[iPaul UK]

I just got myself an HP Scanjet 5300c Scanner today. And I have run into a couple of problems with it. I'm using the latest 1.43 drivers on OS9.1

Firstly.. Most of the time, plugging in the USB cord from the scanner will freeze the Mac completely (Does this on my iMac and my iBook). Not all the time, but 9 times out of 10, this is what happens. This asside, I have scanned some colour pictures, and they came out great. However, I scanned some Black & White pictures, and they look awful! There is some kind of weird distortion thing goin on.. There is like a fuzzy, angular crosshatch pattern appearing on the pictures. And for some reason, if i view the pictures i scanned with the quicktime picture viewer, they look worse. Then the cross hatch fuzzy distortion thing gets noticeably worse still if i rotate the picture. Why would that be!? Whats more.. the picture quality suffers even more if I open the very same file in PhotoShop! (v4) Whats going on with that!? But like I say, Colour pictures seem to be absolutely faultless.
I've tried numerous colour and black & white scanner setting's.. But the problem is still there..

Any idea folks!? This ones got me beat..

[iPaul UK]

<sniff>

Anyone!?

By the way, I think I got the creashing problem cured.. If I leave the scanner alone for a while, it seems to go to sleep or something and the light goes out. If I let it do that, then the Macs are happy for it to be unplugged and replugged again, without crashing.

But this problem with scanning B&W pictures has got me completely stumped!