[KingJeremy]

I've got an Epson Stylus CX4800 all-in-one that I purchased last February. Alas, the warranty is expired, and Epson tech "support" wants to charge me $9.95 for their brilliance. Pass.

I scanned numerous magazine articles into .pdf format back when I first bought it - part of my effort to clean house and toss some mags. At that time I had an emachines desktop running Win2K Pro, and using Readiris Pro 10. Didn't have any problems then, but then I finished and I haven't used the scan feature in many months.

This week I've attempted to scan a few things and some problems popped up. I've got a relatively new (7/06) Gateway laptop running WinXP Media Center Ed. The scanner didn't respond at all to Readiris 10, so I used the Epson Scan program. And when I used that, my entire system froze in the middle of a scan. And it keeps doing it, whether I'm scanning to .pdf, .jpeg, .bmp or what-have-you, and I have to manually power down and start back up. And while the system freezes, the scanner appears to continue and finish the scan. Very odd, but leads me to surmise that perhaps the problem is software related.

I've attempted the following solutions, gathering information via the internet and what little help Epson Tech could give me, all to no avail:

- uninstalled Readiris
- uninstalled and reinstalled printer drivers, both from the CD and from the Epson website.
- uninstalled drivers, programs, and deleted all references to Epson in the registry, then reinstalled everything
- upgraded to a hi-speed USB 2.0 cable
- shaken head in frustration
- drank beer

My Gateway MX7120 laptop is running WinXP Media Center Ed w/SP2, AMD 64 3400, 1.5GB RAM, and the various spyware blasters and A/Vs haven't revealed any problems of note.

Hopefully someone here has had a similar issue with resolution and can help me out. I'd rather not have to just toss the printer, as these things cost money, and that's better spent on problem resolution number six...

Thanks!