PSA: When the Dell Tech Support guy tells you that the only way to fix a problem

[petronius]

is to completely reinstall Windows, don't believe him. I could go into specifics, but this is probably a universal rule. Ignore this axiom at your peril...

[sohndrsmith]

1. Dell Tech Support is a scary thing indeed... even when they come to your house. n't

[petronius]

2. I had a guy come out and rebuild a laptop once - he was a contractor, however,

so he knew what he was doing. The guy had some less-than-flattering things to say about Dell, even though they were paying his bill (I had a few things to say, myself, at the time)...

[SoCalDem]

3. "My name is Carlos"..

Last time I called dell that's what he told me.. And he said it in that king's english Indian accent.. I could not stop myself from giggling..

[petronius]

9. I didn't catch the dude's name, but he had much more precise grammar

than I'm used to hearin' round these parts... :)

[hobbit709]

4. Sometimes that's what needs to be done.

Reinstall complete with drivers takes about an hour and a half. You could be screwing with it for two days the other way. The main reason I partition all my drives is to keep all my data not on the C drive. Reformatting C and reinstalling affects nothing on the D partition.

[petronius]

10. True - and it certainly would have fixed the problem in this case as well

If it was my property I might have just done that (I spent more time than 1.5 hours figuring out a solution). Unfortunately, it's my employers computer and I'm supposed to let our IT staff do things like that... :(

[HopeHoops]

5. Dell tech support blows. In sharp contrast, HP has excellent tech support!

Frankly, the hardware is pretty similar in quality (although I also prefer the HP mouse pad and buttons on the laptop). I wouldn't buy a Dell if it were half the cost of an HP because in their entire history they have never provided even the lowest acceptable level of support. I only know this because I've worked with so many of them in offices (and they also have a high problem rate) including one where ALL we bought was Dell because the CFO owned stock in it or knew someone there or something.

[petronius]

11. It's my work computer, and we're limited to Dell. I've been really tempted

to buy an HP as my own computer, however.

We have the options of macs as well, which I've avoided because some of applications I need are only Windows - that doesn't seem to be a problem anymore, so I may go that route in the future...

[HopeHoops]

15. I've got 4 HP laptops in the house and I'll share a support story here...

My laptop is the oldest and was definitely out of warranty. The wireless stopped working and all the Internet searches said it was a Vista problem, reinstall the OS (pain in the ass), so I just plugged in a physical cable and ignored the problem. About a month later, the display started wigging out and then I just got nothing when trying to power on. This was a Monday, late afternoon.

I called HP and got through to a human who speaks English almost immediately. Within a few minutes, he determined that this was a rare but known problem with the motherboard in my model and even though it was out of warranty, they would fix it for free. Two days later, FedEx delivered an empty shipping box with a pre-paid return label. I put it in (without the hard drive) and called FedEx for a pickup. They picked it up Thursday morning. Sunday morning, about 7:00 a.m., I got an e-mail from HP saying it was fixed and had been shipped. Monday around 9:00, it arrived - about 7 hours shy of one week turnaround.

This was a couple months ago and about a week ago I got an e-mail alert from HP (blanket e-mail, not targeted to me) announcing a recall for several known problems including mine with the same condition - they'll just fix it for free and it doesn't matter if it is out of warranty. Now THAT is customer service!!

[Lost in CT]

6. Did he tell you to go outside naked and pee on your computer?

Cause if not you are still ahead of the game.

[petronius]

12. I did that anyway - what else is there to do on a weekend?

:shrug:

[NewJeffCT]

7. I think it's pretty common to offer that solution for any computer problem

that is not an easy initial solve... heck, I must have re-installed my original OS X on my old iMac at least half a dozen times when nobody seemed to be able to fix it.

[petronius]

13. I was surprised at how qickly we got to that suggestion - it was less than 3 minutes:

"Let's boot the computer into Safe Mode. Doesn't work? Hmm, what was the stop code again? OK... Nope, you're hosed."

:rofl:

[NJmaverick]

8. That is the lazy IT person's solution to many problems

It takes far more work and brain power to fix a problem, than to start over.

[petronius]

14. I got the feeling he had better things to do - like, anything on the planet

other than solving my problem. He did ask if I had any un-backed-up data, however, so conceivably he would have made a more valiant effort if it would have caused me a greater hassle...

[NJmaverick]

16. You could be right

or at the very least he might have tried to assist you in saving the data.