old laptop running Vista

Hi CynthiaStretton:

What is the model of your Toshiba laptop and do you have a 32-bit or 64-bit Vista OS?  Please note that Microsoft officially ended extended support for Vista SP2 and the IE9 browser on 11-Apr-2017 and there have been no new security updates released via Windows Update for this OS since then.  See the Microsoft support article Windows Vista Support Has Ended for more information.

Go to Control Panel | System and Maintenance | System and confirm you have the latest Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Vista installed as shown below.  If you do, please note that there is a currently a known issue on Vista SP2 computers where Windows Update can hang on "Checking for updates..." for several hours (or even days) without throwing an error message or finding available updates. This problem was first reported in August 2015 and these slow Windows Updates have become progressively worse over time. When these "Checking for updates..." hangs occur the Windows Update Agent will saturate an entire CPU core (e.g., 100% CPU activity on a single core CPU, 50% CPU activity on a dual core CPU) and affected users might notice a significant decrease in system performance or hear their cooling fan run constantly when their CPU begins to overheat.  If you think you might be affected by this problem (which is likely if your computer hasn't been used for a while) then the instructions on page 1 of m#l's thread Updates not working, it has been searching for updates for hours should get Windows Update working again and allow you to patch your Vista SP2 OS and IE9 browser up to April 2017.

Regarding an OS upgrade, upgrading from Vista to Win 7 is the normal route but there is no free upgrade path from Vista SP2 to either Win 7 SP1 or Win 10.  You can download and run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20 to see if your system hardware and peripherals are compatible with Win 7 (see the minimum hardware requirements for Win 7 <here>).  Since you can't upgrade from Vista SP2 to Win 7 SP1 for free, you would have to purchase a new Win 7 upgrade DVD or product key from a reputable online source, and prices on sites like https://www.newegg.com/ currently range around $100 - $200 US.  Win 7 SP1 reaches the end of extended support on 14-Jan-2020 so it might not make sense to spend that much money to upgrade your OS if your machine has a relatively slow CPU, limited RAM and older hardware components if your slide scanner software will run on a Vista SP2 machine.

Regarding your browser problem, Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is the last Vista-compatible IE browser so you won't be able to upgrade to IE11 on a Vista SP2 machine.  Google discontinued support for Chrome on the Win XP and Vista platforms in April 2016 after the release of Chrome v49 - see Google's official announcement <here>.  The only major browser that is fully supported on Win XP SP3 and Vista SP2 is Mozilla's Firefox ESR v52.9 (extended support release) but Mozilla has announced <here> that support for Firefox ESR v52.9 will be ending on 05-Sep-2018.  Your best choice for now is Firefox ESR v52.9 which can be downloaded from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new (that web page should auto-detect your Vista OS and offer the correct installer) or https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/ (full standalone installers for all languages - be sure you choose the tab for Firefox ESR v52) but just keep in mind that there will be no further security updates for this Firefox browser in a few weeks.

32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.9.0 * Norton Security Premium v22.15.0.88

HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS