New computer growing pains
My tiny new computer is mostly working well, but there are a few significant issues.
I still can’t get the PC to detect the printer. I tried moving the printer cable to other USB ports, with no luck. I’ve looked online for suggestions, and the next thing to try is to uninstall the drivers and try again. I’m thinking maybe the old drivers on the printer’s CD might be glitching with Win 11, so it might help to get rid of them and retry installing the more up-to-date drivers downloaded from the manufacturer’s site.
Relatedly, the outboard CD/DVD drive I bought seems to be busted already. It worked the first day, but ever since, it just tries and fails to read the disk, making a regular brief scraping noise between silences. I tried it in another port, again, with no result. The “eject hardware” icon in the taskbar tray periodically appears for a split-second and vanishes. Unless someone reading this recognizes the issue and can recommend an easy fix, I think I’ll have to return or exchange it. I’m starting to wonder how necessary it is to have one; I could just use the one in my laptop if I need one.
The PC rebooted itself again while I was out for a walk this morning. My update history shows that the last update check was while I was out, and that a security update was installed today, so I suppose it must have automatically rebooted when it installed the update. I looked into the update settings and found a setting for the “active hours” during which it wouldn’t auto-reboot, which defaulted to 8 AM to 5 PM. That would explain this morning’s reboot, but not the late-morning one five days ago. But that could’ve been an effect of a lingering update pending from the day before. Anyway, I widened the active hours to reflect my schedule. I also found a setting that automatically saves and restarts my open programs when the PC restarts, so hopefully that will protect my apps from forced shutdowns.
A minor issue: the cooling fan platform never turns off, even when the PC is off. I thought it turned off when the laptop powered down, but I’m not certain, because the laptop covered the whole thing, so its sound wasn’t as audible. At first, I thought it was because I had the fan plugged into the USB hub, which is independently powered. So I moved things around to put it directly into the PC. (Its USB plug is designed to nest around another USB plug so you don’t lose a port.) But it still stays on permanently, which is an unnecessary power expenditure. Not sure there’s anything I can do about that.
Advice and input welcome.
