Options for 32 Bit Scanners

Author: Eric Vasbinder

Contents

Vista has various features within it that enhance ease of use and save time when processing large volumes of data. One of these features is the ability to scan images directly into Vista. This is accomplished by starting your scanner's scanning application from an option, usually located in the Vista client's "Tools" menu, called Scan. Unfortunately, we have seen recently where the modern, 64 bit version of the Vista rich client cannot properly use certain scanners. To understand why, please read on to learn a few pieces of background information.

Background

Here are some important pieces of background information that you need to know to understand the situation:

• Scanning Software is Often Old, Created 10+ Years Ago, and Remains 32 Bit

  • The makers of scanning devices have often been creating these devices for many decades. As such, their default scanning software that is often installed is a 32 bit application. This has been effective for many years, and is still supported in Windows itself, since Windows still supports 32 bit applications.

  • Even many scanners being sold today still ship with scanning software that is, in large part, the same scanning software that was created for their devices 15-20 years ago.

• 64 Bit Applications Often Have Issues Starting or Referencing 32 Bit applications

  • For example, 64 bit applications cannot easily open the scanning forms for 32 bit scanning software; they don't even know that the 32 bit scanning software exists

  • This is not normally an issue with software other than Vista, since many customers often have older, 32 bit versions of Adobe Acobat, Kofax PowerPDF, and others available to use with scanners

• Vista is moving to a full 64 bit Architecture

  • As you may have heard, Vista has begun the process of converting from a 32 bit application to a more modern, 64 bit architecture. This is driven by a number of factors, including the need to support newer versions of our various reporting libraries and the drive to support larger data sets in Vista itself.

Result

If you install the recommended version of Vista, which is 64 bit, whether on-premise or in our cloud, you will often encounter an issue where your scanner will not be recognized by the Vista Client: you will see an error that Vista cannot load the scanning form. This will look like the below screenshot:

Resolutions

There are several options for both near-term and medium-term resolution of these issues.

Near Term

1. Scan Outside of Vista: End users can use a separate scanning package, such as Kofax's PowerPDF, Adobe Acrobat Pro, etc. to scan the file as a PDF directly to the local desktop. Then, the end user will drag the PDF into Vista from the local file system. This would avoid the need to use Vista's built-in scanning form.

OR

2. Force a 64 Bit Default Scanning App: Change Windows's built-in default setting for scanning applications to force it to use a 64 bit application as the default scanning app to be triggered by Vista. Examples include Windows Fax and Scan (built-in) or this application from the Windows App Store: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-scan/9wzdncrfj3pv

OR

3. Uninstall the 64 bit version of Vista and its associated Crystal Reports dependencies and install 32 bit Vista

NOTE: This 32 bit Vista option provides only a temporary fix, since at some point in the future, Vista will be forced to move to a 64 bit ONLY application.

Medium To Longer Term

You may reach out to your scanning device vendor (e.g. Fujitsu, Brother, HP, etc.) to add pressure on their engineering organization to create fully 64 bit versions of their scanning software packages.

Compatible Scanners Known to Have 64 Bit Drivers and Software

NOTE: We do not endorse or recommend any specific brand of scanner over another. However, the following scanners have been brought to our attention and we have verified through customer testing that they do have 64 bit drivers and TWAIN scanner software available and have worked with 64 bit Vista in the past:

• Fujitsu: recent fi series scanners (e.g. Fujitsu fi-7180, fi-7160, fi-7300nx, etc.): https://scanners.us.fujitsu.com/fujitsu-scanners

  • Link to x64 TWAIN PaperStream IP Software: https://www.fujitsu.com/global/support/products/computing/peripheral/scanners/fi/faq/psip-installation005.html