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Oct. 5th, 2010 03:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynhefarI am beginning to give serious credence to the idea that there is a technology-hating imp living in my apartment. No other explanation makes sense.
My replacement computer from Dell arrived yesterday, right before I left for work. When I got home, I set it up, connected everything the way you're supposed to, and turned it on. I got an AUTOEXEC.BAT Failure after the Alienware logo.
So I call Dell. This time I get a very nice technician named William who listens to my description of the problem and goes "What? That makes no sense." I find that I respond much better to customer service folk who admit when they don't know what's going on, rather than trying to pretend they do when they obviously don't. I like this guy already.
So we check a few settings, all of which are where they should be. Finally he says that while he's never seen this problem before on a customer machine, he thinks that reinstalling Windows will take care of it. So he leaves me to do that and promises to call back today after work.
Reinstalling Windows *does*, in fact, resolve the error issue. However, while I can now get into Windows, it refuses to acknowledge my network connection so I can't get online, and it frequently stalls on various tasks. In trying to get online I tried disabling and reenabling the network adapter, and it stalled on enabling. At another point, it stalled on shut down - spending 45 minutes on the "Windows is shutting down" screen before I gave up and manually turned it off.
So something is still wrong. Here's hoping William lives up to his first impression and proves to be more competent and reliable than the other Dell techs I've worked with. Meanwhile, I'm going to go search for imp-banishing rituals.
My replacement computer from Dell arrived yesterday, right before I left for work. When I got home, I set it up, connected everything the way you're supposed to, and turned it on. I got an AUTOEXEC.BAT Failure after the Alienware logo.
So I call Dell. This time I get a very nice technician named William who listens to my description of the problem and goes "What? That makes no sense." I find that I respond much better to customer service folk who admit when they don't know what's going on, rather than trying to pretend they do when they obviously don't. I like this guy already.
So we check a few settings, all of which are where they should be. Finally he says that while he's never seen this problem before on a customer machine, he thinks that reinstalling Windows will take care of it. So he leaves me to do that and promises to call back today after work.
Reinstalling Windows *does*, in fact, resolve the error issue. However, while I can now get into Windows, it refuses to acknowledge my network connection so I can't get online, and it frequently stalls on various tasks. In trying to get online I tried disabling and reenabling the network adapter, and it stalled on enabling. At another point, it stalled on shut down - spending 45 minutes on the "Windows is shutting down" screen before I gave up and manually turned it off.
So something is still wrong. Here's hoping William lives up to his first impression and proves to be more competent and reliable than the other Dell techs I've worked with. Meanwhile, I'm going to go search for imp-banishing rituals.
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Date: 2010-10-06 02:55 am (UTC)ipconfig -a
arp -a
net config workstation
nbtstat -r
ipconfig /displaydns
set
sc query (this is a long result, may want to redirect it to a text file)
schtasks (another long one...)
Last long one, optional if you want me to scope out your system drivers...
driverquery /V /FO list
If win7 had the capacity to do so I'd ask to see a copy of clusters 0 and 64 just to verify the MBR, but if it's a fresh refurb it's likely been zero'd.
Heck, yanking the power cord on the modem may set you straight... works for me occasionally when the modem stops talking to the Airport and the DHCP lease expires. I'm sure they've gone over that though.