Help with 64 bit comp problem?

Question

I have put together a pretty strong system, but I don't know how to help a 70 year old photographer friend, who apparently has a mix of incompatible products.

The following is a plea I received from him.

"Frank,
My HP scanning and photo-printing equipment causes all sorts of problems with my Dell PC when I use Internet 64-bit color quality with W7. Maybe you can explain why. The Dell and HP folks, and tech reps couldn't.
The basic problem seems to be that HP hasn't developed 64-bit drivers that work with W7 yet.
Instead, they've provided me with shortcuts and 'fixes' that allow the equipment to work with WXP drivers.
Don't even ask me about rebooting problems associated with my practically new Dell PC that have arisen since all those folks 'corrected' my driver problems. heck, it took me three months to eliminate Bing as my browser!"

Any advice that could help him?

Thanks

Answer 1

I just looked up HP Photo printers and their scanners and they do have new drivers for Windows 7 64bit....but that's for there newer models. I don't know about the model he has and often as not the big company's don't want to make drivers etc. for older models...they want you to buy newer ones! They are more prone to take care of the newest models first. Sometimes the older technology is just not adaptable to the newest OS. I have an old scanner that connects to the computer by a centurion port. which now a day is hard to find a high end mother board with the LPT port to connect it!

Answer 2

Windows 7 is fairly new and he will have to wait to get programs that are compatible with 64 bit operating systems. Adobe flash still hasn't upgraded their flash program to support a 64 bit internet explorer, hence I use the regular 32 bit internet explorer. Windows 7 comes with both and can be found in the start menu programs and they say which one is 32 and which one is 64.

Answer 3

I would advise him to go back to 32 bit. The performance hit will only be slight and his compatibility problems should evaporate.