Does this sound familiar at all?
On a squeeze installation, there is a usb scanner. Works just fine. But for unclear reasons every now and then, it may be because someone plugs in another computer to the usb hub to print, not quite sure, when xsane starts up it gives the usual message about not being able to start the scanner.
I fix this by brute force, I start up a demo copy of vuescan, after which all is well again. But I have no idea why this should work.
However, on another machine running Lenny, this did not work. Vuescan could now not find the scanner. Also (this is an MFP) I was unable to get the printer to work. I had downloaded the drivers (its a Brother) and installed them using gdebi.
So, I tackled the scanner problem first. sane-find-scanner found it, and scanimage -L also found it. Attempting to scan from the command line did not.
Running short of time, this was a friends machine, I took the brute force approach again and installed Mandriva 2010. Got the drivers, installed them, and bingo, everything works fine. Must say, this was wonderfully easy, all the bookmarks and the toolbar configuration came up intact. Could not have been easier. Mandriva will be easier for him to run, at least, until we want to upgrade it.
But, what on earth could be going on?
Peter