Adventures in relocation…
You know how the most innocuous thing can become a technological mountain… under time pressure? The fact that I seem to still have unreasonable expectations about similarities between Windows 8.1 [Codename Blue] and Windows RT 8.1 [Codename Blue] turned into a crisis this morning, but I’ll come back to that in a minute…
[Sung to the tune of “Beverly Hillbillies”]
About a month ago, we loaded the truck and moved to San Antonio… Texas, that is.
That’s our Uhaul equipment parked in front of an 18-wheeler parked somewhere south of Denver (roughly halfway from Redmond, WA to San Antonio, TX).
We’ve unpacked most of the boxes. The older two kids were supposed to enroll in high school this morning. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is their autism, we’ve homeschooled all three of our younglings all the way through 8th grade, so this is a bigger deal than it sounds like to most people.
In order to enroll them in school, things have to get printed. Things are always best when printed at the last minute on the way out the door… In order for things to get printed, the printer has to be configured onto our ISP’s new wireless network. AT&T gave us a new modem/router for the Uverse service.
No, the Brother HL-2270DW printer’s USB driver isn’t supported by Windows RT on our Surface 1.0 units, or I would’ve never discovered this yet another minor Windows versus Windows RT difference for networking.
Halfway through the printer setup process, helpfully documented in PDFs, I discovered that Windows RT can’t see ad hoc networks. Doh.
In order to run the Brother printer admin tool, I had to switch to the Lenovo Carbon X1 running the x64 version of Windows 8.1… Joy. I couldn’t get my non-RT Lenovo notebook to see the ad hoc network that the printer is supposed to broadcast, either.
Of course, wireless printers are best when plugged in on the other side of the house from the wifi router.
After carrying the printer into physical proximity of the router, finding another Ethernet patch cord, getting the printer configured using the BRAdmin tool, carrying the printer back across the house, and plugging it back in… We are able to print from our Surface RT slates again for the first time in a month.
Oh, and you have to use the generic “Brother Laser Type2 Class Driver” from Windows RT. Just in case you were wondering.
No, the “push button and pray” automagic wireless setup didn’t work, either. I tried that first.
One of these days, a career in networking won’t be a prerequisite to a painless home computing experience. Someday.