The Twain driver would be needed for scanning. The basic scanjet is likely the printer driver. These are likely required for the associated function.
Kofax VirtualReScan apparently applies math to improve the scan image. HP smart document scan allows you to create profiles to quickly classify & store the images. These you could likely do without (uninstall) for testing the root cause.
I would also suggest running process explorer in a window as you test, to watch for other processes (programs) that may be running. See the
w7forums recommended freeware for process explorer.