Drivers round the bend
Device drivers, like antivirus apps, are also well-known mischief makers for Windows. They can cause many different issues, but sometimes they are just plain irritating.
Like a lot of us in lockdown, Mrs Cook needed to use Zoom while she worked from home. Her problem was that any noise her laptop made sounded like something between a Dalek and a thrash metal singer.
One doorstep pickup and disinfect later, I started my checks. The first thing was to bypass Windows, so in went the Linux thumb drive: with Ubuntu up and running, everything sounded like it should. Clearly, the speakers were working fine. I jumped back into Windows and uninstalled the sound device and driver using Device Manager. A quick restart later and all was well – for a while.
Leaving the laptop alone so I could do other things, I came back later and restarted it. My heart sank as this time Davros and his chums had returned to wreak havoc. I’m sure you have guessed by now that Windows had updated the driver in the time I was away. Sure enough, when checking the driver versions, a new one had installed, and it was the cause.
So I headed to the Lenovo support site. Surely it was aware of this issue?
No such luck: the latest driver was the same one offered by Microsoft. Older versions also existed but, install those, and Windows just updated to the naughty version once again.
The solution came by digging around on Lenovo’s US website. I found a different driver there that was a little older but worked. And Windows seemed happy to leave it be and not update. I thought about implementing workarounds to stop Windows 10 from installing new drivers, but decided to leave things as they were. And Mrs Cook is, as far as I know, still happily Zooming with her work colleagues.
“I ended up examining scraps of paper covered in hieroglyphics for clues”
Thank you, Google
To finish my little list, I want to throw in a curveball. It’s different to the rest of the issues, but is still well worth a mention. I will let Mr Mackman explain with his opening words to me earlier this year: “I can’t get on my email. It’s thrown up a box asking for my password, but I didn’t even know I had a password. I’ve put something in, but it hasn’t helped.”
He was the first of my customers to call, but the phone never stopped much after that. Everybody who rang