I am posting this just for general information, because many historical and restoration groups tend to use older computer equipment that has been handed down from contributors or other organizations.

In what is probably an unfortunate move for organizations using older computers, printers, and scanners, HP recently deleted from their website the download source pages for much of their equipment that is over 10 years old. Now when you enter the model of an older printer or scanner, the site just tells you that the product support has expired.

This retired the drivers and software for entire families of scanners and printers, not just in Windows XP, but also for some of the machines where HP had offered basic feature drivers that allowed you to use older equipment right up through Windows 10.

This will result in a lot of people who need to set up an older printer or scanner with a new computer, going to 3rd party download sites where the drivers may contain adware.

A note of advice, if you have Windows 10, try plugging your old printer into the computer before you go searching for a driver on 3rd party sites. Windows 10 has a pretty substantial driver library. In a recent test it properly detected and installed the driver for an HP printer that originally came out with a CD of software for Windows 98.

Unfortunately for older scanners the library is much less extensive.

If you expect to keep using older printers and scanners, save and catalog your software.

PC

I'm not too sure, but if you migrate your PC from less than Win 10 to Win 10, the drivers MAY be ported over to the new operating system from your old one. Buying a new WIN 10 PC, you will have to rely on what Microsoft has in their driver catalogues.

HP has been going through substantial corporate crises over the last 5+ years and as a result, their termination of support for older products are a direct result.

In addition to HP, if you plan to migrate to WIN 10 or purchase a new PC/laptop using WIN 10, it would be prudent to see if your peripherals are compatible with the new operating system by going to the manufacturer & checking that out.

Staying on pre-WIN 10 if you absolutely need your printer/scanner/whatever is not the worst thing that can happen. You can also create a virtual pre-10 machine within WIN 10 to run those unsupported devices if you have to. The learning curve initially will be a bit steep, but there are very good websites out there (Windows Secrets for one) which will help enormously.

VueScan is a scanner driver and image capture program from Hamrick Software that will work with most scanners.

http://www.hamrick.com/

-Hudson

a site called driverguide may help out, and just google your device, maybe someone has it archived.

HP has had longstanding support for Linux, these machines are likely still supported with Debian or Ubuntu.

CD

Of related obsolescence of old software, my wife uses Adobe CS2 for our railroad that she has used since here college days. I will not run on anything newer then XP and when our computer HD crashed a few months ago we had to upgrade to Windows 7. We tried loading CS2 onto an older XP machine this weekend only to find that Adobe took down the registration server to allow her to use it.

We do not use the software enough to warrant the current version which is cloud based and subscription only.

We're drifting a bit from the original topic, but have you looked at what's available on techsoup?

Bob H

This site provides replacement software for End of Life Scanners.

I wish I hadn't recycled my Visioneer 6600 now.

https://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/supported-scanners.html

This is interesting. Microsoft did something interesting with Office 2007: when they decided to stop supporting it, they simply waived the necessity to register the serial number, and left the set of 'updates' in place as a resource. I do not recall whether I had to enter the serial number code to get to that point, but there is certainly no restriction on its "licensed" use based on any server registration.

It may be possible, if you contact Adobe, to get them to authorize continued use of a previously registered copy that has had to be reinstalled due to a 'hardware failure' (the old Microsoft equivalent for operating-system install was given as "motherboard failure" which is what they told you to report whether or not there were some other reason for re-use of a monitored installation disk or resource...)

Yes, I think a company that takes down licensing and support for a 'sold' product should also relax the need to register it when that resource is no longer offered, even if the "license agreement" says you didn't actually buy the medium or any rights to the software itself.

I have to wonder whether there is information on the Internet that would tell you how to find your registration-confirmation information in the old 'registered' copy of the program on XP, with a hex editor, and patch that information into the appropriate places in a newly-installed copy so it will instantiate and run correctly. To my knowledge CS does not check at runtime or periodically whether or not its license is 'still in force', and in fact if the servers are taken down at Adobe it would follow they're not monitoring the licensed state of older versions of CS at all.

It isn't cracking to transfer license information from one instance of a program to another within your own environment, inside the license terms of use on number of copies you can run or save. ISTR in any case that CS gave you the ability to install the program on more than one system (e.g. desktop and laptop) provided you only had one copy 'live' at any particular time.

