Repaired Mini won't recognise my scanner any more

I've got a Canoscan Lide60 flatbed scanner that I originally bought for my old PPC iMac. They still work well together, but my primary machine since 2012 has been a Mac Mini running OSX 7.5, and I've been using the scanner with that instead. I had to download a version of Canoscan Toolbox that would recognise it, but that was unproblematic.

I've just had a like-for-like replacement of my Mini hard disk after it failed, and spent the past couple of days trying to reinstall the scanner. But it's no longer listed as compatible. Canon support claim no compatible driver was ever developed for 10.7 (so presumably all the scanning I've done over the past three years never happened!); Apple support say the drivers are in the OS and want me to upgrade to Yosemite as a first step despite the fact it's not listed as compatible with that either (I suspect "upgrade your OS" is just their default answer to everything).

I know the scanner is nine years old, but a fortnight ago it was compatible with my OS and now I'm being told it never was. What the **** is going on and how can I fix it?

What year and model is your Mac Mini? What I'm getting at, was it newly purchased in 2012 or was it a used model and which version of OS X was originally on it?

The reason I ask is if you originally had Snow Leopard on the Mini (OS X 10.6) your scanner software would have worked fine. Even upgrading to Lion (OS X 10.7) it would have continued to work. But, when you replaced the hard drive on the Mini, that meant having to install a new copy of Lion. Since the older driver was PPC only, it would refuse to install on Lion since Lion and later no longer can install or run PPC apps or drivers.

It's a mid-2011 model I bought new from my local Apple Store in March 2012. Looking at the OSX release schedule, 10.7.5 came out that October, so I must have upgraded sometime, but it looks like 10.7 was the standard preinstall on the model when I bought it.

I'll look out the documentation and see if it says any different, though.

EDIT: Yep, definitely came preinstalled with Lion.

Yep, definitely came preinstalled with Lion.

Click to expand...

Then, the scanner software should have installed just as before. If the Mini came preinstalled with Snow Leopard, I could understand the scanner not being compatible. As far as what Canon said, I would take it with a grain of salt. I haven't been happy with their printers or support but that's for another time.

The only thing I can suggest to get your scanner working again is to try VueScan. It's a pricey driver but it works with most scanners. I believe you can try it before you buy.
Download from here. Make sure you download the version for your version of OS X.

Success! More or less by accident, I've found a program called Scangear Starter 1.1 that recognises the device.

It lacks a couple of the shortcuts Canoscan Toolbox had when it worked, but the main interface and functionality are exactly the same. It looks like the software Canon told me didn't exist. I am, it would appear, pretty much sorted – I just don't know how, or what was wrong in the first place!

Thanks for your analysis anyway. Even if it was a blind alley, it was more than I got from the "proper channels".

Awesome you found a solution!

- Nick

Months later, I've restored full functionality.

Despite being explicitly listed as incompatible, it turns out that the driver for Mac OSX 6 (lide60osx11131.dmg) works fine with 7.5 after all, at least in conjunction with the matching version of CanoScan Toolbox 4.9.3.4

Why neither Apple nor Canon could just tell me that remains a mystery, so I'm putting the info here in case anyone else needs it, because nothing is more frustrating than a help thread with no solution.

Take it you mean OS X.6 for OS 6.

Oops, yes. Thanks. Fixed it.