Hi, I posted a message earlier with limited information, so I thought of posting again. Sry bout an extra post. I plugged and switched on the usb scanner but launching 'Scanner' from Gnome menu always display an error message about device not found. I've been searching high and low, then I found about a useful command that would display more information about the device. I typed "sane-find-scanner" and this is the output:

found USB scanner (vendor=0x03f0, product=0x0901) at /dev/usb/scanner0
found USB scanner (vendor=0x03f0, product=0x0901) at libusb:001:003
# A USB device was detected. This program can't be sure if it's really
# a scanner. If it is your scanner, it may or may not be supported by
# SANE. Try scanimage -L and read the backend's manpage.

# Scanners connected to the parallel port or other proprietary ports can't be
# detected by this program.

# You may want to run this program as root to find all devices. Once you
# found the scanner devices, be sure to adjust access permissions as
# necessary.

I returned and clicked Scanner from Gnome menu, after a few seconds waiting for it to search for device, the same error message was displayed, Device not found. Can someone help me out ? Thank you

What brand/model of scanner do you have? You may want to check out the supported scanners list to see if there's anything special to know about setting yours up. I made the mistake of buying the HP Scanjet 4200C, which I later found out is one of the few HP scanners that will not work with Sane But it gives me similar problems - the USB device is detected, and the appropriate driver can't be found.

hi wapcaplet, thanx for the reply. It's true that very few HP scanners are supported, i think only those 4200 and 5200. My next solution is to get VMWare. I'll keep looking around, thanx for the reply