3600 plus

hopefully someone can help with this, I know it's not a common scanner

ok so I plug the scanner in and turn it on, win 7 tries to install it and fails within about 4 seconds "no driver found"
I've got the drivers from the manufacturer and when I try and run that all I get is "scanner not found" this device is compatible with vista and I never had a problem with it in XP. I have also tried to install the drivers from the device manager, this fails with "driver not found" when looking at the driver directory I downloaded.

my system:

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Version 6.1.7100 Build 7100
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name RICHARDBAILEY
System Manufacturer ASUSTeK Computer INC.
System Model P5N-T DELUXE
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9450 @ 2.66GHz, 2666 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies, LTD ASUS P5N-T DELUXE ACPI BIOS Revision 1402, 22/01/2009
SMBIOS Version 2.4
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale Canada
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7100.0"
User Name RichardBailey\Richard Bailey
Time Zone Pacific Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 4.00 GB
Available Physical Memory 2.72 GB
Total Virtual Memory 8.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 6.65 GB
Page File Space 4.00 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

any help or insight on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Unfortunately, I was unable to locate a Windows Vista driver, let alone a Windows 7 driver.

A Windows Vista driver would be your best bet as the XP drivers will probably not work with the scanner.

System Requirements: IBM Compatible PC, with Pentium II or faster CPU, CD-ROM Driver, One available USB Port, 128 MB RAM (256MB recommended), 500 MB free HDD space, High Color graphic card (VGA or higher), Microsoft Windows XP, Me, 98, 2000.

Plustek disabled anything beyond Vista in their installer. It seems rather silly since the driver model used is the same between Windows Vista and 7. There is a way to trick the installer to go. A former co-worker pointed me toward the Application Compatibility Toolkit from Microsoft this afternoon. The alternative is XP Mode under Windows 7 but it requires hardware virtualization and Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate versions of 7. It is also much much slower for scanning, think 45+ seconds per page, painful.

Here's how to use the compatibility tools to force the install
Download the Opticbook driver from the Plustek website
Install Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5
Open Compatibility Administrator as administrator
Right click on New Database(1), select New > Application Fix
Fill in the fields for name of application and vendor
Click browse and select setup.exe for the driver installer
Click Next
Select Windows XP SP2 for operating system mode
Select WinXPSP3 under additional compatibility mode
Click Test
Run through the install wizard for the driver
Answer yes for the driver signing if it comes up

You can uninstall the compatibility toolkit at this point. This worked on Windows 7 Professional x64. Scanning works as fast as I can feed it paper now.
A similar procedure worked on CommVault CommCell console which also balked at installing on 7 x86, so many apps can probably work if their installer is too stupid to work on its own.

Good luck

I finally did come up with a Vista driver download directly from the Plustek site:

http://www.plustek.com/support/downl...asp?txt_pid=10

I just followed the above method with the toolkit and I was reluctant at first, but worked like a charm. Thanks so much!

Originally Posted by ericthebikeman

Plustek disabled anything beyond Vista in their installer. It seems rather silly since the driver model used is the same between Windows Vista and 7. There is a way to trick the installer to go. A former co-worker pointed me toward the Application Compatibility Toolkit from Microsoft this afternoon.

I was tearing my hair out trying to get this to work; thanks so much for this great workaround! Thanks especially for the step-by-step walkthrough. It really helped!

I will, however, add one additional step that may be necessary (it was for me running Windows 7 RC x86):

If the installer insists that it can't find the scanner and exits when trying to follow ericthebikeman's directions from above, go into Windows Device Manager, select the scanner (marked with the yellow exclamation mark symbol) and choose Properties. Choose to update the driver and manually point it at the folder containing the Plustek OpticBook 3600 driver files. From here, you should be able to select and install the actual driver. Once the Plustek OpticBook 3600 is correctly listed in the Device Manager, you should be able to successfully complete ericthebikeman's walkthrough:

Originally Posted by ericthebikeman

Here's how to use the compatibility tools to force the install
Download the Opticbook driver from the Plustek website
Install Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5
Open Compatibility Administrator as administrator
Right click on New Database(1), select New > Application Fix
Fill in the fields for name of application and vendor
Click browse and select setup.exe for the driver installer
Click Next
Select Windows XP SP2 for operating system mode
Select WinXPSP3 under additional compatibility mode
Click Test
Run through the install wizard for the driver
Answer yes for the driver signing if it comes up

You can uninstall the compatibility toolkit at this point.

I chose to leave the compatibility toolkit installed for now; it may just come in handy again.

Plustek now lists 2 driver versions that include Windows 7.

Hi,
where could you find the 2 driver versions? I couldn't find them. If you mean this file it doesn't work.

book3600_plus_V42208L.zip
(2009-11-25)

Thanks for your advice.
Greg'

Yeah, that's the one I found, plus the one below it (previous version) which also lists Win7.

As it goes, I haven't gotten it to work either. Now I'm getting the hardware not recognized message.

It's kinda back burner now as I've got other installations and things to fix, but I will get to it over the next long weekend (hopefully).

The only thing I can think of is, those are for the 3600 plus. This page has one (for 3600) Win7 compatible driver (book3600-V4010_15L.zip) I'm going to try.


Edit: The above one worked for me in Win7 x64. Installed & scans fine. I'm not sure what difference there is between the 3600 & 3600 plus, but you might give this one a shot. My scanner doesn't say "plus" anywhere.

Download driver from Plustek
I did this on W7 64-bit with book3600_plus_V4222_8L.zip
Unzip driver
Connect and turn on scanner
Windows tries to install driver and fails
Go to device manager, open unknown device, go to driver tab and klick 'Update Driver'
Choose 'Browse local computer...' and in the next dialogue point to where you unzipped your download.
Windows warns you, that origin of drivers can't be verified, agree to install anyway.
After driver is successfully installed, accompanying software will start to install automatically.
Restart.
You should be done.