PC & Printer Internet Problems

[stuart little]

Hi Guys, I'm hoping someone out there can offer suggestions (not the obvious!) to the problems I've encountered. Over the last 6 months or so, I've had Microsoft hi-jack my Google set-up & replace it with theirs, trying to force me into using Bing (Hate that one). Twice I couldn't resolve it, so it was a case of paying the local 'Mr Fixit' @ £70 a time. Luckily I managed it myself the 2 recent times, yesterday being the most recent, whereby on sign it I had a message:: "User Profile Service failed the sign in (I had not tried to sign in at that point), User Profile Cannot be Loaded". I clicked OK, sign in icon re-appeared & I entered my PIN, then got "Preparing Windows, which took about 2o mins. Next thing, my set-up had been replaced by Microsoft's 'swirly blue thingy', & no bottom task bar, so I was unable to enter 'Settings'- did a re-boot & then got the task bar - I did a restart & eureka mine was back. WHY does this happen, I can't find the answer by googling?
Now to printer problems:- My Epson XP-970 has on several occasions thrown 'wobblies', whereby it has started a print, then stopped, pressing cancelling just goes on forever, so I delete the print queue which causes the paper to be 'spat out'. The printer goes into 'error mode' & remains there. Being fed up with it, & not being able to find a suitable answer, I assumed it to be a printer fault. I decided to get a new one, choosing an Ecotank ET2861. (£40 for ink re-fill = to 72 cartridges @ £90 ish / 6-pack of cartridges). Not having a 'Smart Device', I started the alternative set-up, which proved to be virtually a day's job, owing to lack of info. I eventually got connection to PC, but only via wire as Wifi failed. It copied & printed OK. Two days later I tried to print a photo, it printed a 20mm strip & stopped, same as XP. It would print an email, so I attached a photo, sent it to myself. Tried again, it printed as far as half the photo then stopped - error again. This has made me re-think that there's a problem in my system somewhere, or some softwhere is missing. I did get a message drop-down saying to run Epson connection checker, which does not appear to exist for this model. Epson assist does not address the problem, & no one wants to answer their 'chat' request. So this is a big plea for; HELP! HILFE! AIDE! AYUDA! APUA! LAGUNTZA! GUIDA! HJELP! POMOC! KUSAIDIA! HJALP!
You see, it's already driving me scatty! Yes I know certain ones among you may already have guessed it!!!!!!!!!

 

[HappyHacker]

I sympathise with your problems but despite having been involved with Mainframes, Minis, and PCs before IBM got involved and Microsoft did not exist, I have similar problems to you and usually end up cursing every time I have to use a current Microsoft system. As for printers they are now the work of the devil and designed to send ordinary decent people in fits of rage and capable of murdering anyone who says "haven't you fixed it yet"

 

[imageel]

Stuart, I hate to say this however you the end user undoubtedly clicked on some Microshaft pop-up that initiated the move of all your data to Microsoft's cloud services.. My brother in-law called recently with similar, he said - my email (which I host) has stopped working and all my Desktop shortcuts have little green tick-marks on them....
TBH if you don't understand how this insidious marketing works and cannot be bothered to read what the pop-up states, when faced with an unexpected pop-up whereby by design the default is to agree/proceed, if you do not understand what the message means, why not photo the screen with your phone and send to someone amongst your friends who does?
Statements such as - "then stopped - error again" illustrates to me that you are probably ignoring a likely detail as to what the error was caused by.
Further the sequence of 'it worked', 'it didn't work' and your subsequent conclusions are likely misplaced, tbh if you don't know what you are doing, can't be @rsed to read error messages, then you should seek more authoritative help rather than blaming the vendor be that MS or the printer mfr.
Don't get me wrong I'm certainly no MS fanboy however for example details of what error occurred will almost certainly be found in the system logs....

 

[stuart little]

Stuart, I hate to say this however you the end user undoubtedly clicked on some Microshaft pop-up that initiated the move of all your data to Microsoft's cloud services.. My brother in-law called recently with similar, he said - my email (which I host) has stopped working and all my Desktop shortcuts have little green tick-marks on them....
TBH if you don't understand how this insidious marketing works and cannot be bothered to read what the pop-up states, when faced with an unexpected pop-up whereby by design the default is to agree/proceed, if you do not understand what the message means, why not photo the screen with your phone and send to someone amongst your friends who does?
Statements such as - "then stopped - error again" illustrates to me that you are probably ignoring a likely detail as to what the error was caused by.
Further the sequence of 'it worked', 'it didn't work' and your subsequent conclusions are likely misplaced, tbh if you don't know what you are doing, can't be @rsed to read error messages, then you should seek more authoritative help rather than blaming the vendor be that MS or the printer mfr.
Don't get me wrong I'm certainly no MS fanboy however for example details of what error occurred will almost certainly be found in the system logs....

Thank you for this, I can't say I've had that sort of pop-up, I think my blocker works well, apart from Total Ad that opens a new tab on Firefox, trying to sell it to me. I do tend to ignore "set as default". I don't have that sort of phone to do as you suggest, but I guess I could use my camera. I don't blame Epson, apart from not making set-up clearer, BUT I DO blame Microsoft for 'messing' with my system. So far I've failed to find errors, this is where, in agreement with you, I suspect that it's my system that's the problem. There was a local guy who did 'house calls', but he's packed it in & gone full time employed, so my next step is to find someone else.

 

[imageel]

To be fair MS does contain a lot of click-bait these days and a lot are aimed at migrating your data to their OneDrive offering which often breaks some stuff, and as is human nature for most folk who are using their device to access mail or some other task, when these interruptions present themselves all you really want to do is click past them to get back to your intended task and this is where you can get caught out because their default click-through is designed to auto accept migration/installation of random stuff etc.
Some of their dialog boxes are intentionally unclear as to what it is about to perform and so you really do need to stop and digest the contents before proceeding since taking the easy option - YES is likely not what you want !!

 

[stuart little]

To be fair MS does contain a lot of click-bait these days and a lot are aimed at migrating your data to their OneDrive offering which often breaks some stuff, and as is human nature for most folk who are using their device to access mail or some other task, when these interruptions present themselves all you really want to do is click past them to get back to your intended task and this is where you can get caught out because their default click-through is designed to auto accept migration/installation of random stuff etc.
Some of their dialog boxes are intentionally unclear as to what it is about to perform and so you really do need to stop and digest the contents before proceeding since taking the easy option - YES is likely not what you want !!

Even my keyboard threw a wobbly on start up today, when I clicked reply it started continuos '4'. The second time I tried to type all I got was a 'beep', a re-start cleared that one!
I have now found a 'Home Visiting PC Doc.', so keeping my digits crossed that he can-do.
I've noticed, too, that when connecting my camera via USB the page format has changed from its original, so this could well be why photos are being put in the wrong place.

 

[selectortone]

I don't think I've used any of my PCs at all this year. These days, being retired, I find I can accomplish just about everything using an android tablet, and my phone when I'm out and about. The last time I switched on a PC it took an afternoon to download all its updates. What an archaic system!

 

[okeydokey]

I don't think I've used any of my PCs at all this year. These days, being retired, I find I can accomplish just about everything using an android tablet, and my phone when I'm out and about. The last time I switched on a PC it took an afternoon to download all its updates. What an archaic system!

Funnily enough I bought a Samsung S6 lite a couple of times days ago to take on holidays instead of lugging my laptop around. Not for work or serious stuff, it's been superb fully recommended it's Android same as my Samsung phone and l let it copy most things over. Just the job