130 SEPTEMBER 2019 |COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE 379
HELPFILE&BUSINESSHELP
Youhelped me last month with aquery
about my GSuiteand personalGoogleDrive
accounts(Shopper377). I’ve been trying to
reorganisethe wayImanage my business’s
domain,and recentlytransferred the
domainregistrationto the same company
that alreadyhosts our web space.The
transfer was smoothand everythingworked
beautifullyforabout amonth, at which
point the websiteand our (Google-hosted)
email accountsbroke.
Fortunately,the new hosts were quick
to diagnoseand fix the problem,but I
haven’t fully understood their explanation
of what happened.The issue was to do with
DNS recordsforthe domain,but Idon’t
understandwhy things workedforsolong
before breaking;Iwould have expected a
DNS error to show up within afew hours.
Can you help?
RonHawkesWe often describeDNS as the phone book
forthe internet, but in fact it’s aseries of
phone books, or nameservers.When you
register adomain such as example.com,
the registrationprovider typicallycreates
an entry foritinanameserverthat they
either controlor use.And when acomputer
tries to look up addressessuch as
mail.example.com or http://www.example.com,
the first part of resolvingthem throughDNSdunce?
DNS is to discover which nameserverwill
know the answers.
Inyourcase,yourpreviousdomainregistrar
associated your domainwith their nameserver,
and created recordson it that in turn pointed
to the servershostingyour web space and
email. When you transferred the domainto
your hostingcompany,itshould have created
similar recordson its nameserver,and made it
the authorityforyour domain.
Seemingly,that didn’t happen.Things still
workedbecauseit took your previous registrarawhile to remove your domain’s DNS records.
However,afteritdid, any computer that tried
to look up any addressesforyour domain–
such as http://www.example.com or mail.example.
com –wouldn’t have been able to find a
nameserverwith the answers.
Once you drew your hostingcompany’s
attention to the problem,it probablyfixed the
issue by associatingyour domainwith its
nameserver,and creatingthe relevant DNS
records.In most cases, this would have fixed
the issue within afew hours.YesterdayIapplied the May2019 update
forWindows10 to my PC, and this
morningmy Canon Pixma iP7200refused
to print anything.Print jobs got stuck in
the queue,and any attempt to ascertain
the printer status came back with a
‘printer not responding’error.Itried
reinstallingthe printer,but to no avail.
Irestored the backupimage I’d taken
before doing the updateand the printer
now works fine again. Idon’t want to have
to buy anew printer when this updateis
installed,and I’m not sure Ican stop it
updating,so Iwould appreciateany
advice you can offer.The printer is
connected directlyto my PC via aUSB
cable,ifthat makes any difference.
Mike LongWhile we’re hearingof some issues with
the 1903 update, we’ve not yet heard of a
printer problem,and we haven’t been able
to re-createyours. Recently,however,we
have seen some long-installedprinters
becomedisassociated from the correct
printer port, which might be the issue here.
Tryuninstallingthe printer completely
before re-attemptingthe update, then1903 doesthebreaking
after the update, downloadand install
the most recent iP7200 series drivers from
tinyurl.com/379helpfile2.
If you still get the error,first try running
Windows’troubleshooter by openingthe Start
menu, typingtroubleshootand running
Troubleshootsettingsfrom the results.If
Windowsisn’t alreadyrecommendingthePrinter troubleshooter,
find and run it from
under the Get up and
runningheading.
If that doesn’t work,
click the Start button,
typecontroland run
ControlPanel from the
results,then click
Devices and Printers.
Find your printer,
right-click it, select
Printer properties,then
select the Ports tab.
Now scan down the list
of ports to see if any
are ticked. If not, find the first free USB
port, probablyUSB001,and tick it to
associateitwith your printer.Ifaport other
than aUSB port is alreadyticked, make a
noteofthe port name so you can restore
the setting later,then tick the first available
USB port. Click OK to accept the change
and dismissthe dialog.⬆DNS problemstake up to aday to propagate, and fixing them can take anotherday⬅Windows10 version
1903 includesimproved
troubleshooting