Windows 7 Drivers for PC line Flatbed Scanner (Model PCL-3000 aka Mustek 1248UB)

Label on the Underside of Scanner

My parents have just brought a new Windows 7 machine and as you can imagine, as the techie in the family, when I came to visit I managed to pick up the task of getting all the old USB devices working with the new machine. The upgrade was from Windows XP so it was quite a big surprise that pretty much everything worked just fine, the drivers for the Lexmark Z615 were downloaded and installed without incident. Same with everything else actually (memory card readers, speakers, etc).

Of course not everything worked, the Labtec USB Webcam had become damaged in transit and no longer seemed to work at all - thankfully a quick trip to PC World netted a Sandstrom 720HD camera to replace it - and then there was the PC line Flatbed Scanner.

Now this isn't the first upgrade/ replacement machine I've dealt with (not even the first one this year) so it was quite a surprise when I plugged the make and model into Google and searched for drivers that I *didn't* get anything useful (and no, I'm not counting the "pay us £20 and we'll let you have them" sites which absolutely everyone should avoid as usually either a) they don't have the drivers or b) the actual driver download is just a couple links lower in Googles search results and is *free*). I'm happy to be proved wrong if someone has a site that's reliable; I just doubt that the business model for these sites can actually support the in-depth knowledge and testing of (frankly) obsolete hardware people think they are getting access to when they type in their credit card number.

A bit of digging turned up the fact that the PC line PCL-3000 is actually just a re-badged Mustek Scanner - looking further into it revealed that it's just a re-badged 1248UB scanner and if you go to the Mustek driver download site the Windows Vista drivers are available to download;

• (** SEE UPDATE BELOW **) Go to  http://www.mustek.com.tw/Support/ (note that this is NOT the usual .com site, but the parent company in Taiwan - the drivers don't seem to be on the US site)
• Click "Support"
• Enter "1248ub" and click "Search"
• A single result is returned, click on "1248ub"
• Click "Drivers Download"
• Click "Windows Vista 32-bit" (or 64-bit if that's the version of Windows you're using!)

If you want to go straight to the download (and you trust software downloaded from bloggers you don't know!) then the direct link is here (of course this might not work as they could move this anywhere on their site).

Hopefully this will save someone the amount of time this took me to work out!

UPDATE: October 2015: Mustek have updated their website and the link (and instructions) above no longer works. The software itself is still accessible on their FTP site though at this location;

ftp://ftp3.mustek.com.tw/pub/new/driver/0_Old%20Products/1248%20UB/

It looks like the software for the scanner is now available for Windows 8, 7, Vista, XP, and 2000. I've not tried it, I switched to a Mac a good few years ago, so can only guess it still works. If it does please leave a comment!