Dear experts my epson perfection scanner 1670 has be working fine for the last 3 years. This morning it started giving messages "Unable to launch scanner set up wizard. I uninstalled and then reinstalled from the scanner installation disk. Result Still not recognising the scanner. As far as I can see there is some connection to the PC as the scanner hiccups twice when passing the XP welcome start screen. I tried calling the scanner from omnipage pro 12 and from thumbs+ 7, but they also give messages like start wizard can't.... Is this a problem of epson or is something missing in the windows XP software? bye Fred

Have you confirmed the cables are secure? Life's more painless for the brainless.

Just to say --- Before you did the uninstall and reinstall, you should have tried Windows System Restore back to a date when scanner was working. That may be too late now.

Fredf, Even though you are having trouble with your epson perfection scanner 1670, I think this is a common problem with most USB Scanners in Windows XP SP2. I had the same type of issues with a HP Scan Jet Scanner, HP tech support was worthless, so I did my own trouble shooting and finally figured it out. I posted the answer at the URL below. See My response #5 & 6 to help you resolve this issue. http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/...

Thank you all for the very helpful replies. Jennifer hit part of the nail on part of the head. Somehow the usb cable is broken. My ohmmeter says it isn't but Swapping the cable with the printer cable, The scanner starts to scan and the printer stops printing. I bought another cable. Now the problem has changed. The scanner scans but the output is a blank page. This is becoming weirder by the minute. Any more good ideas? Thanks a million in advance. Bye Fred