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Thanks to both for very helpful suggestions.

I’ve ordered a new USB cable (3.2 Type A to B which is the type supported by the external dock). Downloaded USBDeview, which identifies the drive, when attached, even when Windows doesn’t. Will experiment further. I’ve discovered, strangely, that if I sign out of Windows (no need to restart), turn on the external dock, then sign in again, the dock is recognised, drive letter assigned and I can read and write from the hard drive without problems.

 

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread so far.

The sheer variety of responses and experiences regarding what should be a simple matter just go to prove my point!

Could someone at AskWoody untangle all this and offer a single guidance/FAC which could work to resolve at least most of the problems? It would be a blessing!

In response to some of the questions you asked:

* yes, this has been a problem at least since moving to Windows 10

* updates don’t seem to affect it in any consistent way

* Yes, IPv6 is enabled on both computers

* Network troubleshooter doesn’t tell me anything useful/intelligible

User Accounts: yes, well, yet another area of long-lost clarity on which MS has dumped wagon-loads of obscurity, thanks to the advent of Microsoft Account. Computer-name; log-on name; network name; microsoft account name; log-on pin number (in Windows 11) ……….

Thanks again for all your useful and helfpul advice.

Not sure if this is related. Recently on several occasions my task-bar icons have lost their Jump Lists, the Windows Start button has ceased to function (except when right-clicked). Again, I suspect a recent Windows update and/or conflicts with other software. The problem is usually cured by restarting once or twice, but it’s a nuisance. I’ve read various threads suggesting using Powershell to force re-registration, but the results for others appear mixed and sometimes lead to loss of other functionality. Any thoughts?

One thing you might want to be aware of: if you use any Adobe Type 1 fonts, these will not be rendered readably on screen in Word 2013 as Word’s new rendering engine cannot cope with them (God and Bill Gates know why). They will still print correctly and they work fine in other Window programs including Publisher. Just not in Word. That has been enough to drive me back to Word 2010, as I have used Adobe Fonts over the years for special purposes and can’t afford to re-purchase the OpenType equivalents (Adobe converted its entire font library to OpenType but doesn’t seem to offer existing, licensed users any upgrade path).

For Word 2010 Normal templates, it’s enough to rename it before installing 2013. Then after the installation, rename the new Word 2013 created Normal.dotm to something else and rename your original one back to Normal.dotm. Not sure if it works on earlier versions and plain .dot templates. Don’t see why not –Word should convert them.

I’m astonished by this. Talk about burying it in the small-print! Surely there must be hundreds of thousands of Office users out there, with legacy Adobe Type1 1 fonts they have accumulated and used over the years? I’ve got over 100 and while there are many which I seldom use, I’m extremely unhappy to lose some of them. Anyway, the explanation that they aren’t supported by Windows 7 is nonsense: they’re supported and work normally in Windows itself, most other Windows applications, and in parts of Microsoft Office EXCEPT for Word.

Thanks for this useful article and the various responses. I agree that Rapport is good in principle. But it’s also true that it poses some problems for Windows users, though not the kind of resource-hogging older anti-virus packages used to cause.
* On two occasions, months apart, it caused various blue screens on my PC. Each time the cause was chased to Rapport and I followed their advice to disable ‘Cerberus’, one of the Rapport components. Some days later they updated the program and I could fully re-enable it.
* On several occasions it conflicts with or fails to work correctly with new versions of Firefox
* On several occasions it runs but does not correctly protect the bank websites I use (and which are listed as protected by Rapport): the Rapport icon does not turn green when I access the sites and it reports that it is not actively protecting them.

To their great credit, the Rapport tech support people are very diligent and patient, on one occasion spending well over an hour online to make changes to the Rapport setup on my PC (which they can control remotely via LogMeIn –a process I find slightly scary), and eventually the problems are sorted out.

However, I think using Rapport is a bit of a mixed blessing and certainly it would help if they could update the product more regularly to cope with browser changes and updates.