I have a Dimension 530 Dell, (18months old) running Vista, (all updates are loaded and current e.g.SP2) with the AIO Dell 968 Printer.  Somewhere over the past months, my printer and scanner funtions became very slow in responding to my PC to the point, where the scanner was taking 3+ minutes to respond to my desktop tool request to scan.  In reading a number of posts, I have followed the directions of un-installing the printer, updating all drivers, and re-installing it and have done so more times than I care to admit which has consumed many hours during the past two weeks.  Each time, I attempted to change one variable such as loading it from the original disk, loading it from the most recent Dell download, using a USB cable connection, using an Ethernet cable to my router, using the wireless connection to the router, and also having gone into Printers, run as Administrator, and deleting all of the printer driver files and starting over.  Each time I finish the install, it results in a very slow responding AIO Desktop Center tool launch (takes nearly 3 minutes to come up, a printer response time of 2-3 minutes to print the test sheet, and a grayed out scanner tool that does not recognize any scanner function.  In fact, the scanner button on the printer when hit, will see the PC name, search for applications, time out and do nothing.  I have been unable to find and error messages, or other obvious conflicts.  While hooked up to my wirelss router, my older XP machine talks to the printer just fine and it works very well.  My Vista machine just won't communicate with the printer very well.  What am I missing?