I have a Visioneer 7100 flatbed scanner. It wants to scan but can't. Everytime I try, the light starts to move, stops, starts again, then dies w/ an error message telling me to unlock it. It is unlocked. I checked the Visioneer web site and it turns out that the driver can't calibrate the scan head.

To fix this, I'm supposed to uninstall the current driver and reinstall it. However, I can't uninstall it; WinXP Control Panel shows the driver but when I try to uninstall it, an error pops up "Can't open INSTALL.LOG". This is a crock of crap; I can find and open the .log file myself so I don't know why the driver can't get it. Unfortunantly, there's really no other to get rid of it.

I do have an uninstall program via OnTrack SystemSuite, but I'm hesitant to use it on a driver. I can't get tech support for my scanner because it's no longer in production (which pisses me off to no end since the scanner is only a year old).

I didn't notice before but Visioneer's scanners are only compatible w/ Windows. I tried to hook it up to my Mac, under the assumption that a scanner should work on the graphic designer's OS of choice, but no dice. I also tried it under Linux. That's when I noticed that every scanner on Visioneer's site is only good w/ Windows. What type of crap is that? There should at least be drivers for a Mac, I mean it is the choice of graphic artists and media types.

Oh well. So, to get to the point, does anyone know how to get rid of drivers that refuse to die?

If all it's complaining about is that it "Can't open INSTALL.LOG", try re-installing the driver (in effect overwriting the previous install) and THEN uninstalling it. It's worth a try...

That's part of the problem. I tried reinstalling the driver first but the current driver says I can't install the "new" driver w/o removing the old one first. But I can't uninstall the old one because it can't find "install.log". I can find and open "install.log" manually, but the driver can't seem to find it.

That's mad. I would've thought that any scanner build in the last 5 years would be TWAIN compatible, so a Mac (on OS X anyway) should work with it striaght out of the box, and Windows should anyway.

Have you tried renaming the Program's folder & rerunning the installer? How about finding the program's .exe name, do a search through the Windows registry (backup first) and delete every key which mentions it? Also do the same for the brand name 'Visioneer' and the model '7100' (careful...).

Then go into C:\winnt\twain_32\ and delete whatever you don't like in here.

Fingers crossed that at some stage the installer will run for you.

But I still remain sceptical that a clean driver will help. It sounds like the scan head may be having movement problems.
Still, fingers crossed for ya buddy!
GF