Windows 7

I installed Windows 7 last week. All seems to have gone smoothly (so far). I was advised by the Upgrade Advisor software to uninstall iTunes first, so I did that. After the upgrade completed I reinstalled iTunes. This failed a couple of times until I ran the install executable “as Administrator”.

My graphics card driver needed an upgrade – also identified by the the Upgrade Advisor – so I downloaded and installed the latest one. This said that it was not certified for Windows 7 but it seems to work fine.

My Printer (Lexmark 4650) stopped working too. I downloaded the new drivers but these made no difference. So I uninstalled it, and the full Lexmark suite, rebooted and then re-installed. After I had put in the wireless network key it was running just fine again. I had to connect it via USB as when doing the first install for the software.

Everything else seems to run fine. Sleep mode is quicker both to sleep and to wake again. The wife likes the “themes” used for screen wall paper. We are using the Great Britain set at the moment. It cycles between Tower Bridge, Stonehenge, The cliffs of Dover, Tintagel castle, etc.

Chalton and Waterlooville

One of the other delegates at the Alton group lives in Chalton and had asked if I could give him some advice. He was having issues with using Linked In, Hotmail and his wireless network.

The Linked In issue turned out to be because he had two profiles, using different e-mail addresses. Linked In was using cookies to remember which one he last used to log on. The simple solution was to "kill" one of the profiles as you can't merge two profiles. Luckily he only had two contacts on the one he wanted to kill off.

The Hotmail issue was caused by him sending and receiving email for a different account using Hotmail, so he was getting a "sent by... on behalf of..." header. Not Hotmail's fault.

The WLAN was easy enough: he just needed to type in the password. The house walls are 1 foot thick in places though, so reception in his office may be a bit flaky. However a booster or an upgraded router may be cheaper than a separate DSL line which is what he uses now. The office has a separate power supply so he can't use Ethernet over power lines. He doesn't want to put in a physical network either as this would be unsightly. He's going to test the WLAN later as we ran out of time - he needed to leave.

I then went to Halfords in Waterlooville to get some bulbs for the car. One tail/stop bulb and one headlamp. I'd noticed yesterday that they were not working. Traffic chaos in Waterlooville as they are re-surfacing the bypass and the roundabout, so that took longer than expected to negotiate! For once the guide at Halfords identified the correct bulbs! However while changing the headlamp was easy peasy, the tail lamp involved undoing 2 screws, removing the lamp cluster, then unplugging it, then undoing 4 more screws before you get to the bulbs. Then you swap the bulb and re-assemble it. I did the headlamp in Halfords car park, but had to come home to do the tail light. I then noticed that one of the number plate lights has failed...grrrr.

Lexmark 4650 Printer

A few months ago we bought a Lexmark 4650 printer/copier/scanner. It works wirelessly so we can keep it on the other side of the room to the computer, using a different power socket and helping to reduce clutter. I had some problems getting it to work at first but after a few hours of re-installing the software and re-booting I got it working and it has been printing, scanning to network and so on without any problem.

However.... yesterday it stopped working. The printer / scanner / copier was fine in itself but wasn't talking to the PC. The night before last we'd had some power "brown outs", when the power drops but not enough to shut down the TV and PC. So I guess that was when it lost the connection.

It was doing my head in. I sent it a print job and it ignored it. I asked it to scan to a network attached PC and it reported that it was "trying to connect to network". So, as the first IT fix of choice is always to "reboot it". I tried that, it still didn't want to play. So then I re-set the wireless router (BT Home Hub 2) and rebooted the printer again. It was STILL sulking. So then I connected it to the PC via USB 2 and started the wireless configuration utility. It scanned for networks and found my neighbour's WLAN and not mine. I re-set the wireless router again and scanned again. It still failed to find it.

I went through the settings on the router for the Wireless LAN. While doing this I noticed that the router was using channel 11 with an option to re-set to use a different channel. I remembered that last time I looked it was on channel 6. I clicked on "reset" for the channel number and it moved on to channel 1. I then told the Lexmark Wireless Configuration Utility to re-scan for networks. It found my LAN in seconds, I entered the password and as if by magic it started working!

The nightmares I had when I first got the printer were a similar issue that seemed to fix itself. With hindsight, it probably fixed itself when I re-started the router and hence reset the channel. It seems that pressing the reset button doesn't change the channel number used and it looks like the printer cannot "see" the higher channel numbers. I can set the BT Home Hub to use a particular channel if I want, but part of me is thinking I want to find out what the issue REALLY is. Does it limit to single digits perhaps, so does the channel number have to be below 10 perhaps? Maybe it's worse than that - it may have to be 8 or below. I may do some more tests :-)