Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III AF-2840 in Windows Vista

So, did you also try to get this negitive/slide scanner to work in Windows Vista?  No success? Thought so. Unfortunately I have found that Minolta scanners seems to have kind of a short life cycle in the eyes of the manufacturer. Like many other computer accessories that are not professional grade, drivers are availible for the current operating systems but when new arrives there just isn’t being any drivers developed. For this scanner I believe it was Windows 2000 and possibly Windows XP it had drivers for. But the arrival of Windows Vista was the death for this otherwise perfectly good scanner.

Like cameras, a good scanner do have a longer life cycle than normal computer accessories, which means that updated drivers are needed. Hopefully manufacturers will pick that up. Even though this scanner is not a professional grade scanner it has good performance and when sold it was not cheap, more in the price class of a good camera. I think as a consumer you should expect a bit longer life than that. Enough complaining.

There is a solutions to the problem called Vuescan from Hamrick Software. This nice piece of software is just loaded with drivers for a wide range of scanners, included the Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III AF-2840. There has been some problem with the Minolta drivers during the development as the release notes mentions solved problems with this scanner hanging in some versions.

Vuescan brought the Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III AF-2840 back to life in Windows Vista and I am now happily scanning my old film negatives.

Vuescan has support for over 1200 different scanners and produces PDF (single or multiple pages), JPEG, TIFF and TXT files. There is a free trial for download and it costs $39,95 to register it. In my opinion it is well worth the money.

Visit Hamrock Software’s website.