Microsoft sent me some updates Thursday night as I was signing off. I let them run until they were done and the computer shut down, then I turned off the monitor and went to bed. When I came back on Friday, there was no internet connection. As I said before, this happens sometimes, but it usually comes back in a matter of minutes. This time, however, it was still down after several hours. I asked Cortana about it, and she directed me to a diagnostic thing, but all it could come up with was "Ethernet doesn't have a valid IP configuration." I still don't know what an Ethernet is, I'll have to look that up one of these days. Suspecting that one of those downloads had changed my settings, I found a thing that reset the settings back to what they were before, but that didn't solve the problem. It was getting late by this time, so I gave up and watched TV for awhile to clear my head. I finally decided that, if it wasn't back tomorrow, I would have to call somebody.
We have a toaster oven that has been kind of glitchy lately. Sometimes the heat doesn't come on until we turn the timer off and back on again. If that fails, we bang and beat on the unit until it starts. This morning, after I had successfully made my toast, the unit failed to work for my hypothetical wife in spite of her performing the usual resuscitation ritual. We have previously agreed to buy a new toaster oven one of these days, but then the old one would work for awhile and we would forget about it. My hypothetical wife finally made it work by unplugging the unit and then plugging it back in. A simple low tech solution that we have found to be successful in the past with various electrical appliances.
Her success inspired me to try the same tactic with my internet connection problem. I didn't unplug everything, just the satellite modem, because that seemed to be where the problem lay. When I saw that the little blue lights were blinking, which means that it's searching for the satellite signal, I went to the screen and found a message asking me if I wanted to make my computer accessible to other devices in my network. The only other devices I have are the mouse, monitor, and printer, so I didn't see how that could cause a problem. Anyway, the message recommended clicking "yes" unless you were using a public computer, so I clicked "yes". The little internet warning icon changed from yellow to red a few times, and then I was asked the same question again, so I clicked "yes" again. Then the internet connection was restored good as new.
The more I think about it, I think I was right about one of those downloads causing the problem. I had never gotten that message before, so that must have been one of the updates. I suppose that necessitated restarting the modem, and it would have been nice if I had gotten that message, but I didn't. Good thing my hypothetical wife had that trouble with the toaster oven or I would have called tech support, where they undoubtedly would have directed me to "Just pull the plug, stupid!", or words to that effect.
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