Troubleshooting Lab

One of your customers uses a portable computer as her primary computer at work. She disconnects the computer from the company network and several peripheral devices so that she can take the computer home with her in the evenings.

The computer has two network adapters installed. One adapter allows the her to connect the networking cable at the office so that she can share information with other computers and take advantage of the office’s Internet access. The other adapter is a wireless networking card that allows the computer to communicate with a desktop computer at her home and share that desktop computer’s Internet connection.

At the office, she connects her portable computer to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse. At home, she uses the portable computer’s display, keyboard, and mouse.

The customer would rather not be notified every time she starts her computer at home that hardware devices are missing. She also thinks that having Windows search for the missing devices when they are not connected is causing her not to be able to connect to certain resources on her home desktop computer—especially her printer. She has also noticed that the network connections at both the office and home seem to run slower when both network adapters are active. However, she would rather leave both adapters connected to the computer. What would be your solution?