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Windows XP had a scanning interface that was actually suitable for scanning more than one document--you set up the page dimensions, typed a name for the series, and then could scan/back/back-scan/back/back as many times as needed. Using the keyboard, I could set up a rhythm whereby the scanner was never actually idle.

Windows 7 has, AFAICT, only one interface, which is completely different, in which you have to right-click your scanner, choose 'start scan', scan, then name the page, before the interface goes away and you have to start all over again. Worse yet, you can't actually tell it, e.g., to stick to a letter size document, because it's greyed out--apparently my same scanner that could do this in XP "doesn't support" this in Win7. The options are to get the whole platen or to get the whole platen and then let the software decide what images (note the plural!) it should be chopped up into. The whole platen is the lesser of two evils, and it's wasteful and inconvenient, but at least I could fix it with ImageMagick if I could actually scan more than one document per session in an easier way.

I want the XP interface back. How can I get it in Windows 7? I don't think I should have to shell out for third-party apps here. If there's a way to override it using an XP OEM CD (which I still have from my laptop that died) or a lightweight freeware app that will do the same thing, that's what I'm looking for.

(All they seem to have out there when I google it are things for making a multi-page PDF. I don't care about that, I'm just looking for the nice "1 letter size sheet = 1 PNG/JPG" batch-mode scanning I had before. It's the same issue William212 complains about about half way down this page, but as his post is not on topic with the OP there, it doesn't really get addressed later in the thread.)

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  • I'm not sure. How is it the scanner when they went and changed the Windows scanning component interface? The scanner itself still operates fine. Any WinXP box I've seen works the same way as my old setup, and both Win7 laptops I have access to work the same way as each other. How is that not a software thing?
    – Kev
    Jan 28, 2013 at 22:56
  • @Ramhound, see also pcworld.about.net/od/windows1/Windows-7-Four-Reasons-to-Upg.htm and search for 'scanner' then read those two paragraphs.
    – Kev
    Jan 29, 2013 at 0:06

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This site recommended that one install Windows Live Gallery to get these features back. Before I installed that--figuring it would be bloaty--I thought I would try Picasa since I already had it installed, and somehow Picasa brings up "ScanGear" which sounds like a Canon (the brand of scanner I have) invention to me. Even though nowhere else in Windows was I able to find this ability to bring up the scanner's own driver rather than the Windows interface (which, in XP, I would have preferred over the scanner's own driver because it seemed leaner), it seems to have the ability both to fix the scanning frame to letter size, and scan repeatedly to the same folder with the click of a single button.

Of course if there was a way (some command-line DLL call maybe?) to bring this up without having Picasa necessarily installed, that would be the best answer.

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