It might surprise people to know even an MIS PhD runs into various computer issues, seemingly on a daily basis. For example, I've often used a well-known software security product, and it seems to run into some issue, maybe up to a handful of times a year, where it runs into some technical issue that it can't self-correct, and the recommended "solution" is to deinstall and reinstall, often using a special utility to do so. For some odd reason, the last time I did so, some deinstall popup seemed to start up for weeks after an apparently successful reinstall (it had no issues updating). The pop-up didn't seem to do anything, but I was confused why it was happened and worried it might actually uninstall the functioning reinstall. Maybe it was an interim patch that finally corrected the problem, but I do recall trying multiple deinstall/reinstalls thinking maybe there was some corruption in the installation.
I own multiple USB devices (to avoid things like coffee spills, I usually use an external keyboard and mouse, I have a printer (cf. below discussion, a flash drive, and multiple external hard drives. I recently ran into issues in using one of the USB drives: it started crashing backups, and it seemed to imply files had corrupted, so I tried to rebuild the hard drive. but my robocopies kept breaking down (Microsoft's native directory syncing tool).
It dawned on me that I had swapped out the drive's USB cable to the right-side port to attach my printer's USB cable (I rarely use my printer often, located to the right of my notebook PC). I had in the interim attached it to a USB extender hub on a left-side port. It dawned on me that I was overloading the port with 2 hard drives attached and decided to swap back the USB connection to the right-side port. BINGO! This time robocopy worked as expected, with no breakdowns.
Now I'm going to cite my multifunctional printer here, mostly for reader convenience: I own an older Canon PIXMA MX452. This model includes both wireless and USB connection. I think I initially configured it for simpler USB connection (wireless was somewhat more complex, including a separate printer configuration). So why did I finally embrace a wireless setup? For one thing, as described earlier, I have limited USB slots. For another thing, as I've discussed before, I own 5 PC's (in addition to a Chromebook). I tried to install the printer drivers on my first backup PC, an older workhorse HP, and God knows for what reason it wouldn't install over a USB connection. The wireless printer setup was a fairly painless printer setup. A modest setup menu navigation, press your router button and voila. (I managed to do it without referencing documentation, which is positive for printer usability.) I was then able to navigate the wireless option for printer driver installation; I got a popup for my local wireless connection, and subsequent test print jobs worked as expected.
I then installed the wireless printer driver option on my 3 remaining backup printers; I think I had one sticky install I finally managed to work through. I finally tackled the wireless install on my workhorse printer this week, including deinstall/reboot. For some reason, it was not finding the printer on the network (my backup PC had no problem seeing the printer on the network), so it demanded to connect to the printer via USB cable. It showed my local network wireless, and the properties seemed correctly configured but it wasn't seeing the printer on the network.
After multiple installation attempts, I tried to reinstall my original USB connection, but for some reason, now it didn't seem to be able to find the printer via cable--almost the same problem I initially had with my primary backup PC. Long story short, I went back to the wireless connection install, and THIS TIME I got the wireless connection popup--and was able to complete and test the connection.
It's not clear what I did differently during the successful iteration. It's almost like your car doesn't turn over the first time you turn your key, but it finally does on a subsequent attempt. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." I probably ran into some nuanced bug. But for a moment there, I was worried that I was unable to print from my workhorse PC and have to go to a backup PC to do printing.
An aside note which I may have referenced in passing.on an earlier post. I love Dropbox, but I'm not a premium subscriber. I had been using Dropbox to share certain files across my 5 PC's. At some point, Dropbox changed policies so the "free option" only allowed up to 3 (?) PC's to connect to one's account. That sucks. I can work around the problem by, say, using a flash drive with said files, and of course there are other services with GB's. of free storage.
