If you have the misfortune to “upgrade” to Windows 8, you have discovered that it doesn’t play well with some of your software and peripherals, even in what Microsoft jokingly calls “compatibility mode.” The biggest disaster at the Daily Mirror in our computer upgrade was the loss of the CanoSscan 9950F scanner, which is the only affordable scanner that can handle negatives, slides, etc. The others, from Nikon, Epson and Microtek, cost thousands of dollars, while a CanoScan 9950F can be found on EBay for about $200.
If you go to Canon’s Web page for the CanoScan 9950F, you will find that there are no drivers listed for Windows 8. And if you try to run the scanner under Windows 8 without updating the drivers, you will get nothing but error messages.
In desperation, we installed the Windows 7 drivers. And voila. It worked! You will need to know whether you are running in 32- or 64-bit mode, but anyone who has read this far and understands what I’m talking about should have no problem.
You may have to “jump start” it with with the CanoScan Toolbox to get it running the first time, rather than the PhotoStudio software that also came with the scanner. And you may get the typical Windows 8 warnings like “DO YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THIS?” and “WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!” but click through those and it will work.
ladailymirror.com 
Have you tried Wikipedia?
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Yeah but I never get past the entry on tin foil hats.
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Forget the Canon software, get VueScan. (www.hamrick.com)
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Thanks, but I’ll stick with what works. 🙂
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Windows 8 is a plot by the young ‘uns to kill off all us over-50s by giving us aggravation-induced strokes and heart attacks. You know, James Gandolfini was trying to open Windows 8 when he died?
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OK, Larry, it’s your call 🙂 But for others who do a lot of print, negative and document scans it’s highly recommended. It processes the raw output from the scanners to greater accuracy than the performance-optimized vendor code. The OCR is also great, as is the support. I’ve been using one version after another since it first came out in 1998.
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Earl, since you speak so highly of it, I’ll look into it.
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the windows vista drivers will work on windows 8 and windows 10 since that was a 64 bit operating system.
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