Ah, I spoke too soon! I tried running simple-scan again using "open new document" and now it doesn't work! Must have been a fluke last night. I know what you mean about xsane being "dangerous"--one of the first times I used it the scanner made a horrible sound...one long continuous scanning noise that I thought would never stop! It finally did stop but there was no image. It was set to pdf. When I set to jpn it was much better. But nothing should have caused it to make that sound.

if sane breaks down the scanner, you will be in serious troubles,... man, cannot you try to email the dev to ask what to do ?

herewith the link: https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mail...nfo/sane-devel

Here is one last attempt to salvage this situation. There is a more recent version of simple-scan than the one installed on my computer...3.25.1. It's worth trying to install it to see if that makes any difference. How do you install the tar.xz after downloading the package? I have opened the package on my desktop but apparently something has to be done to integrate the folder into my system. Is that done in a terminal or can it be done through the folder itself? I would like to try this as a last effort. Any help with this will be appreciated. Thanks again!