Atta-boy!! 

Fear not, lad....you're the very embodiment of jackass diligence....

...or is it diligent jackass?

Can't be all bad...least ya call it 'fell swoop' and not 'fowl sweep' or some such....

What's the bet I'm yet again the target of vehement rhetoric ..... something like "Help save the innocent computer.  Deny JAFO the use of his...." ....

[thanks, yrag for helping yet again]...

yrag -

We never sorted the issue of the different file date for msconfig.exe - mine definitely did not match yours.  Is it moot?

Yes...as long as they're identical, I wouldn't worry about it.......

Did you install this: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=3387

Did not install the Visual C redistributable.  Do so?

No balls....no golf.....

Install it.....

Too bad you didn't see this, Daiwa:  http://drjbhl.joeuser.com/article/410015/Problematic_NET_Updates

I did see it, actually, but only after automatic updates tried to install it & failed.  Absence of apparent adverse effects at the time led me to think 'no harm, no foul' - the fax issue that came up a couple of weeks later related to an interaction between the fax software and the TWAIN interface, which the fax software tech folks thought had nothing to do with .NET.  They were very surprised to learn the problem had been fixed by reinstalling the .NET frameworks (only versions 1 & 2 - yrag advises XP can't really use 3.5 or 4 anyway).

A curious coincidence -

At about the same time I started having trouble with my fax/scanner issue at home, all three workstations at my office which use Fujitsu scanners for scanning in documents began having similar problems with significant delays between pages on multipage scans and massively bloated scanned file sizes (a 4 page .tif file which should be ~100k would end up 1.5MB) after having had no such issues for 18 months.  This has also been associated with a very noticeable change in responsiveness of the remote desktops to which we VPN - typing lags, post-click delays, lockups.  Not sure how/why there would be an impact within the virtual environment, but there is a lot of interaction between it and the local desktop for certain functions, scanning in particular.  These workstations have automatic updates set for unattended D/L & install of security updates (since staff ignore them like an old boyfriend) - no installation error on any of the machines like I ran into at home, but the coincidence seems a little too cute and I'm going to run through yrag's drill on one of the workstations as a test to see what happens.

Well, my suspicions were confirmed.  After doing the .NET cleanup & reinstalling 1.0, 1.1 & 2.0 (and service packs), all three machines began scanning normally again, though the image file sizes are still running a little higher than prior to June.  Something about that security update for 2.0 published in late June was very wrong - 4 machines with scanners, 4 machines with issues.  At least they are back to baseline again, but the procedure was painfully time-consuming (multiple reboots).

Once again, my gratitude to yrag for the tutorial.