Vista - Microsoft Scanner and Camera Wizard

I have a new laptop with Vista, but I liked the old Microsoft Scanner and
Camera Wizard from Windows XP a ZILLION times better than the import options
given in Vista. The new wizard is entirely too restrictive.

I want to put pictures into a predetermined folder of my choice and give it
my own distinct names - not using the tags. Why can't I do this anymore? It
was super-easy in XP and now it appears that I'm handcuffed by Vista's
restrictive options that don't allow the user (me) to customize it to my own
liking.

If I want to use tags, great.. but I don't. I want to use the same thing I
used in XP.

Wondering if anyone knows how to accomplish this short of going back to XP
or to another computer with XP.

Really not liking the Vista wizard at all.

Thanks in advance.

i agree 100%, although I used the scanners & cameras wizard mostly for scanning, it was MUCH nicer in Windows XP.

I had my scanning down to a nice routine in XP, I just opened my control panel, scanners & cameras wizard, and it would allow me to put in a file name, destination, click "scan" and my scanner would scan.

Now, with Windows Vista, it makes me use some hokey software that came with my scanner, and it's nowhere near as good or efficient for what I want to do. When I go to my scanners & cameras wizard, all it will do is give me my scanner properties. Very annoying.

Has anyone figured out an answer to this problem? I love XP's importer, and I absolutely HATE the new vista format. You can't do ANYTHING with it!!! Please let me know if you find something. Thanks

I agree with all these comments, I use my digi-camera for pleasure and
selling goods on Ebay, it use to be so simple to use the XP wizzard and
simply down load the photos I wanted. For some reason I was not able to
send images back to my camera yesterday - possible related, Anyway let's
hope some wizzard can solve this problem, so far I must say
this is the only things I do not like about Vista.


--
Rob123
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com

Hi,

You can find the wizard here : C:\Windows\System32\wiaacmgr.exe
It is well hidden...
I hope this helps !

J.

I do a search for this and do not find it?

I have found a resolution to the quick renaming issue. You still have to use the regular Vista import function, but then create folders for each group of photos you want to name similarly, e.g. "20081231 Sarah's Birthday" and put all the pictures relating to that event in the folder. Then, use CTL+A to select all files in the folder and right click on the first message in the file name area and select "Rename". Type your file name in the first box and it will rename all selected files with a number in parenthesis following each file name. It's the only workaround I've come up with, and just recently. This was one of my big beefs with Vista as well. I hope this is helpful!

PS - I don't know what a quote button is so I can't use it. Not trying to have improper posting etiquette, just ignorant. Sorry about that.

This new import tool has frustrated me from the beginning as well, and I tried numerous third party programs with no luck in reproducing the simplicity of the XP Scanner and Camera Wizard. I finally found one from (of course) Microsoft themselves. The Windows Live Photo Gallery (LIVE is the operative term here, this is NOT the standard Windows Photo Gallery included in Vista), available for free download from Photo Gallery - Windows Live, has an automatic import tool that not only does everything the old XP wizard did, but surpasses it.

The WLPG import tool automatically groups the pictures on your camera by the duration of time between each set of pictures, i.e. every time there is a 4 hour gap between pictures, it creates a new group. You can easily set the gap between groups or remove the grouping altogether for a more XP-like experience, but I recommend using the auto-grouping as it is extremely helpful and accurate.

You can name each group before you import, so you can do a bulk import and still get individually created folders and properly named files within those folders in one easy click, rather than going back to the beginning several times as in XP. You can also set the file naming independently of the folder naming, which I find helpful to avoid long file names. For instance, you can tell it to call the folder "Steve's Birthday 2009", and just name the files "Birthday". Of course the files are numbered in order they were taken as well.

The gallery program itself is a perfectly good tool for viewing and managing your pictures. It looks just like the built-in Vista "Windows Photo Gallery", which is very similar to Picasa. It also has a pretty cool panoramic stitching feature which worked surprisingly well when I tested it.

But you're not interested in editing, you just want to get your pictures on your computer in an organized way without paying to do so. So go download this thing already, because it does just that, really well.

JudyBooty it is in the window that you are reading at the bottom left the blue buttons "quote" "multi" "quick" just hit the blue "quote" button and it will quote what is posted in that window. I went through the same thing when I first started and now I would like to know how to get rid of "notice" that comes up every time I log in.

Awesome! Thank you so much. I had to replace my old dell that finally died and got a vista box (Blah). And my g/f was on my case cause of how my clicks it took to get something scanned. You are a life saver!