Olympus VN-4100PC Software for Windows Vista and 7

Mirrored from How-To: Get your Olympus recorder working in Windows 7 and Vista

I’ve mirrored this because it actually took me about half an hour trying to get my ancient (yet still reliably and accurately working) Olympus VN-4100PC to work with my Windows 7 PC.

The problem was that

1. I no longer have the original CD that came with the voice recorder. This CD contains Olympus’ “Digital Wave Player” software.
2. There is no obvious way to interface the VN-4100 with a PC, without the aforementioned DWP software.
3. The “official” product support page for the Olympus VN-4100PC has an update for the DWP software, and a Vista/7 update… but no direct link to a DWP installer!
4. I did not find the VN-4100 (and related product) pages on the Olympus U.K./Ireland site, as some online commenters suggested. These all directed to the Olympus home page of whichever country or region I was trying. Even Google-cached pages weren’t helping.

Fortunately I found this post from http://rianjs.net/ containing a direct link to the DWP software, both on Olympus’ site, and a local mirror. I have also added my own local mirrors of these files.

This article applies to the VN-120PC, VN-240PC, VN-480PC, VN-960PC, VN-2100PC, VN-3100PC, VN-3200PC and VN-4100PC digital audio recorders being used on 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7.

The problem with getting your Olympus digital recorders to work with newer versions of Windows is that Olympus doesn’t provide all of the drivers you need in one place. In the hopes that I can save other frustrated users 20 minutes of wasted time, I’ve provided download links and a short guide to getting your recorder working with versions of Windows newer than XP.

1) Install the original Digital Wave Player software (Olympus link | local mirror) (local mirror #2)

Installing the original software will not get your device working, but it provides the baseline for the updates that you downloaded.

2) Install the Digital Wave Player update (Olympus link | local mirror) (local mirror #2)

This will make a green and gray digital recorder icon appear in your System Tray. (32-bit Windows users stop here.)

3) Install the 64-bit Windows drivers (Olympus link | local mirror) (local mirror #2)

After you’ve completed this step, you should be able to connect your device and transfer the audio files to your computer.

Interestingly, the original DWP installer is actually in the same directory as the update and 64-bit Windows drivers, but is not shown as a link in any of the voice recorders’ software download pages.