OpticFilm 7400, SilverFast 8.5, Windows 7 64 - no go

[unustus]

For days I have been trying to get my OpticFilm 7400 installed on my laptop. Hours and hours spent in vain, uncountable restarts, extensive searches for possible tips - still nothing works. I had SilverFast 6.6, then found out about the 32/64 bit conflict and upgraded SilverFast to 8.5. Also downloaded the latest driver from Plustek. The only thing I managed to do was to lose my sound card and web cam! And I cannot reinstall the drivers, it seems, so I'll have to start from scratch again with my rescue disks.

Tonight I for a moment thought I had solved the problem, both drivers installed without any error messages, but on starting SilverFast, I was not able to serialize it or anything else. Checking the Device Manager I saw my scanner listed as a 120, so I uninstalled it again. And now once again nothing is working.

So when I get my laptop back into shape, I want to be absolutely sure I do the installation the right way. But I am beginning to fear I won't be able to. I just read a post mentioning that you have to have your original CD mounted in order to install the upgraded version. The horror of this is that my scanner is several years old, I changed my computer since I got it, and somehow at some point I lost my CDs! I managed to find my serial number in an old email, and I had saved copies of the old files, but they were of course the 32 bit versions. So here I am now - with a scanner and newly upgraded software - fearing I won't be able to scan again.

How can I possibly install without the CD?
If it can be done, how do I go about it?
And what is the precise procedure for the installation? I am so confused by now I need an explanation for dummies. Any help to get here?

[LSI_Ketelhohn]

Dear customer,

A CD is not needed. You can install the latest update from our website. Our "updates" are always full installation files. A previous installation is not necessary.
If you got a serial number bound to a CD you can exchange it for a name-based, non-CD serial here on our website.

For installation you only need the latest drivers from the Plustek website and the latest SilverFast version from ours.

Kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.