Acer ScanPrisa 640P

Posted on 22. Jul, 2006 by in Computers

I have a scanner now. In the last five years I have accumulated bits of papers, letters, bills, photographs and statements which I neither require nor can throw away. Getting everything scanned and orgainsed on a PC seemed to be most logical way out so that the house can be free of paper and still the content is not lost.

So I picked up a second hand Acer ScanPrisa 640P from ebay which costed me 40% the cost of a new entry level flatbed scanner.

The seller on ebay happened to be just 10 minutes drive away from my home. I dropped by his house and asked to test the scanner before I paid for it, but he refused saying that his laptop didnt have a parallel port. Though I was a bit amused to hear an excuse like this, I didn’t know that this guy already had a USB to parallel port adopter which he was using for his printer. The guy proceeded to de-dust the scanner, pull out the cables, look up the driver CD and he even gave me a serial number written on a piece of paper. I payed him, picked up the scanner, and came home.

The fun began when the installation started.

The driver CD had a driver which wasn’t compatible with XP. I called the seller again and he very plainly told me that this was an outdated model that wouldn’t work with XP and I had to get back to lower versions if I wanted to get it working. He seemed to be quite glad to have made money by selling an obsolete piece of equipment.

I was a bit pissed off because it would take me atleast a day to get Win 98 installed on my PC, which already dual boots on XP and SUSE 10.1. Wihout accepting defeat I googled and googled and googled and learnt that Acer’s scanner division had been sold off to BenQ in 2004. Since then the driver updates are from BenQ. I could download the required drivers here. I called the seller and informed him that the scanner was working perfectly under XP and he didnt seem to like the sound of it.

I got working on the scanner for 7 straight hours. I’m already rid of a kilo of old paper. I’ll be needing more disc space now. But that is a different story.

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14 Responses to “Acer ScanPrisa 640P”

  1. Tony

    26. Jul, 2006

    Cheers Krishnan for your link to the Benq website, I was also struggling to find a driver for my acer scanner.

    Cheers again, u helped me out of a hard spot!

    Tony .

  2. Rob

    01. Aug, 2006

    Yeah, what Tony said. Much obliged.

  3. john

    15. Aug, 2006

    i’ve Dloaded the driver from benq but after installing it i got a “no printer driver installed” prompt. my printer is outdated too HP deskjet 610C series ver 11.2.

    can you help me pls.?

  4. partha

    17. Aug, 2006

    I have a scanprisa 640P scanner. Both my present printer and laptop have only USB ports. Is there any way I can use the parallel scanner? I understand that most of the parallel to USB adapters are for printers.
    Thanx.

  5. Krishnan

    17. Aug, 2006

    Using the 640P scanner on a USB port is highly unlikely, however, I wouldn’t want to rule out the possibility without giving it a try.

    If you can borrow or lay your hands on a USB-Parallel connector, do give it a try. Even if it wont work, it will give an error on why it cant do it. Start from the error, google on it, talk to tech support, a solution could emerge.

    Hope for the best.

  6. MikeF

    28. Dec, 2007

    Thanks!!! – I’ve been looking for this driver for a long time…. even partitioned off some disk space and was about to load Win98…. loaded Ubuntu instead, but NADA… hey, ho, off we go, back to XP.

  7. Madhu

    29. Jan, 2008

    Krishnan, I downloaded the driver. But after unzipping it is opening as multiple files. How to install? Can u please guide me?

  8. Krishnan

    31. Jan, 2008

    Madhu,

    Unzip and extract all the files to a temporary folder. Run setup.exe and follow directions.

  9. Madhu

    01. Feb, 2008

    I tried it, but I am getting a message: “Cannot Install: SETUP or INSTALL program file name contains folder information. Use Actions/Checkout instead”.
    Madhu

  10. Avly

    25. Jul, 2008

    Partha, did you succeed in using parallel to USB adapter for your scanprisa 640P scanner? I bought one, but the scanner doesn’t work.

  11. Malu CLBS

    05. Sep, 2008

    I have the same problem as Avly and Partha. I also bought a parallel to USB adapter. When I connected the adapter, it apparently installed the driver, but I kinda found out it only had installed a driver for printers. I tried to install a driver for scanners, but it still doesn’t work. I’m not even sure if I installed that driver correctly…

  12. jags

    20. Jun, 2009

    i chanced to read through this blog. i am looking for scanprisa 640P scanner for windows XP. when i check the link mentioned by you, i get redirected to different product line. i am not able to find for model 6690. appreciate if you can provide me pointers or email me the driver. thanks a lot.

  13. Guest

    01. Jun, 2010

    can anybody tell me what model i have to click on Krishnan’s link.I have scanprisa 640p
    model no: 6696-0qe

  14. Waleed Mirza

    26. Dec, 2010

    Guys i have the same scanner i uploaded the driver from benq in windows xp but i cant use it through any graphics/editing software to scan the images or etc it give somes Twain Source error. please help me guys i am in deep trouble looking forward to your help

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