Odd Story re Dell Support (Not a Windows Question)

[Rhonda Lea Kirk]

I've just had a very strange experience.

In the past month and a half, I've had four blue screens. All the stop
codes have begun with the dreaded 1000007e, and all have had one thing
in common--concurrent use of the optical drive.

I finally wrote to Dell Support. In the meantime, I ran their "Crash
Analysis Tool" which reports something fairly common (says google): an
AOL driver (wanatw4.sys) and the Sonic DLA driver (tfsnifs.sys). (I've
slowly been removing the crap they shipped with this computer, but I'm
stuck with AOL because my daughter sometimes uses my laptop.)

So when I got the email back from Dell, I expected them to tell me to
update the drivers.

Instead, they had me run their nifty little diagnostic utility.
Everything passed, although the beeps I was told to expect at the start
never intoned--everything was on-screen instead. But as I said, it was
all green.

So I wrote back with this information (no logs, because if they exist, I
don't know where they are), along with the results of the "Crash Test
Analysis." And this morning, I got back an email telling me that my hard
drive is bad and they will be replacing it forthwith.

How nice.

It's true that my hard drive runs hotter than I'd like--normally about
48c and when I'm doing something that requires the HDD to work, it has
gone as high as 55c, but it isn't my HDD that's acting wonky here, it's
the DVD player, and I'm having a hard time connecting the dots.

So I wrote back and said "Whoa. Explain this."

I don't "chat" with Dell Support and I don't talk to them on the phone
because when I was having trouble with Office (the missing CAB problem)
they nearly tortured me to death with their stubborn refusal to explain,
followed by disconnects when I insisted on an explanation. I have had
pretty good luck with email, though, because it provides me with a
captive audience.

I will report the outcome when there is an outcome, but with the recent
discussion about "which computer should I buy," I thought this might be
an interesting bit of information.

I guess that in addition to everything else, I'm going to have to start
learning about hardware, because my own level of ignorance is getting to
be quite inconvenient.

rl
--
Rhonda Lea Kirk

Insisting on perfect safety is for people
without the balls to live in the real world.
Mary Shafer Iliff

 

[Guest]

I feel for you Sr. everything is now overseas and you cannot get good support
these days. In regards to AOL I suggest that you download the latest version
and install it, you may have AOL 9 but it may not be the latest version.
Current Version is AOL 9 Security Edition.

http://free.aol.com/tryaolfree/cdt.adp?532446

 

[Rhonda Lea Kirk]

I feel for you Sr. everything is now overseas and you cannot get good
support these days. In regards to AOL I suggest that you download the
latest version and install it, you may have AOL 9 but it may not be
the latest version. Current Version is AOL 9 Security Edition.

http://free.aol.com/tryaolfree/cdt.adp?532446

Y'know...the thought of actually *purposely installing* AOL on my
computer makes me gag a little. I loved it in '89, and I could deal with
it in '95, but it has turned into a Medusa since then. (I have Optimized
9.0, btw.)

I may just uninstall it completely and tell my daughter to go pound
sand.

But what I understand from the reading I've done is that AOL is not the
real problem. It's Sonic DLA. Unfortunately, while Sonic is great about
sending "buy me" mail, it doesn't want to let me onto the website to
download the correct driver. The website insists that my password is
incorrect, but when I ask for a new one to be emailed, it says "error,
error, try again later."

So I'm going to go collect some Vitamin D in the backyard until Dell
decides to write me back with an explanation. And if I end up with a
replacement HDD (?!), the first thing I'm going to do when it arrives is
format it and reinstall Windows without all the Dell add-on crap.

At least something good may come out of this.

Thanks, Steve.

rl

 

[Plato]

In the past month and a half, I've had four blue screens. All the stop

Nothing to fret about.

 

[Rhonda Lea Kirk]

Nothing to fret about.

First, I thank you for taking the time to reassure me--it is much
appreciated.

<laughing> But I never fret. I just turn into Watson. There is
nothing in the world that I find more fun than solving a problem, big or
small. The things that go wrong with this computer give me much more
pleasure than the routine tasks (and postwhoring) for which I ordinarily
use it.

I didn't receive a reply from Dell for more than 24 hours, so I wrote
another email with everything attached, and I said, "I'm extremely
upset." (I'd planned to wait one more day, and then start a new support
request attaching all that had transpired--I think the poor fellow who
wanted to replace my HDD was just too embarrassed to to deal with it
when he realized that he jumped the gun.)

I got a very rapid response from a supervisor. I was impressed.

I don't know how all this is going to turn out, but I've learned how to
use the built-in diagnostics, and with a little luck, I might even get
the opportunity to crack the case. (I really want to see inside, but I
don't want to void the warranty.)

I'm so weird.

Thanks again for taking the time...

rl
--
Rhonda Lea Kirk

If you don't know where you're going, you
should know where you came from.
Gullah Proverb

 

[Rhonda Lea Kirk]

Rhonda Lea Kirk wrote:

<snip a comedy of errors>

Well, it just got better. Dell will "surely resolve [my] problem" if I
will only do the following two things:

First:

Boot into Safe Mode and do a System Restore. No particular date, just
follow the prompts.

Then:

Open the Recovery Console and run chkdsk /r.

That wasn't the supervisor, btw, but someone who apparently got hold of
my email and thought he could do a better job.

I wrote him back and told him he is insane and to please give my email
back to the supervisor.

He responded by advising me that he was going to send me a shipping box
and that I should send my computer to their repair facility (at no cost
to me, woo-hoo!) and that they will return it all fixed in 7-10 days.

I told him to go pound sand.

Well, okay, that's not what I wrote, but that's what I meant.

Dell is not touching my laptop.

<laughing> I had no idea that tech support had gotten this bad.

rl