Epson Scanner + Windows 10 = Success

Got an older Epson scanner and Windows 10? Struggling to get them to work together? I was too, but finally succeeded.

About a year ago, I switched to the Microsoft Surface Book laptop. My old Toshiba was starting to “act weird.” This is the technical term for the initial symptoms of hardware breakdown that signify that new hardware is needed, and which you can ignore at your own peril.

Naturally, the laptop came with Windows 10. After getting all my software configured and data moved over, I went to set up my Epson flatbed scanner. Initially, I tried using the CD that came with it and got an “OS not supported error.” Not too surprising considering the highest OS listed on the CD was Windows XP. I had been able to set up my Dell wireless printer with Windows 10 despite both vendors claiming it wasn’t supported. But it turned out that wasn’t the case with the scanner.

I dropped the project for about a year. I wasn’t looking forward to futzing around for a few hours trying to get it to work and likely failing. I used my phone for things like documents and checks to be deposited.

Fast forward to today. I now had a more detailed graphics project that required the quality of a flatbed scanner. I looked online at new Epson scanners, both lower-end models and super fancy photo scanners. None of them listed Windows 10 as a supported OS.

This seemed odd considering how long Windows 10 has been out. So I Googled it and found lots of people asking the same question: what companies have scanners that support Windows 10? Apparently, none that admit to it.

So I decided to try setting up the scanner one more time. I succeeded in getting it to work, and here's how I did it.

1. Go to the Epson support scanner page: https://epson.com/Support/Scanners/sh/s2.
2. Select your scanner type. In my case, it was Perfection Series.
3. Select your scanner model. In my case, it was Epson Perfection 1670 Photo.
4. In the Operating System dropdown, select the most recent operating system version for which you see Scanner Driver and EPSON Scan Utility. For me, it was Windows 7 32-bit. The majority of today’s hardware is 64-bit, and I could have selected Windows 7 64-bit. But in my experience, 32-bit applications always seem to run regardless of the hardware it’s running on. Whereas 64-bit software is much more finicky.

5. Install the EPSON Scan Utility and voila!

My guess is that the success of this approach depends on how old the scanner is. Getting it to work seems unintuitive to me, so I hope this helps you get your scanner up and running!