Friday, September 21, 2007

Our Dell laptop: to love or not to love.

A couple months ago, our computer started to make things hard for us when we booted him/her up in the mornings. We had to boot and reboot for about 5 - 10 minutes. After hours of research, I discovered that the hard drive is failing. "Is that bad?", was my first reaction. This week, it's gotten much worse. Dell and I have become recent penpals. It's fun. Yesterday, I tried to do a repair installation of Windows XP thanks to a recent email I received from the "team" that's working on my problem. After all that, my computer did nothing. Nada. Thanks Dell customer service! This time I call them (I get someone in India) and am instructed to reload XP from scratch. The dreaded words: "You did a backup, right?". Yes, thanks to my ginormous iPod. Then he tells me that "it'll take awhile to load so we'll call you back in 2 hours". I guess I'm not going to bed tonight. Two hours pass and no call so I call again. This time I get someone in Oklahoma. "But I usually speak to someone in India", I tell him. "Oh, if you call more than 3 times in one week, you get us", he tells me. "We deal with more difficult issues." I thought he was about to say that they deal with more difficult clients. "Adam" and I have a nice conversation while he walks me through the process of reloading the modem and some drivers. We come across a lot of problems which he thinks it's due to the failing hard drive. As we're loading, I start getting massive amounts of pop-ups and viruses. It was like I was being shot at and had nothing to protect me. I start to panic: "Adam, can we hurry this up so I can contact Norton Antivirus and get my subscription back up and running ASAP?" He agreed. He quickly walked me through the rest and we politely ended our (over an) hour long phone conversation. I hop on over to Norton: "Save me! I'm being hit and have nothing to protect me!" Norton to the rescue. I had it up and running in no time and had around 10 viruses spreading around the laptop that Norton (the amazing) caught and "killed". I was also watching Norton flashing message after message that they're blocking intruders from invading my system. It was as if my Dell and I were in the movie, "Star Wars".

So, I'm off to shop for a new hard drive since the reload of XP did nothing to help our problem. :(

3 comments:

Jennifer said...

Oh my. What a *fun* experience, especially talking to people in India. I feel like I should send a "get well" card to your computer.

Barry said...

That is what you get for not buying a mac. I hear LaCie makes good hard drives -- and they are French too!

Jill said...

Best of luck fixing your computer. We have a Dell laptop and desktop and have undergone issues with both this year... don't ya love conversing with their customer service via overseas. What fun!