Still no printer

Well, I tried uninstalling all my drivers from the printer’s CD, removing the printer from Devices, and starting over from scratch. I hooked up the printer and turned it on, and Windows detected it and auto-installed a Canon Inkjet Print Utility, which seemed promising. But then the utility gave me the same “A driver used by this application is not installed” error message without specifying which driver. I went to the support site it recommended, the one from which I’d previously tried downloading a more up-to-date driver. This time I went through the help chat dialog box, and it pointed me to a different download that turned out to be the exact same thing from the CD, complete with antiquated graphics.

I tried it anyway, what the heck. It told me it had to uninstall a previous version of the driver — probably the newer one I’d tried before, ironically — and required me to reboot. When I rebooted, the utility opened and gave me the same missing-driver error message, and the installation didn’t resume. I gave up for a while, then realized maybe I needed to try running the installer again. I did, and it seemed to go smoothly, albeit slowly.

But then, when I tried to get it to recognize the printer, the same thing as before happened: it initially claimed to have detected the printer, spent several minutes claiming to be completing the installation, then said the printer wasn’t detected, was I sure it was plugged in? So I tried moving the USB cable (the new one I bought last week) from the hub plugged into the back to an open port in the front, thinking it might be a faster, cleaner connection. It did seem to be faster — in that it didn’t take nearly as long to tell me it couldn’t detect the printer.

Argh.

Just to make sure, I got out my laptop, and once it had very slowly booted up, I tried printing something from it. And it worked fine, with no problems (except that I accidentally told it to print a 12-page document that I thought was one page, and it was 6 pages in before I found the control to cancel it).

So: The printer isn’t the problem. The cable isn’t the problem. The drivers installed just fine. Yet I still can’t get the new computer to detect the printer. What else could be going on?

Anyway, I did manage to get a few more things done. The free antivirus program I’d tried, based on a positive review online, stopped providing full service after a week and nearly forced me to upgrade to the paid version before I figured out how to get out of it, so I decided to uninstall it and go back to my usual Avast, which further research showed is still one of the top-rated programs. I also discovered that Win 11 doesn’t put a link for the Task Manager in the tray, so I found out how to open it, then pinned it to the taskbar while it was open. Also, while I had my laptop on, I transferred over my music and audio library, which I’d neglected to do the first time.

Meanwhile, it occurred to me that I hadn’t tried plugging in my webcam (which I usually leave unplugged so nobody can hack into it or something). When I did, there was no auto-download of the software, though the computer did recognize the device and showed me a live feed from it in the settings menu. I found the manual and went to the download site it listed, but the software there apparently only supports up to Windows 10. I asked in live chat if that software might work in compatibility mode, and the support person said it might work, so I decided to try it. But all it gives me is a live image from the camera. There’s no recording software like there was for the older version.

Well, my webcam is very old and low-resolution anyway. Maybe this is an incentive to buy a newer one. It looks like I can get a cheap one for under 20 bucks. I’ll think about it, if I need one. I might just use my phone camera if I need to make a Zoom call or record a video.

Hmm, it’s probably worth checking if the printer’s website has chat support. But I’ve done enough computer stuff for today.