Old application won't work under Vista.

[ciar?]

I have Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (32-bit) and am trying to run an old
OCR application. I run it in Win95 compatibility mode.

Most functions of the old application work in Vista, but it fails if I ask
it to acquire an image from the scanner. I am asked to select my twain
source, which I do (Samsung SCX4100), but then the scanner gives a couple of
grunts and a message box from Vista says "twain.dll Client's 32-Bit Thunking
Server has stopped working". I close the box, am told to check for Windows
updates, and finally (when I try clicking around on the application) that
"NTVDM.EXE is not responding" and I have to close the application.

I have no alternative twain sources to try, just this scanner source.

The scanner works fine with other (modern) applications.

My c:\windows\twunk_32.exe is version 1.7.1.0 dated 2006/11/02. I believe
that it came with Vista.

I don't really know what is going on, but I assume that the application is
calling twunk_32.exe to handle the actual scanning. It looks to me as if
Vista has ways of running old applications like mine, involving twunk_32.exe
and NTVDM.EXE, but they are not working on my machine.

I would be grateful for any suggestions to fix this.

[dominic payer]

OCR programs tend to work closely with the OS. If this is a very old
application, it is probably not compatible with Vista and you will need
an up-to-date OCR program.


On 22/11/2009 03:03, Ciar?

[jim]

On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:03:20 -0000, Ciar?

[ciar?]

Thanks, Dominic.

The reason I'm persevering with this old application - which hasn't been
developed or supported for well over 10 years - is that it is trainable to
recognize the non-Latin alphabet I'm working with. I've tried and failed to
train FineReader on the same alphabet. I don't know of any other OCR
application which is trainable from scratch on an alphabet.

I'm operating at present on Vista by using a modern application to scan the
pages to TIFF images, and using the old application to do the recognition on
the TIFFs. It would be a lot more convenient to have one application do
both parts of the work.

So I'm willing to spend some effort in getting the old app to talk to the
scanner, if someone can help me to understand and fix it, or can convince me
that it can't be fixed. In the second case, my best option may be to go
back to using it in Win95.

"Dominic Payer" <dcp@dcp.fsv.co.uk> wrote in message
news:udfRlD0aKHA.5608@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> OCR programs tend to work closely with the OS. If this is a very old
> application, it is probably not compatible with Vista and you will need an
> up-to-date OCR program.

[ciar?]

"Jim" wrote
> On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:03:20 -0000, Ciar?

[stan starinski]

Can you run it in Windows7 XPvirtual machine box?-->in Win95 Compatibility
Mode?
Should as slow as molasses, but if you're so addicted to antique software,
the only solution is to find equally antique OS for it.
Ecost.com has some seriously insanely priced desktops they're liquidating
$30-120 for a whole computer, put WindowsME or somethign old on it, and
try.... but hwere you get antique Windows is another problem.....

[bill leary]

"Ciar?

[patrick keenan]

"Ciar?

[charles w davis]

"Patrick Keenan" <test@dev.null> wrote in message
news:OlScL$%23aKHA.1596@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> "Ciar?

[ciar?]

Thanks for that idea, Bill, that was something I never even thought of.

The connection is USB. My printer/scanner has a parallel port, but my Vista
computer hasn't. So I moved the printer/scanner and old app temporarily to
an XP machine, where I had the choice of USB or parallel connection. There
I found, however, that the result does not depend on whether I use USB or
parallel connection.

In XP, using a "modern" application (IrfanView), an image can be scanned
successfully. But using my old app, the scanner window does not popup (to
let me set resolution etc), the scan does however take place, but ends with
"Lead error: Data format not supported". So the process of scanning an
image in the old app goes further in XP than in Vista, but the problem is
there in XP too.

"Bill Leary" wrote...
> Sorry if I missed it earlier, but how is this scanner connected the
> computer? USB, parallel, serial, SCSI, etc.?

[bill leary]

"Ciar?

[ashton crusher]

On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:03:20 -0000, Ciar?

[ciar?]

"Ashton Crusher" wrote
> Can your OCR program work with files instead of dealing directly with
> the scanner? If so, use you newer scanning programs that work and
> scan the documents to TIFF files. The use your OCR program to do it's
> thing on the TIFF files. I have done this several times over the
> years to do OCR when for whatever reason I was not able to do the scan
> directly from the OCR program. Most OCR programs will not only read
> the TIFF files but if you put them in a directory together (for multi
> page documents) it will open the next sequentially numbers TIFF file
> and do successive pages that way.

Thanks for replying. Yes, it can do that, and that is what I am having to
do at present.