USB Devices behaving oddly

[Dave M G]

Ubuntu Users,

Recently I had a bit of strangeness with my packages in Synaptic. That 
is, I tried to install a package, it said I had broken packages that 
needed to be fixed. I selected to fix the broken packages, and Synaptic 
proceeded to uninstall what seemed like 50% of all the applications I had!

I tried to re-install all of them, but I'm not sure if I got everything.

Since that happened, some of my USB devices are not behaving properly.

Right now, for example, my scanner. It is a Canon N1220U that worked 
fine with Xsane before this package issue. Now, Xsane doesn't recognize 
it, though the driver for this scanner is still there.

Further, when I plug in my scanner, the machine makes a "beep" noise 
from the computer speaker that I have never heard before.

I went into Synaptic and tried to search for and install anything and 
everything that looked like it might be related to the management of USB 
devices. But that hasn't helped so far.

How do I diagnose the problem and get back support for my USB scanner?

-- 
Dave M G
Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft
Kernel 2.6.20-5-generic
Pentium D Dual Core Processor
PHP 5, MySQL 5, Apache 2