# vista users beware



## paintlady (May 10, 2007)

I have a new computer that came with Vista. My printer/fax/scanner/copier was running great last night. This morning with I logged on I saw that Microsoft had automatically downloaded some files. We have an internet business and when I went to use the printer to print something off it our site my printer wouldn't work. I tried for over two hours to get it to work including uninstalling and reinstalling my printer driver. It kept saying "error" in the printing queue. I finally called HP and got INDIA!. I guess they outsource to there now. The girl I spoke to was telling me that as my printer was out of warranty I would have to pay for technical service. I told her NO WAY as I knew there was nothing wrong with the printer and made a copy of something to prove it. It just wouldn't print from my computer. I told her I thought that the Microsoft download did something to mess up my printer. She told me that my printer was too old!! I told her it was only three years old and worked fine until the automatic download. Then she put me on hold for 15 minutes and finally came back and said she could sell me a new unit for $159.99 plus shipping! I told her that I knew that the problem was not with the printer. I gave up with her and called my son who is in college. 
He walked me through some steps and we ended up reverting the hard drive to the day before yesterday and LO AND BEHOLD THE PRINTER WORKS AGAIN! Then he told me how to block the automatic downloads from Microsoft. Now I am wondering just how many other people have had :flame: this problem with Vista and how many buy new printers that they dont' need. I am going to try to contact a live body in the USA from Microsoft and tell them about this as it was their download that messed up my printer. So if you have Vista and are having printer problems the Microsoft downloads could be the problem.


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

no to belittle your problem, but that is really nothing new or unique to vista. it has happened with XP lots of times with more devices and software than just printers. the updates are usually only tested with a portion of the available hardware and software and the automatic updates can be a problem if you are not using totally "new" and compatable stuff. shutting off the automatic updates is probably the way to go for your problem. i often wonder if they don't allow, or even engineer these issues, to increase sales in other markets.


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

in computer years 3 years old is OLD and as meloc noted this is not anything new with vista, every download,update,fix that MS or anyone else puts on your machine could break something. Simple fact of computers. Remove the printer drivers, reload the drivers and see if that fixes the problem.


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## arabian knight (Dec 19, 2005)

I agree that is nothing new.


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## paintlady (May 10, 2007)

I did remove and reload the drivers and it still didn't fix the problem but reverting the hard drive a day did and then we blocked any more updates unless I approve them. I am not very computer literate and am thankful for a son who is! Should have called him first I guess. It just irritated me that the HP person's first inkling of "help" was to try to sell me a new machine when they should be aware of these kinds of problems. This computer came with Vista. I would have prefered to have had xp installed on it as I never had trouble with that.


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

this reminds me of the problems i just had trying to fix the neighbor's computer. she needed a modem as lightning got her's. she bought a brand new u.s.robotics fax modem from the store that built her computer. i guess they recommended that one. they would charge $50 to install it so she decided to have me do it. that thing was the biggest pain in the butt i have seen since the last u.s.robotics modem i tried to install. the drivers would not load from the disk...no matter what i did, so i had to download them from the net after bringing her pc to my house and using my broadband connection. even then, it took some coaxing. eventually the modem was installed, but no matter what i did, the modem would not detect the dial tone and dial out. so i ended up taking a used modem from her son-in-law's pc and installing it. as soon as i installed it, windows found the hardware and had the driver in it's database. i did nothing more than physically installing the card, and windows did the rest like it should.

i guess my point is that i feel there is a 50% chance that the folks who sold her that modem knew that it was trouble to install and did so hoping she would need them to install it. i doubt it is any different with "critical updates" from microsoft. anything to make a sale. i have also seen this tactic used when a person uses a trial version of virus/malware "protection". it works fine as long as it is in the trial period, but let it run out and many strange things happen. usually that involves a registry entry that won't go away. i had a heck of a time getting rid of a trial version of norton and installing mcaffee once.


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## lharvey (Jul 1, 2003)

I used to do outsourced service calls for one of the big office supply stores, that is named after a desktop fastening device.

I would only get the work order and have to rely on the work order being accurate.

More than 70 % of those work orders didn't have the right information for the call. What they said the call was to be wasn't at all what it should have been.

Since the price per call was capped guess who comes out on the bad end.

The only thing to do was to call the office and have the phone person charge them more to actually fix their issue if instead of being a one hour call it would take three.

I spent 6 hours working on a machine after a one hour drive to and from. This call was to connect three PC's via wireless router. OK 3 mahcines wirelss with workgroup and all. ONe hour max. Well when I arrived it wasn't at all it. What the customer thought they bought was a total reload of windows. They didn't even have three computers. Just the one.

Big Box Sux...

L


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## paintlady (May 10, 2007)

I did call Microsoft to tell them about the trouble I had. They switched me over to a specialist who put me on hold.. and then we got disconnected. Funny how that works!


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## chickenmommy (Aug 24, 2004)

lharvey said:


> I used to do outsourced service calls for one of the big office supply stores, that is named after a desktop fastening device.



:rotfl: 
Thanks for the chuckle. Needed after the day I just had.


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## pixelphotograph (Apr 8, 2007)

hmm staples comes to mind


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