Muzman on 21/4/2017 at 03:15
I should probably go mining through the tech-o-sphere for this sort of thing. But Boy is that tedious. So I thought I'd try here first.
As many of us discover, after a certain age you become tech support for old people. The trouble is nowadays, if their gear is recent enough, they can have OSs and problems that you don't even have to worry about.
Anyway. I don't have Win 10 (well I do, but I never really ran it) and there's this problem that keeps coming up with my mum and other old ladies who I end up giving tech support to.
They keep having trouble with the network dropping out. They've usually learned a thing or two over the years about modems and so forth so they go through the motions and try to figure that out. But they don't get anywhere.
They call me and sometimes I can find a problem, but there's one I can't fix. It seems that if for whatever reason Win 10 loses the network it just basically sits there twiddling its thumbs and saying there's no access.
You can fix the connection, reboot the modem whatever and have access on your phone or any other device but the win 10 machine just sits there like nothing has changed. Sometimes it'll pick it up again eventually, but this is an unreasonably long time. The quickest way to get access back up again is a friggen restart like it's windows 98.
This is especially troublesome with one case; this friend of mamas runs a wireless broadband connection because the phonelines in the assisted living place suck. She's abused the thing's USB connection to the computer a bit and it is loose (it'd be fairly impossible to change her ways at this point as she views computers in a ritualistic manner. I tried to get her to not touch it but she became convinced that my moving the cable from one side of the machine to the other would mess things up.)
So anyway; wireless broadband modem, wired by usb cable to the PC (PC has no wireless). Everytime lady bumps it it disconnects. But every time she jiggles it again it reconnects so it should be fine. But no, Win 10 does not recognise the access has come back for ages if at all and a reboot is faster.
I can't fix this and can find no reason these Win 10 boxes do this. Crafting the right search terms is a nightmare. I just need someone to tell me how to kick Win 10's networking ass and make sure it stays kicked so I don't get calls every time this happens.
cheers
voodoo47 on 21/4/2017 at 09:06
I'm assuming downgrade to win7 is not an option? hardware-wise, those boxes should still be capable of running an older os.
Sulphur on 21/4/2017 at 16:20
This may be a dumb question, but since you're already running a USB cable from the wireless modem, is running a length of ethernet cable instead from the modem's LAN port to the PC's LAN port not possible? That should bypass the whole fiddly USB jiggling altogether.
Nameless Voice on 21/4/2017 at 17:01
What do these ladies use their computers for?
Is it something that couldn't be served just as well in Windows 7 or even Linux?
I have personally avoided Windows 10 as much as I can, but other people that I know have also reported a lot of silly issues with its networking that just don't make sense to be happening in an OS in 2017.
voodoo47 on 22/4/2017 at 07:17
having moved to win7 myself only last year, I'm pretty sure I (and all the old people I provide support to) will live comfortably without win10 for another 10 years or more. assuming they all live that long, heh.
Muzman on 24/4/2017 at 10:34
Thanks folks. At least I'm not the only one who has seen this stuff. Downgrading seems like a lot of work at this point, but that might be because it seems like it's probably a simple problem and ought to be easy to fix or at least work around. But that might be optimistic. There were a lot of people caught by waking one day and having Win 10 (my mum was, for instance). Mother has been enjoying the interface for the most part. She likes it better than 8 (like most people I guess). She's pretty good with getting used to changes but it still sounds annoying.
The other lady, I think any drastic change would be traumatic. She didn't like me changing her default printer (even though she asked me to), or the position of cords. Anything could be the source of a potential problem and therefore terrible frustration and anxiety. That's what you deal with I guess
So I think the downgrade ship has sailed.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
This may be a dumb question, but since you're already running a USB cable from the wireless modem, is running a length of ethernet cable instead from the modem's LAN port to the PC's LAN port not possible? That should bypass the whole fiddly USB jiggling altogether.
The thing is one of those self contained little lumps. The usb is the only port it has and seems primarily for charging the battery. I guess you ideally use it for total wireless access, but her computer has none so this option is the go. She religiously follows the instructions on the screen it has to unplug it when it is charged (and then has to replug it to get access). Doing this seems to have worn it out a bit. And change is hard. So it's better to just make windows go like it's supposed to.
One thing is that Win 10 mustn't have always done this. Mum didn't always have this problem. And her friend would have concocted far more torturous ceremonies for getting her computer to work and might even have been rebooting constantly. So I'd guess that this problem was introduced in some recent update. I guess we have to hope another one fixes it.
