Scanning a negative

I want to scan some colour film negatives on my flatbed scanner and convert them to positive images as graphics files. I thought I had software for this, but thinking about it, it has not been something I've tried before, and nothing I have seems to do it properly - I end up with a white image with pale blue for the few visible details. It's a weird negative format from a panoramic camera so I can't just take it in to Happy Snaps or something.

Any suggestions, preferably reasonably idiot proof?

The programs I have are very early Paintshop Pro, Corel Photo Paint 12, and PhotoPhiltre 7.