Epson Expression 1600 Scanner Image Prob

Hi Gang,
I setup a system a week or so back which included an Epson Expression 1600 Scanner. Cool scanner...very quick...BUT...
When scanning, there is a very noticeable grey background across the intire image. I first thought of dust but the grey is too uniform across the page. When I had a watermark turned on via the Epson 2000p printer, the grey was just a band across the top ~3 inches of the page. I turned off the watermark and the grey covers the page. For example, she scanned in a leaf. The whole page is light grey. You can cut the leaf out of the image and the result is a light grey page except where the leaf was..which is very white. There are two printers attached to this system and both print out the same image...with grey background. We scanned with and without a white piece of paper behind the leaf. System specs are:
Windows 2000
Abit KT7-Raid
900MHz AMD Thunderbird
(2) IBM 30Gb 7200 HDDs setup as Raid (0)
512MB PC-133 RAM
Hitachi CM771 Monitor
Epson 2000p Printer
Cannon ?? cheapie Printer
Oxygen 32MB Vid Card
PhotoShop 6.0
blah blah......rest of system
Image was scanned into two different programs with same result, PhotoShop and umm Paint? I forget... at any rate same grey results. We can take an "eraser" in Photoshop and erase the background. Scanner and 2000p are both USB interface. I tried different resolutions, and such. When printing out the images that came with PhotoShop, there isn't any grey background so I'm pretty sure it's scanner related....would the USB cable be able to do this????
Please...if you have any suggestions....
Thanks Muches
Atman