Windows 10 - Blood Pressure Raiser

I thought, mistakenly, that Windows 10, when installed on top of an earlier version of Windows, would pick up all of the settings that previously applied and thereby give me, the user, a seamless experience of upgrading. That illusion has already been shattered. And here is a bit more stupidity, for the record. Non-IT people may look away now.

My wife and I have the only two computers in the house, linked via a shared router. We were both on Windows 7. The printer is physically attached to her computer. This weekend she has made the step up to Windows 10. I assumed the network settings would all work just fine. Wrong. My computer could "see" but not communicate with the printer (apparently doing a windows spool job ??). I printed without a hitch whilst I was on 10 and she on 7.

A bit of Googling and it seems the homegroup needs to be set up. I click on my homegroup in the file explorer window and am told that "Anthony on PCS" knows the password needed to join. Umm. Hello? I am that Anthony of whom you speak and PCS is the identity of the computer I am using. I asked myself what the password was and no great surprise, for something set up in a hurry three years ago, I can't remember. In any case I suspect that Windows 10 created a new homegroup structure. None of the advice on the internet about how to change a password is of the slightest use because the option to do this is not visible on the edit screen.

The solution, it transpired, was for me to power off my computer, for my wife to set up a new homegroup and for me then to join it.  This cunning plan nearly got derailed when Windows, desperate to look after our security, even though we are the only people on the network, insisted on creating a 10 digit password. It helpfully provides a link to print it but when I clicked on it, I got an error message with one of Microsoft's ever popular but utterly unhelpful error numbers. So I had to write it down.

I then turned on my computer, watched the little blue circle go round and round for a bit and eventually was able to join the homegroup, at which point the printer now worked for me and the option to change the password appeared on the control panel section governing homegroups.

So to summarise, m'lud, it is my contention that the sodding software should have used the old workgroup settings, that instead of setting stupid levels of security for genuine home users, Microsoft should ask right from the start if you are setting up for home or business use and that the one size fits all approach to network security is ridiculous. The prosecution rests and, believe me, needs to.