Hi Lisa - been up on MS forum trying to solve the problem.
Ref restore point - it had been almost a year since I used the scanner so there is no way to know how far back to go or even if one can go back very far.
The suggestion about some other scanner software not being totally installed seems reasonable to me but I can find no indication of it anywhere. The old HP printer I had was an all in one so it had scanner ability - it has long ago been uninstalled. The present Lexmark is the same so I uninstalled it.
So far no one has been able to solve the problem - it is ONLY on HP scanner software that I get the "access is denied" message.
Tks for the help - jb