Disclaimer: This blog entry is an unofficial tech-support and is not guaranteed to work for all users. Novice computer users should not attempt it without a computer geek's supervision!Now that Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system has been commercially available for a few weeks, and everyday PC users have started making the upgrade “leap of faith,” I’ve received a considerable number of e-mails from individuals who own one of Mustek's ScanExpress A3 USB scanners. According to one reader, my blog is one of the only websites offering support and/or advice on this topic. That said, I felt this warranted an update regarding “how to install” Mustek’s popular (but unfortunately, no longer officially supported) large format scanning device.
First, the good news ... Many of the individuals that I’ve heard from have had great success installing their Mustek ScanExpress A3 USB scanner by following the steps I previously posted
here.
The bad news?
Those steps were sufficient for installing the scanner via Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1), a public pre-release (beta) copy of the Microsoft operating system, but some of the newly activated security features in the commercial version – more specifically, User Account Control (UAC) – are giving users a few extra, but passable, hurdles.
GETTING STARTED
Ideally, your computer should have a fresh installation of Microsoft’s Windows Vista (any edition). You do not need to activate for the scanner to install properly. That said, you should try installing it prior to any other additional drivers and software like American Online (AOL) – one gentleman reported having issues with AOL automatically closing whenever he started it, however, he did not have this issue after re-installing Vista and installing his scanner first.
DOWNLOAD THE DRIVERSAt the time of this posting, they are still available here ...
http://download.opendrivers.com/drv/scanner/mustek/a3usb.zip...
The Updated Windows Vista / Mustek A3 USB Unofficial Workaround ...
(0) DO NOT CONNECT THE SCANNER USB CABLE TO THE COMPUTER! That is the LAST step!!
(1) Run the REGISTRY EDITOR. Click the Vista Orb (formerly, the “Start” button) in the bottom left corner of your taskbar. You should see a text box immediately above it that reads “Start Search.” Type the application name “regedit.exe” in this box and you should see a link appear (see following picture) for you to click.
(2) Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
(3) Rename the key "ProductName" from "Windows Vista (TM) **" to "Microsoft Windows 2000". Please note that the ** will depend on your version of Vista. For example, Home Premium ...
(4) Install the Mustek A3 USB driver for Windows 2K/XP. Do this by RIGHT-CLICKING on the EXE file and selecting “Run as administrator.”
(5) When installation has completed, undo the registry changes.
(6) It wouldn’t hurt to re-boot your computer here, just to make sure there are no issues thus far.
(7) Power the scanner and connect USB cable. Windows Vista will proceed with detecting and installing the scanner.
Note: When I first installed Vista, I mistakenly attached the scanner’s USB cable before installing the drivers because my scanner was plugged in from my previous operating system. This caused an error that said:
C:/Windows/Twain_32/L3u16/ColorB.dat was not found.
To correct this problem, all that I had to do was unplug the USB cable, reboot the machine, and plug the cable into a different USB port. This caused Vista to re-install the scanner like a new device and everything seemed to work fine.
In my case, the scanner has been flawlessly working for 3 weeks straight in Adobe Photoshop CS2. If you own a Mustek A3 USB ScanExpress and have upgraded to Microsoft’s Windows Vista, please feel free to share your own success or horror stories below.
Stay TOONed!
- Mike Cope