Better to be a Loser?

[parliboy]

Since he completely recovered his drive, and he said the problem was easy to fix, my money's on an NT Loader problem.  I was doing a dual boot with XP and Mandrake a couple of years back and had problems when I uninstalled Mandrake's loader.  Someting went screwy with XP's loader and it had similar symptoms.

[Brandon Brooks]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Jun 8 2004, 11:05 PM\'] What was the fix, tho? [/quote]
IIRC, I had to put in the Recovery disk and overwrite some files on the HD.  I guess it was a BIOS problem.  Took a little while to complete, but was relatively simple.

(I admit that I'm not an expert with computers.  But I used to be a computer science major, and my inquisitive nature likes to sometimes fool around with things.)

So, it really infuriated me to find out that I didn't need to buy another hard drive at all.

Since he completely recovered his drive, and he said the problem was easy to fix, my money's on an NT Loader problem. I was doing a dual boot with XP and Mandrake a couple of years back and had problems when I uninstalled Mandrake's loader. Someting went screwy with XP's loader and it had similar symptoms.

I'm almost certain that's what it was.

Brandon Brooks

[aaron sica]

*Jumps on soapbox*

The problem with the tech support of Dell, Compaq, etc. isn't so much the fact that they're bad companies - it's how they are doing it that's the question. If all these companies would actually hire TECHNICIANS, IN THE UNITED STATES, that know what the !@#$! they're doing, instead of hiring people who are reading from a book, their image would look much better.  

Instead, they get Habib from Bangalore, India, whose course of action for every problem is to "reinstall WindowsXP". Display bad? Reinstall WindowsXP. "r" key not working? Reinstall WindowsXP.

As someone who lost his job to outsourcing back in March, this is a subject that normally quiet Aaron is very outspoken and vocal about.

I hope Earthlink crashes and burns in hell because letting their US support go was the worst thing they ever did.

*Jumps off soapbox*

OBGameShow (stretching it once again): The show "EcoChallenge" in 2002 had a "TeamEarthlink".

[ITSBRY]

[quote name=\'Brandon Brooks\' date=\'Jun 8 2004, 06:15 PM\']I called Dell and ask them what I could do... this incompetent told me to buy a new hard drive. 

I call Dell again, and what does incompetent #2 say?  Reinstall WindowsXP.  I hung up on her in disgust, and figured it out myself.[/quote]
This was also my issue with Dell tech support.  I knew the problem was the DVD from the start, but the idiot tech support guy had me doing all kinds of stupid stuff.  By the time he was done with me, Windows wouldn't even load and I went from having a sometimes not functional DVD to a PC that wouldn't even load Windows.

He tried to get me to reinstall Windows and when I wouldn't do that, he tried to tell me I had a virus, which is tech talk for "I don't know what I'm talking about, but I'll tell the stupid consumer that because they probably don't know any better."

After repeated games of phone tag with the guy, I gave up and called again.  I spoke to another tech and bitched until they sent me a new DVD drive.  Once I installed it...voila, no more problems.

ITSBRY
itsbry@juno.com

[Casey]

[quote name=\'Brandon Brooks\' date=\'Jun 8 2004, 06:15 PM\'] Well, I'll be the first to gripe about Dell.

I've had by Dimension 8200 for a couple of years.   (snip)  Knowing that hard drives just don't die in two years, I Googled my problem. (snip) [/quote]
 Actually hard drives can and do die that quickly.  At work, we use Dell machines exclusively (and I also have Dell machines at home), and I've had the hard drive replaced in my work PC twice in 2 years.  (Once after 3 months and once a year after that).  Except you usually know when it dies: Click noises, Windows tells you to insert a disk into Drive C (I loved that message), BIOS errors on boot, etc.  To be fair, prior to using Dell machines we used HP at work, and hard drives fail in them to.  It just happens.

That being said, I've had nothing but good luck with the Dell machines I have at home.  One is pretty heavily used as my homebrew TiVo.

For the record, I have a Dimension 8100, Dimension 8200, Dimension 2400 and Inspiron 2650.  (Four computers isn't enough for 1 person!)

Straying back to the topic a bit, if I went on TPIR and won a new computer system and armoire, I'd still take them.

[dzinkin]

[quote name=\'aaron sica\' date=\'Jun 9 2004, 08:46 AM\'] *Jumps on soapbox*

The problem with the tech support of Dell, Compaq, etc. isn't so much the fact that they're bad companies - it's how they are doing it that's the question. If all these companies would actually hire TECHNICIANS, IN THE UNITED STATES, that know what the !@#$! they're doing, instead of hiring people who are reading from a book, their image would look much better.  

Instead, they get Habib from Bangalore, India, whose course of action for every problem is to "reinstall WindowsXP". Display bad? Reinstall WindowsXP. "r" key not working? Reinstall WindowsXP.

As someone who lost his job to outsourcing back in March, this is a subject that normally quiet Aaron is very outspoken and vocal about.

I hope Earthlink crashes and burns in hell because letting their US support go was the worst thing they ever did.

*Jumps off soapbox*

OBGameShow (stretching it once again): The show "EcoChallenge" in 2002 had a "TeamEarthlink". [/quote]
 One of my consulting clients reported to me that when he called Gateway for support, he kept getting people who claimed to be from Texas but had accents that said "India" all the way.  The solution?  He had to say "I want someone from Canada."  Make of that what you will.

I also know firsthand that you don't have to be from Bangalore to suggest "reinstall Windows XP" as the solution for every problem; I won't mention names but I know a few techs right here in the good old USA who do the same thing.  Not excusing outsourcing, mind you... just as you don't have to be an AOLer to be a moron, you don't have to be from India to be an incompetent computer tech. :-)

ObComputerAndGameShow: "Click" sucked.

[BrandonFG]

[quote name=\'aaron sica\' date=\'Jun 9 2004, 07:46 AM\'] Instead, they get Habib from Bangalore, India, whose course of action for every problem is to "reinstall WindowsXP". Display bad? Reinstall WindowsXP. "r" key not working? Reinstall WindowsXP. [/quote]
 It's Story Time, since we're all discussing our computers. :-)

They either tell you to reinsatall your OS or try to swindle you into getting an extended warranty...last summer, when my comp. acted up, they would always tell me that my warranty expired, and that I'd have to pay an extra $30 for an extended warranty. Since Compaq couldn't do a reasonable job of fixing my comp. when it WAS under warranty, I refused. I ended up fixing the problem myself by running a FDisk process on my comp.

Also, QuickRestore sucks. :-)

ObGameShow: I *liked* Click.