Scanning Negative Colour Film and also Prints

Hello.

I have just set up all my scanning software and my 8800F on my new
Win7 system.

Can you advise what settings you recommend to use for scanning both
negative colour film as well as 6x4 prints?

Is it best to disable all image corrections etc like sharpening, dust
removal, or can hardware dust removal etc help in any way?

Which software would you advise to use with my 8800F? The Canon
software, Silverfast or Photofun Studio (scangear driver)?

How do you select whether to use the full platen or to scan for
individual film negatives in the Silverfast settings?

I was thinking of scanning at 48 bit colour to Tiff files at either
2400 or 4800 dpi. Just not sure whether to use the Silverfast for this
or the Canon software.

In the Canon software I try to disable everything like sharpening and
tone but it seems to always re-enable itself e.g. the option for tone
always turns itself back to "ON" so I think I must need to find a way
to save my own settings as default.

Finally, the last thing is what do you select for the gamma setting or
would you just leave that on the default? I think mine is set to 2.2
as default.

Thanks for any advice, I am pretty much a newbie to scanning
especially film.

John