Learning Curves

I'm having a love-hate relationship with the learning curve involved with getting everything working and myself up to speed with my new laptop.

I had a lovely time at the music course weekend and loved having K to stay. She was the perfect guest, easy, accommodating, unfazed by my chaos and clutter. We chatted almost non-stop.

And so to the homework assignments which are part of the course. I have CDs where I need to identify rhythms, musical instruments and music styles. I have a portable/external optical drive in the form of a DVD/CD read/writer. I haven't used it since my old computer died, but it worked fine then, so I should be able to plug in and play, right?

The new laptop has a couple of USB 3 ports, but only has one USB 2 port. Although you can plug a USB 3 connector into a USB 2 port (it just runs slower), you can't plug a USB 2 into a USB 3 port. It doesn't fit, and needs an adapter which I don't have.  I have a little multi-port hub plugged into the USB 2 port, into which I plug frequently used things, like leads for transferring things off camera and phone, the dongle for a wireless mouse, and then there's a port free for anything else. My optical drive has a USB 2 port, so I plugged it into the free port on the hub.

The drive showed up in the Devices and Drives, and I looked at the properties to see that my laptop already had some sort of generic driver for it and thought that it was working properly. Cool!

I popped a disc in and closed the tray, and immediately the drive's icon disappeared. No error messages. The drive was stuttering away, evidently not reading the disc, the green light flashing on and off. I tried ejecting the disc but nothing happened - the button on the tray front wasn't working.

Okay, well I know this one of old. Into the desk drawer for a paperclip, open out one of the arms, poke it into the little hole next to the eject button on the tray, and it releases the catch.

Take a look in the tray, blow a few times just in case there's dust or fluff or something. Try again.

Same problem. Sounds as though there's a problem with the hardware, it's making such a horrible noise.

There is plenty of help available through the internet, lots of experts out there, although it really takes some sifting through to find the thing which might be the solution.

I searched using the make and model of my optical drive, adding 'troubleshoot'. The first thing I found was a video from some chap who was reviewing the same optical drive that I have, and had found that neither of the ones he had from new worked. Then there were lots of other reviews which said that it worked fine. No help there, then.

I found the manufacturer doesn't make it any more and had no information on it. I bought mine in 2013, I think, so it's 5 years old, which is practically antique in IT terms!

There were quite a few discussion groups and a couple of sites offering help for a 'modest sum'. Reading some of the discussion groups, with lots of experienced, possibly expert users chiming in, gave me plenty to explore.

From the various opinions, I gleaned the following possible issues:

• Too much play in the disc tray (= tighten up some little screws. They were already tight)
• Dirty head (= clean it. I would, but it can't run the cleaner disc)
• Drive failure, or all sorts of other impenetrable issues with the optical drive hardware (= so buy a new one. Even though they are relatively cheap, I'll hold off from spending if I can possibly help it!)
• Faulty lead, USB connector, USB port. (The former two were working, the latter definitely works).
• Faulty leads or connections in the hub. (Nope, other things plugged into the hub work fine)
• Original drivers needed (there's nothing available to download except some rather suspicious non-specific stuff, and the original drivers are on a disc, which, you guessed it, won't run)
• Windows 10 is not designed to work with external optical drives (I seriously doubt it, although there are a LOT of comments about the unreliability of optical drives, internal and external, with Windows 10)
• Updated drivers needed (Windows 10 doesn't give you an option to look for updates if it's only just installed a driver - logical, providing the driver works, and it thinks it does. It also thinks it's just a CD ROM, so I wonder if this is the source of a lot of the complaints that Windows 10 doesn't work, because the driver doesn't provide the full functionality?)
• Outdated USB controllers (it's a new machine, unlikely)
• Eject/deinstall, reboot, reinstall (the old, reliable 'turn it off and turn it on again'. No change)
• And then, four hours later the very last suggestion; to use a powered hub or plug the lead directly into the USB port, no extensions, as apparently optical drives use a lot of power to start up. I plugged it directly into the USB 2 port and it worked. Hurrah! However, it means I no longer have a USB2 port for anything else, so I could do with an adapter, as I automatically reach for a mouse. (And then tap it a few times and wonder why it's not working, forgetting that its dongle isn't plugged in.)

I was so excited, I let the system rip the disc without setting any options and then spent another ten minutes wandering around my new system trying to find where it had put the tracks. When I found them, they were .wma when I would normally have gone for .mp3 (but what do you expect when you let Windows Media Player loose on them? Tsk!). Then I found that my old reliable audio file converter software is no longer free. Okay, I get it, it's good software, why should the company maintain and update it for free? But it was the final straw and so late it was early (in the morning!), so I took my grumpy face off to bed.

The following day, I wondered about the complaints I'd seen that Windows 10 was unreliable with optical drives and wouldn't play DVDs; also the way that my system just saw this as a CD ROM drive. I had a look and could find options to burn discs but no, it would not play a couple of DVDs I had to hand, and therefore no options to rip or burn video off a DVD formatted disc either. Indeed, it turns out that Windows 10 is not supplied with this, assuming that everyone now streams stuff and uploads/downloads via cloud storage. Or something.

So every issue spawns another few, in this case, a USB 3 to USB 2 adapter, or possibly a powered hub, as I could do with being able to type without resting my arms on the front of the laptop, and a separate keyboard will either need a port for a connector or a dongle. Also, file converter software and DVD read/write software.

The list of things to learn and buy in order to give myself the capability I want seems never-ending. I keep asking myself when the complications will decrease to a level where I appreciate the benefits.

Ho hum, better get on with this running order for the weekend. Funny, I had one to do only 10 weeks ago or so, when my old system died. I never really appreciated how WYSIWYG and plug-in-and-play it was! I was wondering though: do others go through this learning curve with their computers and if so, how do they cope, or is it just my lack of knowledge? Comments welcome!