Find Hardware Wizard won't work, won't give up

I have a Nikon LS-10 film scanner that worked fine in
Windows 98 and still works fine in XP with third-party
VueScan software. The problem is that XP persists in
finding the scanner every time I boot up, no matter how
many times I try to disable the scanner in the System
Manager (which is harmless to the VueScan program's
ability to run the scanner). Nikon says its Win98 vintage
drivers work with XP even though they haven't been
certified. But XP disagrees and says the folder with these
drivers contains no information about my scanner. So I
can't install the drivers or prevent XP from trying four
times each session before giving up until the next time.
How can I solve this problem, preferably without
completely disabling the Find Hardware Wizard?