Scanner not working

[Andrew Wood <andrewjameswood@ymail.com>]

I have a long standing problem with using my scanner (HP ScanJet 5300) 
under Debian using either Simple Scan or gscantopdf. Both generate I/O 
error messages. It used to work fine but have never been able to get it 
to work since upgrading to Jessie and now in Stretch it doesnt work 
either.  For the last few months Ive been making do with VueScan on 
Windows but its driving me up the wall and I would like to be able to 
use it with Linux again.

Any suggestions on how I might identify what the problem is?


Thanks

Andrew