PC Troubleshooting in Frankfort

November 7, 2010

Saturday afternoon, I headed down to Frankfort to help troubleshoot Bob’s PC. There’s a wireless network set up, but he was wanting to connect his PC desktop to it (using a USB adapter).

Liz was here on Friday, and dropped off the robot costume. I was just going to scrap the thing, but when Tricia heard we weren’t going to keep it… she wanted to have it.

When Liz was here, no one was around… so she set up the robot to peer creepily into the kitchen window.

This… took a lot longer than I had anticipated. Bob had a USB adapter, but no CD… so I tried to install a few drivers I found online, with no luck. We then headed out to Best Buy and picked up a Belkin USB adapter.

After trying to install it, I got an error. This machine is running Windows 2000, and the adapter I picked up apparently didn’t support it (I found this out after getting on the phone with Belkin’s support line).

On the side of the box, it listed “System Requirements” as Windows XP and Vista. However, the part that I saw was just below that, in an area marked “OS Supported,” which listed Windows 2000. A little confusing.

After more research and phone calls, we decide to try to find the original USB adapter’s CD-ROM. Luckily, Bob locates the thing… and I get to installing. After a lot of setup, I end up getting it to work on a total lark after installing and re-installing a few times.

Ultimately, setting this up was just a matter of trial and error. I don’t think I’m all that technical or proficient, I just try a lot of things and use the process of elimination.

After going through all this to set up a basic USB adapter, I’m now very glad I switched over to a Mac. Happy to be done with confusing hardware installs and missing drivers and all that jazz.

Before I left, I went back down to the basement to take a look at Julie’s plants. She moved in a lot of things for the winter (and got several plants from a neighbor who was just going to throw them out).