HP 4300C Re-installation Woes on Win 2000

This is probably a quick fix for someone out there. I can't
get my scanner recognized as a scanner. In the device mgr,
it is listed under "Unknown".

About a year and a half ago, I bought and HP 4300C scanner
for my computer at work. The installation went fine, with
the scanner connected through the USB port, and I proceeded
to scan whatever I wanted. Then, about 6 months later, I
installed the software for my digital camera (an HP 215)
which apparently screwed up the whole scanner installation.
The scanning software no longer worked.

I tried various reinstallation procedures, attempting to
keep my camera installed on the machine, but nothing ever
worked. I even accomplished the uninstallation instructions
from HP, which included searching the hard drive for remnant
files and the registry for scanner-related keys. The
installation would seem to go along fine and complete
itself. But the scanning software (HP PrecisionScan LTX)
would never run. I could see the scanner in the device
manager under Imaging Devices, and any tests done to it were
successful, but the program just wouldn't open up. I never
got any errors, the computer would just be busy for several
seconds and then stop trying, as if I had done nothing.

I finally decided that I would rather have a working scanner
than the ability to use my digital camera. I removed all
traces of the digital camera and its software. Then I tried
another full uninstall of the scanner software. This time,
the scanner software installed fine and starts like a champ.
However, it does immediately give an error that it can't
find any scanners.

Now when the install program tried to put in the drivers,
there was some error that the INF file was missing a part of
it or something like that. So I did some researching on the
web and discovered that if I added a little bit of code to
the registry (code from a registry backup when the scanner
was recognized) I could get the computer to recognize the
scanner as an unknown device. Now if I can just get these
two things to meet in the middle, I think I'll have
everything done.

It seems as though the computer does not recognize the
scanner as an imaging device. Does anyone know how to fix
this? Or any other help for that matter would be appreciated