Epson V600 Autoscan turns red

I bought an Epson V600 scanner and scanned a few thousands of 35mm slides, most in Autoscan with colour restoration selected, with perfect results. In the middle of a batch, the scans started turning out red. I put back one of the slides that scanned perfectly just a few minutes ago to check and it turned out red. Professional works fine, it seems only the color restoration setting has the problem.

Local Epson tech seems clueless and asked me to “use professional mode” they don’t even view it as a problem that they need to fix! Would appreciate any pointers, ideas, I still have few 1000s of slides to scan.