TL;DR

Install the driver in compatibility mode with Windows 7.

Skip CanoScan Toolbox — use VueScan instead.

If scans come out scrambled, uninstall the driver with the delete utility (also in compatibility mode), reboot, reinstall, replug the USB, and scan again.

Intro

Is there a feeling better than finding an old scanner from the mid-2000s, tracking down a driver for it, and actually getting it to work?

I needed to scan a few hand-drawn pictures. My phone is fine for documents, but I wasn’t happy with the quality for artwork — and I wanted everything to come out at a consistent resolution with accurate colours. My parents’ CanoScan 4200F had been sitting in a drawer for years, but I figured it was worth a shot. When I saw the CanoScan Toolbox UI, I got a few childhood flashbacks.

I was right to try it. It worked.

Drivers

Canon officially dropped support after Windows 7, but the drivers are still on their website. I backed them up here just in case they disappear:

Original source: Canon Europe support page

Installation

  1. Right-click the driver installer
  2. Properties → Compatibility
  3. Check Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows 7
  4. Apply
  5. Run it.

Bless Windows, the installer works fine on Windows 11 in compatibility mode. It did give me a warning asking if it actually did install correctly. It did for me.

Skip CanoScan Toolbox

I gave up on CanoScan Toolbox immediately. Every time I tried to scan, it gave me:

Unable to open TWAIN source Please check connection Then re-start Toolbox

CanoScan Toolbox TWAIN error

I didn’t dig into why — I just moved on to VueScan, which picked up the scanner as soon as the driver was installed.

Fixing scrambled scans

The first scans I got from VueScan were wrong: the image was split into horizontal strips that were out of order and vertically offset.

Here’s what fixed it:

  1. Run the driver delete utility in compatibility mode with Windows 7.
  2. Reboot.
  3. Reinstall the driver, again in compatibility mode with Windows 7.
  4. Replug the USB cable.
  5. Scan.

I also ran VueScan itself in Windows 7 compatibility mode. After I turned that off it kept working fine, so it probably wasn’t necessary — but I can’t be sure it made no difference, so I’m noting it here.

Scanning an A3 canvas

The scanner bed is A4, so for a larger canvas I scanned it in multiple passes and stitched them together in Photoshop using File → Automate → Photomerge. A bit of levels tweaking and here’s the result:

Scanned A3 canvas, photomerged and levels-adjusted