Hi Starina,
I'm so glad I came across your post. I've spent nearly 2 weeks trying to make my Win 8.1 laptop see the scanner in my HP Photosmart premium 390g, tried installing the full feature driver rom the HP website with and without the wizard, uninstalled and reinstalled endless times, run HP solutions trouble shooter, network diagnostics, you name it... I even run a system restore on my new laptop because it got so badly messed up in the proccess! Now I know it's not going to work with the official software, so I am going to go for your suggested solution. Thank you!