Halle-frickin'-lujah*

I am writing this post from my brand new Alienware Aurora desktop with more harddrive space, more memory, and a faster processor, than my old XPS, not to mention a Blu Ray player and Windows 7. A desktop that, with the replacement of yet another motherboard, finally works.

It's been almost 2 months of headache and crap service, but at least I got a better computer out of the deal.



*another example of tmesis

I 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.

Oh, and Nero didn't call on Friday. Colour me surprised (no, not really).

Ok, so I realise that Dell subcontracts their technicians, so an annoying technician doesn't necessarily reflect on Dell themselves, but this guy is ticking me off.

So Friday I went out to a social held by one of the student groups associated with Women & Gender Studies, to which I am the new liaison. It was open to all, student and faculty alike, and it was probably about one part work and two parts fun. At some point between 4:30 when I headed over to the social and about 7pm when I left, the Dell guy had called *twice* wanting to set up a time to install the part that Dell wants to be replaced that I can almost guarantee will not fix my problem. I called back and got a recording, which I expected, and said I was returning the call and for him to call back when he got a chance, acknowledging that that probably wouldn't be until today because of the long weekend.

So he calls today at 7:15am which in my opinion is straddling the line between awfully damn early and *unreasonably* damn early. And since I don't have to get up until 8 I put my pillow over my head and ignored the phone. I was going to call him back when I got into work to set up a time. So a little before 9am (I didn't have to be in until 9:30 today since I'm working until 6) I'm leaving my apartment and this guy walks up and introduces himself as the Dell technician and asks if I have some time.

Um . . . no. Just NO. You do not randomly show up on my doorstep. And he looked at me like it was *my* fault he'd made a wasted trip when I told him that no, I was on my way to work and I did *not* have some time. I told him I'd be home by 7pm. He then got another annoyed look on his face and said he'd have another technician call me since he "didn't usually work that late."

Well, excuse me for having a life and a job! If you'd waited until I returned your early-ass phone call I might have been able to work out a time later in the week where I could take a long lunch or leave work a bit early, but damn. *I'm* the customer here. I'm the one with the crappy broken computer that *isn't my fault* and you should be finding a way to accommodate my schedule, not getting ticked off because I haven't accommodated yours.

*GRRRRR*

Got a call from the Dell technician today, who seemed to think I was being unreasonable because I refused to *take time off work* to meet him so he could install the *fifth piece* of replacement hardware on my computer. Dell has also been sending me annoying automated phone calls reminding me to return the old parts that were replaced, something I don't intend to do until I have a functioning computer. They can have their pieces back when I'm sure that they won't be needed again.

I am so sick of this. Last time I talked to someone at their technical support I asked to be transferred to a supervisor and my call was promptly dropped. I don't know for sure that was intentional, but I wouldn't be surprised. They've really screwed themselves with this. I've been buying Dell computers for years, and I honestly believe that the problems I've been having with this computer are the exception rather than the norm. Since I never had to have prolonged contact with their technical support before this, I would actually have recommended them. Their computers are usually pretty good. Now I know, however, that their customer service sucks donkey's ass, and I intend to tell everyone I know to avoid them like the plague.

I'll be telling them this too - *after* my computer is finally functional and if I ever manage to get myself transferred to a supervisor.

Ok, so the Dell technician came back with the new motherboard on Monday. Everything now *seems* to work, but I won't really relax until I make it a week or two with no problems. I'm still in the process of reinstalling all my programs and restoring my backed up files, a process which is taking longer than it might otherwise due to my general frustration and lack of motivation to have anything to do with the computer for awhile. I have not torn a strip off Dell yet, but I will in a day or two, after I'm reasonably sure there won't be more problems.

It took quite a bit. I've had good experiences with them in the past. My Dell computers have been by and large stable, and lasted quite a while. In fact, my nearly 10-year-old Dell desktop still works, it's just so obsolete as to be nearly worthless. And previous to this instance, I've been happy with their customer service as well. But now I'm not so enthralled.

First of all, they categorically refused to allow me to simply return the tower and let them figure it out. The guy I talked to has worked for Dell for eight years and in that time they have *never* returned a desktop tower. It just isn't done. They also insist that the problem is with the harddrive, based, apparently, on the x0000007B error code I've been getting, and are sending me *yet another* harddrive.

