Another Windows troubleshooting mission

An early start today, with the alarm going off just after six, and after a suitable breakfast, out of the house by twenty to seven, walking to the National Express coach station in Sophia Gardens for the seven fifteen coach to London to see my sister June and fix her computer. On my way down Cathedral Road, with relatively little traffic around, I was delighted to hear singing, first a wren, then a robin, then a blackbird, then a starling, and then thrush. All in the trees and garden bushes along one of Cardiff's main arterial roads into the city centre. What a lovely surprise to start the day!

The coach fleet has been upgraded since I last took the journey a year ago. Seats are better upholstered, if a bit narrow for me, and there's more legroom. Best of all, there's free wi-fi, which allows one to receive and send emails, also to surf the net, though not to use social media apps, it appears, probably because they gobble up too much data. Some video streaming is possible via a Sky app, and e-magazines are available to read, but not much to interest me. 

I slept on and off, and browsed a little, and the journey seemed to go much quicker than usual, despite arriving about forty minutes late because of traffic congestion around Newport and beyond the Severn bridge on the approach to North Bristol. Google kept issuing notifications of traffic delays throughout the journey, and it was possible to follow the trip on the Maps app in 'real time'. If you're not driving, this is quite interesting as you get to put names to the hamlets and villages along the M4 corridor which do not appear in motorway exit signage. Then if you're curious, you can Google further info about them. This time last year, on a trip like this, I would have been struggling to do office tasks on my Blackberry in response to a crisis phone call from Ashley, or prepare a document draft on a policy change. This was a much more relaxing and leisurely an outing.

I arrived at June's place at half past midday, having done some shopping for her on my way from coach to Victoria train station. June's laptop is identical to Kath's, and as soon as I switched it on and examined it, the same problem problem presented itself. A broken network configuration, meant that there had been no updates since 9th November, and the anti-virus software was also out of date. It was a matter of re-setting the network software from the command prompt window, with the recommended single line of code, rebooting the machine and forcing it to update everything immediately, a process that took about an hour, all told. 

This was a lot more straightforward than with Kath's machine, as in her case the update mechanism was broken, and it took ages just to find out how to repair it. Would I have been able to remember how I did the full repair two weeks later? Glad I didn't have to put that to the test.  Being risk averse, I'd brought with me the little Acer Aspire E11 I bought recently, to leave for June's use, while I took the other one back home to sort out. But that wasn't necessary. After lunch, I spent some more time, removing some of the useless redundant software, installing and using CCleaner to keep her Acer ES1-521 running as well as it can. So, hopefully there'll be no more problems, unless Microsoft does something equally as stupid and dangerous to render its flagship software system unfit for purpose again. I wonder how many millions of hours have been wasted and money expended by individuals and businesses unable to sort out critical technical problems forced upon them for themselves?

My sister starting using a home computer of her own fifteen years after retirement, and that was ten years ago this year. She gets along reasonably well with surfing, emailing, writing and printing off letters, scanning documents, shifting photos from camera to computer, but finds changes in the user interface, layout and terminology imposed by Windows quite baffling and dis-empowering. I wish that I had introduced her to Linux at the outset, where it is possible to choose your own user interface and modify layout until you get it the way you want it, then stick to it through all the necessary updating processes that improve the work the software needed to do in the background, to keep users safe and stable. Too late for that now however! 

I am pleased, however, that she gets on well with Libre Office, as I never put MS Word on her first laptop. So, she has benefited from having basically the same user interface throughout the decade, as its appearance changes have been cosmetic and minor. I'm glad to see reports that the next Libre Office will replicate the ribbon tool bar familiar with many users of recent iterations of MS Word, and that it will be optional - if only Microsoft would make optional appearances available easily, without fuss and palaver.

My trip home took just three hours and ten minutes, as the traffic on the streets of West London was relatively light, so it only took about half an hour to get as far as Heston services, when it can take twice as long when things are really busy. Despite spending seven hours of the way in coach seats, my gammy leg didn't stiffen up too much, so the twenty minute walk home wasn't an effort. With 'mission accomplished' I arrived with a sense of modest satisfaction, and devoured the welcome late supper Clare had left for me. She retired to bed early, in anticipation of early rising tomorrow to attend the Heath Hospital for her next eye operation. 

    

Keyboard anomalies

An early start this morning, to attend the funeral at Thornhill Crematorium of the husband of a former colleague of Clare's. The Fountain Community choir had been asked to sing a couple of choral items. As it was rush hour we left early, forgetting that there's less of a rush now school terms are over, so we arrived half an hour before most people. 

