Using Nikon Coolscan with Windows 10

This is a very long shot but I am hoping that someone might be able to help me out.

The scanner I am messing with really belongs to my brother who has lent it to me to try and scan my 10 carousels of old slides. (I am really just planning on picking out my favorite ones - not all 1,400 slides.) My brother warned me that I might have trouble with drivers. Ahem...

I've tried so many things to get this scanner working over the past few weeks that my head is spinning (though it may also be that I am just getting over the flu). But, first, here's where I stand now:

The device and firewire controller both appear to be working correctly according to device manager. (Can't figure out how to paste images here.)
IEEE 1394 host controllers > 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy)
Imaging Devices > Nikon SUPER COOLSCAN 4000 ED

Alas, Nikon Scan 4.0 shows: "Nikon Scan was unable to find any active devices"

In past experiments, I've had very-limited success in getting both Nikon Scan 4 and Vuescan to see the scanner and even create scans of slides before ending back up with the above message.

In spite of many years of IT experience, I am not enough of a Windows hack to be able to do the same thing twice and get the same results (very frustrating). It seems that, even if I try to "uninstall" everything (drivers, software, etc), I don't think that Windows actually clears it all out.

I have been from one end of the Internet to the other finding and trying different "solutions". My attempts have included:

1. Trying to follow the instructions to the letter on: "Getting your Nikon Coolscan to work on W7 x64" (That trick got me the closest to getting the scanner to work - at least for a few minutes - with Nikon Scan.)
2. Various compatibility combinations for Nikon Scan.exe (Interestingly, Windows seems to remember those settings even after uninstalling and reinstalling Nikon Scan!)
3. VueScan gets the same message, though it has found and been able to drive the scanner for a short time. (Heck, I'd be willing to pay the Vuescan license if it worked reliably.)
4. I was going to set up a VirtualBox and run WinXP until I figured out that VirtualBox doesn't support guest connectivity to Firewire interfaces. Ahem...
5. I also found a place that suggested installing the "Legacy" driver for my Firewire controller. Hence, the "IEEE 1394 host controllers > 1394 HOCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy)"

I've tried a lot of stuff that I just can't remember just now. It is particularly frustrating, though, that I can't seem to do the same thing twice.

Things I haven't tried yet include:

1. Finding, downloading, and installing Nikon Scan 3 software instead of Scan 4. Does anyone think that might help?
2. I have an old computer sitting in another room that I am thinking about installing Win XP onto (the scanner box still has the old XP drivers).

I am just reaching out in hopes that someone may have some other ideas I could try.

Thanks, in advance, for any help you can provide.

Regards,

Bob

You could install a dual boot Windows 7 / Windows 10 system with a small Windows 7 disk space just to control the scanner. You could also try installing a Windows 7 VM within Windows 10 but controlling hardware from the VM may be difficult.

Thanks, Steve, The dual boot idea is a good one. I had thought about that already - just failed to mention it as yet another option. I just thought I'd first try the old PC in the other room (it was an old "Media Center" PC before the days of smart TVs). I need to look it over one last time before I get rid of it anyway. Why not try to use it with the scanner? Anyway, I've got an old WinXP Pro install disk and, since the drivers that originally came with the scanner were for XP, it seems like a good place to start.

Your second idea, a VM, is where I was going with VirtualBox. Alas, after installing VB, I discovered that it did not support Firewire (1394) interfaces. Then I tried to figure if ANY hypervisor (Hyper-V, even VMware) supports Firewire interfaces to the guest OS but was less than comfortable that any of them would work for what I am trying to do.

Bob