Hi,

I agree about end of life allowing registrations without needing to have purchased the item.

I recall reading somewhere that the result of the assembly line (most closely associated with Henry Ford), demand would be quickly filled. To keep the assembly line open, planned obselescence was the result.

I was taught to take care of my belongings and they would last a lifetime. I purchased a 1985 Buick Summerset Regal that was finally scrapped in about 2012. It had about 110,000 miles on it. Mom used it mostly and when we both went somewhese or to one of her cancer medical appointments we used my 1985 Buick Century. My Century (nammed "The Red Arrow" for my railroad family), lasted until 1999 when it needed another new motor. It had close to 300,000 miles on it.

I do not say that we should not have started assembly line productions, but I do wish to point out that one of the negative results of the assembly line mentality was planned obselesence. Nothing is ever all good or all bad.

As for computer software, I ran into big problems with my copy of 602Office (Windows competitor) recently when I had a computer crash and did not have a working drive with 602 on it. Luckily, I found out that using a DOS NE.exe (Norton Editor that was free with one of the DOS versions of Norton) could exit the 602 text document and I could pull out the ASCII characters. Just a pain in the butt.

I keep most of the original drive CDS and program installation discs ready just in case. I found my copy of DOS 6.02 and the seven 5 1/4" floopies a month ago when I was looking for something else.

A few items I use will not run on the 64-bit version of Windows 7. I still think Win XP is as far as I want to update.

As for Windows XP, Internet Explorer beyond version 5 will not load or run on my copy of XP 32-bit while IE 10 or so will run on the 16-bit version. So I have my older 16-bit XP running fine with SP3 (downloaded automatically) but I need a CD of it for my 32-bit XP. I tried three different hosting sites and 10-odd downloads with my dial-up speed hot spot and they all failed.

Oh well.

Doug vV

I went through this with Adobe when a computer with CS4 crashed. They were very cooperative in allowing installation on another computer when the problem was explained to them.

PC

Adobe got into a situation with CS2/Mac where it just wasn't going to be practicable to continue running the authentication servers. So they made one last patch to CS2 to make it stop using the authentication servers and just use a fixed authentication key, which they published on their website. "Whatever."

You have something confused in there somewhere.

There is no 16-bit XP -- never has been. You are talking 32- and 64-bit, and if I recall correctly 64-bit was highly processor-specific and not many programs were written for it.

You're thinking of 'compatibility mode' for 16-bit DOS (on Ntvdm, the Windows NT virtual DOS machine, and wowexec, the counterpart of win.exe running on top of DOS). If I remember correctly - it has been a VERY long time - the command set of the virtual-machine DOS corresponds to 6.22, but I also think anything that ran under earlier DOS was accommodated in that version, if you had the virtual memory settings configured right.

I wouldn't bother with anything except 32-bit XP Pro (the 'Home" is different, and much more poorly structured). Be advised that no matter what you see Microsoft say in its collateral, institutional support for XP is extended until at least 2019 (there are critical Government applications written for the platform that won't port effectively).

You have something confused in there somewhere.

There is no 16-bit XP -- never has been. You are talking 32- and 64-bit, and if I recall correctly 64-bit was highly processor-specific and not many programs were written for it.

You're thinking of 'compatibility mode' for 16-bit DOS (on Ntvdm, the Windows NT virtual DOS machine, and wowexec, the counterpart of win.exe running on top of DOS). If I remember correctly - it has been a VERY long time - the command set of the virtual-machine DOS corresponds to 6.22, but I also think anything that ran under earlier DOS was accommodated in that version, if you had the virtual memory settings configured right.

I wouldn't bother with anything except 32-bit XP Pro (the 'Home" is different, and much more poorly structured). Be advised that no matter what you see Microsoft say in its collateral, institutional support for XP is extended until at least 2019 (there are critical Government applications written for the platform that won't port effectively).

In other news -- why, what do you know! Adobe has posted the instructions on what to do about the CS2 install!

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/creative-suite-2-activation-end-life.htmll

In a nutshell, you can't install from your original disk set, but you go to a special address and download the 'final patched version' which will work with your original serial number -- you do still have that, or can get it, right?