Free OCR Software

This is inappropriate!

https://www.google.com/#q=free%20ocr%20software%20windows%207

Sorry not a user for such and have commercial software available but it seems there is something out there.

Maybe someone can come up with a recommendation.

I feel your pain. I found Win7 is not backward compatible with some programs. Maybe this will help:

Go to Windows Help and Support and search for "Program Compatibility troubleshooter"

You may still be able to run your old program.

My problem was not compatibility, but that I don't have the installation disk (it's too old and came with the computer), and it would not transfer from the Win XP machine.

I still find it strange to hear people looking for free programs that use any form of Windows operating system. If you want open source code that works, use Linux. Linux has multiple OCR packages. You can even find a modestly priced ABBYY version that runs on Linux. A comparison with other Linux OCR programs does show that one does get something for the added cost of ABBYY. Working with Linux for an OS there will not be the hacking or obsolescence worries of Windows.

Another solution will be to make an ISO copy of your Windows platform that your licensed copy of ABBYY did work on. Install a virtual machine on you Win7 machine with the old operating system inside it.

Redfred: Thanks for you last suggestion.

For those of us who are retired and have lousy pensions, even modestly priced seems expensive. If Win 7 didn't come with this computer (which happened to be free) I would have seriously considered Linux.

Purchase ( I know, I know you're on a pension) an external hard drive and install LINUX on it. Or create a partition for LINUX on your current HD, or try the version of LINUX that runs under windoz.

The Win 7 XP VM works reasonably well - I usedit for a number of XP programs that simply did not like the 64bit install - The XP is 32 bit and keeps the old programs running.