Let's recap, shall we? My primary harddrive didn't work. When the primary harddrive was replaced with the secondary harddrive, that one didn't work. While unlikely, I can see how it's possible that some environmental factor (a power surge that somehow got past my surge protector? something else?) damaged both harddrives simultaneously. But then the *brand new* harddrive they sent me that arrived yesterday didn't work either.

Now they're sending me a *fourth* harddrive, and somehow that's magically going to fix the problem. Ah, but this time they're sending a technician to install it for me (the unspoken but clearly implied explanation being that I installed the new harddrive incorrectly [I didn't install the new harddrive incorrectly]).

I was assured that no matter what other knowledgeable people of my acquaintance (including my brother, who now works for Microsoft) might have suggested, the problem could not possibly lay with either the motherboard or the power supply. I just have had the most horrible luck to have had three harddrives fail (one of them brand new). After all, that's much more likely than a single, underlying problem somewhere else. This new harddrive will work because, obviously, fourth time's the charm.

I was promised, after I politely but firmly expressed my skepticism that yet another harddrive would solve the problem and relayed my frustration over the sheer amount of time I've had to spend on this (not to mention time without my computer), that the technician would not leave until everything was up and working.

This sounds to me vaguely ominous. I'm having visions of having to kick the technician out at 1am because of course, this latest harddrive won't work either.

I feel very sorry for the technician they're sending. Because, while I'm sure that none of this is his fault, he will be there in person, and when the new harddrive doesn't work (which it won't) he won't be leaving without taking the tower with him. I don't really care what happens to it after that. In fact, if returning the tower is really truly that impossible, I can just dump the whole thing in the trash and they can send me a brand new one. I'm liking that option more and more. After all, I know they *ship* towers.

Aarrgh!!

Ok, so I spent about five hours on the phone with Dell last night, and the computer is still messed up. The first technician I talked to, who, happily, didn't treat me like I was an idiot, said that the fact that the computer was freezing when in Safe Mode indicated to her that it wasn't a malware or driver problem, since those things are disabled in Safe Mode. She thought my copy of Windows was corrupted, so she had me back up my important files and reinstall Windows.

Windows reinstalls in two stages - the first where it loads certain files, and then launches and begins setup. As soon as the files had completed loading and the computer went to launch Windows, I got a blue screen of death. This began hours of changing BIOS settings, unplugging and replugging in the hard drive, testing the memory chips, etc. Nothing worked. Finally, I tentatively drew the technician's (now a new person) attention to the fact that my computer came with two harddrives. We had been trying to install Windows on my primary harddrive. Might it be possible to switch the harddrives and see if the secondary harddrive worked? He agreed this was a good idea, and so it was done.

The files loaded, Windows launched, and began setup. I cheered. The technician said clearly my primary harddrive was bad, and that he'd have a replacement sent out. My secondary harddrive would be my new primary harddrive and the replacement for the original primary would become my new secondary. Fine with me. We got off the phone, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Windows was still loading, and would be for about the next half hour.

Twenty minutes later, I got another blue screen of death. It was now almost 11pm. So I had to call Dell back and tell them that the problem was *not* fixed, but that we'd have to continue this later, as I was completely exhausted and near tears with frustration.

So, either both of my harddrives are damaged, or it's something else completely. Personally, I'm ready to ship the whole damn tower back to Dell and let them figure it out, but they seem to want to do it piecemeal. So I guess I know what I'll be doing again tonight. *sigh*

Ok, so hopefully my computer problems are fixed. Although the Dell support guy didn't exactly fill me with confidence at first when he tried to suggest that the freezing was due to malware and send me to a fee-based malware support line. Not that it *couldn't* be malware, but I am usually pretty careful with my machine (I have a firewall, I run virusscan and Spybot frequently, etc.) and it seemed suspicious to me that I only had problems with freezing immediately after installing a new video card.

I managed to convince him to at least check the video drivers to make sure everything was working properly before I wasted my money on the malware support line, and when the computer froze in Safe Mode he finally admitted it might not be malware. So we uninstalled the video driver and then downloaded a new version from the website and installed that one.

So far it's been about an hour and a half with no freezing, which is longer than I got any other time since I first installed the new video card, so I've got my fingers crossed. I won't really consider the problem resolved until I make it a few days with no issues, but for now, things look good.

As I was passing by the computers earlier I noticed out of the corner of my eye that a student was looking at the Wikipedia article for "Sycorax". The first thing the popped into my head was "wonder if he's researching Doctor Who or Shakespeare?"

Yes, I am a geek.