Making the Canon LiDE 35 work with Windows 7 x64

Some of the biggest "gotchas" about upgrading from one operating system to the next are finding out that some of your well-worn hardware won't make the journey with you.

In terms of everyday user experience, there's very little difference between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7. But from the standpoint of device driver support, they are two distinct OSes. When I tried to move my Canon LiDE 35 from my Pentium 4 (32-bit) PC to my newer Core i3 (64-bit) PC, I was stopped with an "installation failed" message, even though the scanner had worked just fine under Windows 7 on the old machine. Checking online showed that Canon never officially released 64-bit drivers for the LiDE 35.

I was beginning to think that a new scanner would become a wishlist item for me until a Google search turned up a 2008 online discussion indicating that this device would work with the Windows x64 driver for the LiDE 60. I visited the Canon support page for the LiDE 60 and downloaded and installed that scanner's driver software and CanoScan Toolbox application.

After installing the LiDE 60 driver, I had to go back into Windows' Device Manager and manually choose to use it, acknowledging Windows' stern warning that it may not work. But when I was done, I was able to perform a test scan successfully. (The ease with which I was able to do this suggests that Canon doesn't wish to officially update the LiDE 35 driver software mainly because of how old this model is, and not due to any technical hurdles.)

So if you have an LiDE 35 (or have the opportunity to acquire a used one cheap) don't give up on using it with a new computer running 64-bit Windows Vista or Windows 7!