No scanners are recognised on laptop

Hi. Our fairly old Epson printer/scanner stopped working a few days ago. It would print, but the scanner wasn't found. As it was fairly old we went out and bought a new hp8600 printer. Again it prints but no scanner is found. We tried both on our old laptop and the scanners work just fine. Our old lap top is windows xp, this one is windows 7. We have tried downloading the drivers etc, but nothing works. Could this be a lap top problem or windows problem? should we have bought a new laptop instead of printer?!!! I have NO technical knowledge at all so please answer like I am 4 years old!!

hi.. Thanks for your reply. Yes I have tried all of the above. I keep getting messages like 'unsuccessful network instaltion', 'Unable to be installed over network', and 'Current full hp software is installed but the functionality drivers are missing or configured incorrectly'
We have uninstalled it and reinstalled it, but nothing seems to work!