[member=2]Jerry[/member] Thank you for the suggestions. I did try Xsane once but found it pretty difficult to understand - but if it worked the effort would be worthwhile. With the paid programs I'd have to be sure they would work where the FOSS ones don't but I don't have a big scanning requirement (probably why my scanner has lasted so long!).

But ... I've been doing some tests and I think I've got my answer, though it's not what I really want.  I tried out the various Live USBs and CDs I have on the different computers I have and I found that:
> no distro could deliver a scan from my scanner on the PCs that UEFI
> LinuxLite 3.4 (and most, but not all, Ubuntu derivatives) could deliver a scan on any PC which had BIOS.

So, to answer my original question : No, it's not Linux Lite 3.4 that's making my scanner obsolete. It looks as though it's a change to computer design that occurred when UEFI was introduced, or it may be UEFI itself.

In fact Linux Lite 3.2 was the only distro I tested that delivered a scan on my Acer UEFI laptop, so no complaints at all about Linux Lite.
It looks as though the sensible way forward for my scanner is to reserve an older machine for it - and the good news about that is that Linux Lite 3.4 will be able to power it.

I know I've put in some long posts and I do thank you, Jerry, for your patience with the and for your readiness to pur forward potential solutions. I hope I haven't taken up too much of your time but for me it has been worth it, so thank you once again. 

Good, another reason for me to detest UEFI

[member=6497]Peejay[/member],

If UEFI was introduced to your computer, how did you get Linux Lite to run on it?  The default installation of Linux Lite doesn't work with UEFI.  Lastly, if this is the end of your thread, please mark it as solved.  For help with that, review this https://www.linuxliteos.com/forums/intro...uidelines/

(04-17-2017, 03:39 PM)Peejay link Wrote: I've had my N650U for a long time and it's always been perfectly OK for me. I've never got it to work in Ubuntu, though, and a lot of derivatives, but it has worked in Linux Mint and in Linux Lite, which I adopted at 3.2. Now I'm up-to-date with 3.4 I'm back to googling for solutions that actually work.
Checking at http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html gave this info:
Model                   Interface USB id Status Comment Backend         Manpage
CanoScan N650U/N656U USB 0x04a9/0x2206 Complete           plustek (0.52) sane-plustek
Using sudo sane-find-scanner produced this:
>could not fetch string descriptor: Input/output error
>could not fetch string descriptor: Input/output error
>found USB scanner (vendor=0x04a9, product=0x2206) at libusb:003:002
and sudo scanimage -L gave me "No scanners were identified."
I've checked the presence of the stated backend and all seems to  be in order and lsusb identifies the device too, but no connection can be made to it, it seems.
I've also checked that the scanner does still work and on an older laptop it still does, so not a hardware issue.

If the worst comes to the worst I can revert to 3.2 - but I really like the upgrade - or I could have a go at a VB version of a suitable distro, but both seem rather heavy going given that the scanner worked fine before I did the upgrade.

I've seen enough of scanner Q&As to know that the answer is rarely clearcut or universally applicable but I would be very grateful for any suggestions. Well, not quite ANY perhaps!

I live in hope!

I've just read through the thread as I was searching for a print solution in printers and scanners....however, I have the exact same scanner, and I've just plugged it into another distro I use and it works I've not tried this on LL as my version is a clean 3.4, the application is on Launchpad https://launchpad.net/simple-scan no idea if this would work but might be worth a try.

Another option might be to remove sane; apt remove --purge then apt autoremove then reinstall it.

[member=5239]torreydale[/member]

(04-20-2017, 01:35 PM)torreydale link Wrote: [member=6497]Peejay[/member],

If UEFI was introduced to your computer, how did you get Linux Lite to run on it?  The default installation of Linux Lite doesn't work with UEFI.  Lastly, if this is the end of your thread, please mark it as solved.  For help with that, review this https://www.linuxliteos.com/forums/intro...uidelines/

Sorry to be slow picking your query up. Not really on-topic here so apologies if undesirable. I had no particular difficulty installing Linux Lite but I had previously installed another Ubuntu derivative, Peppermint 6, that did support UEFI installation so the Ubuntu shim was in place and set with the firmware as accepted, so perhaps that made the difference. From recollection I simply did a multi-boot install with Secure Boot off and it went in pretty easily, alongside Pep6 and Win10, both of which I should really remove now because I haven't used either for months. Very impressed with Linux Lite.