Q:After upgrading my operating system, the old drivers for my scanner no longer work, and the manufacturer doesn’t have any newer ones for me to download. Now what?

A: This happens more often than it should—for example, an upgrade to Apple’s Mac OSXSnow Leopard left an iMac with no way to scan images through an otherwise functional Hewlett-Packard printer-scanner unit.

Selling the device to somebody else—then buying a new model from a vendor with a better record of supporting its older hardware—is one option. But if your scanner is valuable enough to you, Hamrick Software’s VueScan (hamrick.com) can probably keep it operational.

This $39.95 program supports hundreds of scanners from dozens of manufacturers and comes in versions for every version of Apple and Microsoft’s operating systems since Mac OS 9 and Windows 95 (plus releases for Linux). It’s free to try, although it will embed dollar-sign watermarks in scans until you pay to register it.

A reader suggested this to me some time ago, citing her own positive experience, and the HP scanner worked perfectly in VueScan’s trial download.

iLife works with Leopard

Q: A rep in one of Apple’s stores said I could install the regular Snow Leopard DVD on a Mac running Tiger, but that my old copy of iLife wouldn’t work. Is that true?

A: No: iLife ’08 doesn’t appear on Apple’s list of software incompatible with the new operating system, and users on Apple’s tech-support forums have confirmed that it works fine in Snow Leopard.

This isn’t exactly the first time a computer store’s employee has offered advice at variance with reality, nor will it be the last.

Got a question on personal technology? Send a note to Washington Post columnist Rob Pegoraro at

robp@washpost.com

. Questions can be answered only through this column.