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I have a hardware that has to be connected via USB. This piece of hardware is very uncommon and not to be used by general users (it burns firmware into microcontroller [OKI Semiconductor], the device is called uEASE [micro ease]). I use this hardware in office but now I've to use it in my home pc. My office pc runs of Windows XP Professional and home pc runs on Windows 7 Ultimate. I've the driver for XP. Unfortunately, the driver is not supported by Windows 7. Whenever I try to install/update the driver from device manager, Windows 7 says:

Windows found driver software for your device but encountered an error while attempting to install it.

Oki uEASE

The data is invalid.

The driver comes with only a *.sys file and a *.inf file. How to work with this driver in Windows 7?

Thanks in advance.

Edit:

The hardware manufacturer does not provide any updated driver for Vista/7.

3 Answers 3

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The 'easiest' way is to run it inside XPMode on Windows 7. This is a full XP installation that runs in a window, totally separate from your Win7 installation, however, MS has made it appear seamless so apps you install in XPMode's XP can appear as if they're running as normal Windows 7 apps.

For example, I have a topfield PVR that uses an old USB driver, but this is not supported in Windows 7, so I installed XPMode, then installed the PVR app there along with the old driver - and it all works.

there's lots of guides for setting it up on the web.

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  • XP Mode is a VM running WinXP, just as if you were to install XP in VirtualBox. Feb 9, 2010 at 0:55
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I use a USB serial controller for programming old motorolla radios. Somewhat amazingly, I was able to get it to work using an XP install in Virtualbox.

Just set give the guest OS access to the USB device, and install drivers in guest OS.

Perhaps this will work for you too.

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  • I too am using an unsupported scanner (no Vista drivers) through an XP virtual machine (VMware). It's nice that this trick also works with VirtualBox.
    – efotinis
    Feb 8, 2010 at 19:39
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Windows Vista switched to a completely different device driver model, and so all drivers written for XP and earlier won't run natively in Win7.

You can run XP in a VM, but its a sloppy solution to a "I need one thing" problem.

Check with OKI Semi to see if they've released an updated driver. Since the hardware is so specific, you should be able to find one, and if not the vendor will usually write an updated driver if enough users register interest in such a driver (especially if the piece of hardware is pricey and low volume).

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