The priest officiating was Canon Peter Collins of St David's Cathedral, an ex-colleague from my time at St John's, as the deceased was a Catholic. The Briwnant Chapel was filled to overflowing, as more people turned out than anticipated. It's not often that I attend funerals at which I'm not officiating, and get to see other clerics at work. It gives me cause to reflect on my ministry to the bereaved.

My right knee is still giving me trouble, although the treatment I had last week has made a difference, but Kay warned me that full recovery would take time and could still be painful. Stitting still for any period of time stiffens the knee considerably, and the only remedy is to get out and walk slowly and carefully until the muscles warm up and the stiffness subsides. So, after lunch, I walked for over an hour around Llandaff Fields, and then down to the phone shop on Cowbridge Road to buy a cover for my new Samsung J3, which I'm very pleased with. Its very slimness led me to feel that it could be vulnerable if dropped, and needed a protective case.

In the evening, with nothing of interest on telly, yet again, I switched on my new Acer E3-112 as it still needed a few configuration tweaks. When you sign in on a new computer with a MS OneDrive i/d, it configures some of the Windows 10 settings according to the last collection of settings backed up to the Cloud. This presumes identical machine setups are in use, and in my case this is not so. 

The last Windows device I set up for myself was my HP mini desktop, using an Swiss keyboard, useful for writing letters in French or German. These settings were shared with the new laptop, giving me the option of a Swiss keyboard by default, or an English keyboard option. Once I'd figured out what was going on, it was easy to change the specific setting. I've come across this before, as I've been in other situations where sharing of computer settings doesn't quite work first time due to differences in keyboard settings. I wonder why this anomaly hasn't been noticed and remedied before.

By the time I'd finished sorting this out, a succession of automatic updates was under way, including the big Anniversary Update from last summer. It took a couple of hours. My computer bargain was a shop demonstrator model which hadn't been attached to the internet since it was set up, so it hadn't ever been updated. So it's often a long wait until you have a properly functioning machine. That's the price to be paid for bargain purchases.

    

Shopping around

I drove to St German's for the midweek Mass this morning and celebrated the memory of St John of the Cross, a suitable saint for this Advent season of waiting, given the part played in his spiritual teaching to longing for God and divine love. Afterwards I stopped for coffee in the church hall day centre, and met with PCSO Andy. It's the first time since I officiated at his wedding to Michelle back in the spring this year. He told me that they are expecting a baby this spring, and are planning a Christening at Saint Germans in early summer. As he's well known to parishioners, this is a celebration many people will be delighted about, me included, especially if I'm able to be involved in it.

Afterwards, I drove out to PC World to browse for bargains, but didn't see any. A young man took me through his sales routine for choosing a mobile phone. I think he underestimated my understanding of all the devices on offer, exactly what I wanted and why. He was so keen to promote state of the art stuff that he had difficulty in grasping my critical remarks relating to my actual needs and requirements for a purchase. Newest isn't always as good as tried and tested, or the issue of how much actual learning or adaptation is required to use a device as efficiently, if not more so than my existing one. 

I don't need a phone with a nano SIM cards fitting an adaptor tray on the phone. They are difficult to handle if you ever have to swap SIM cards. Taking it into a shop to do that when you could do it for yourself matters to me. Also having a removable battery, rather than one sealed into the case, currently fashionable and guaranteed to make the phone redundant after a year or so of heavy use. Young sales personnel may not need to use the word 'sustainable' as part of their sales patter, but it's part of what I need to know before investing time and energy in new kit.

After PC World, I went to Staples, which has put sales tickets on all its display stock since I was last in the store. I succumbed to the temptation to buy a 11.5" Acer Aspire E11 laptop at half the asking price. At £153, it's the cheapest Windows PC I've ever bought, and is small and light enough to take with me on my travels. It's not very powerful, but its specification is adequate enough for things I need to do when I'm away.

The machine wasn't factory reset when I took it from the store, and I had a problem setting up my own user area, as the ostensibly deleted demonstrator user account control mechanism was still functioning, and it took a trip back to the store to learn that it had no password. It works fine, except the the log-in screen still throws a Staples error message, although it logs in to my user account with administrator privileges as expected. If that doesn't clear with us, I'll have to factory reset it myself. Come to think of it, that's the first time I've not had to register the operating system from scratch, so I may be obliged to revisit this if I have any more hassles with it.

I cooked a prawn and mushroom risotto for supper instead of a paella, to finish off a bottle of white wine taking space in the fridge. I was quite pleased with the result. Then we sat and watched telly for a few hours before turning in later than intended. As ever.