You might think I am just mentioning cats to create an
article with greater appeal and that could be partially true, but there is a
tiny common thread. For my work in
technology I just moved a computer printer from one location to another, but
much like my experience in moving two cats to another location the transition
did not goes as well as I had expected. The cats went into hiding, the printer
attached to the different computer did not want to install properly. Eventually
over time the cats have become more sociable adapting to their new
surroundings, I doubt the printer would have started working on its’ own no
matter how long it was connected to the new computer.
Experience tends to teach one that things are way more
complicated than it may appear on the surface and what should work easily
sometimes doesn’t. The beginning of next week will be 20 years of computer work
at my present job and I had several years of experience before that at a
different employer. Much you can learn by reading but some expertise is acquired
by trial and failure. Just because something absolutely should work doing it
one way but does not, trying slight changes might lead to success.
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| Computer Became Bored With Install and Failed |
Back to installing the printer driver for the printer at the
new location; I had the CD in the computer and left the USB cable unplugged
until prompted to plug it in, and watched the messages go across the screen.
After clicking on a couple of prompts the whole process should have been
automatic and complete in a couple of minutes. A message on the screen warned
this could take several minutes and considering this wasn’t the newest computer
I didn’t get too excited about the slow progress. Finally as the bar completed
its’ slow progress across the screen an error screen quickly popped up telling
me that the install had failed because the process took too long. Now how could
that be? What else did the computer have
to do that it would get bored with the tedious process of installing a printer
driver.
As the rest of the message suggested I tried the whole
process again, and again received the same error. By now what should have taken
a couple of minutes had wasted close to an hour. I took a new approach and
downloaded the printer driver from the Internet with the installer and one
without. Using the installer appeared to start the same install program as
before. I stopped this which started an uninstall process which took more time.
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| Trying the Add Printer Option for Install |
After another reboot I installed the driver without the
install using the Add Printer option from the Control Panel. This went quick
but there was no option for the USB connection. Not sure if getting the driver
to at least appear as installed helped, but I started the driver with the
install that had been downloaded and the process went pretty fast and was
successful.
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| This Time I Made Sure ALL Drive Components Installed |
At this point I feel like I should have a moral to the story
but I really don’t. Other than my
somewhat pessimistic view of expect the unexpected. Before moving the two cats
my mother had I moved the older cat and she accepted the move fine until she
had to be put to sleep. Most of the time installing a printer is a really quick
task that anyone can do.
Bill Kuhl
