I have noted that there are several people that have regular problems with some scanning software whilst others have no problems. Some of these may be due to a general unreliability in your system. If your image processing software can be used without any problems this may indicate otherwise but it's difficult to be sure. Anyone experiencing regular problems may like to try the Prime95 torture test (as I recently suggested to Stan). I believe there are versions for Macs (and others) as well as PC's. It's frequently used by overclockers to test whether their system is stable. If your system can't run it successfully for at least a few minutes you've got serious cpu/memory or heat problems. These will regularly cause your programs to fail unpredictably. You can download Prime95 here: http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm You can set it running at start up and continue to work with little noticeable slowdown in performance it just mops up any spare resources. You can set it to use upto 90% (enter 100% and it tells you the max) of physical memory under options->cpu and it will still not effect your general performance. If your PC has any cpu/memory (or overheating) problems the program will throw up an error. Similar number cruncher that many are familiar is Seti. But I don't know if it as a similar severe test. Steve