Last Monday my computer would not boot up, so I called Dell who advised me they would have to format my HD and reinstall Windows. O.K. the music was backed up and I can find the rest. When tech was finished, I informed him that a "boot from CD" sign appeared during boot up and there was a pop-up saying something failed to initialize. He told me he would fix this problem and had me go to dell connect so he could take over my computer. After a few minutes he lost the connection to the IP and asked me to re-connect. I tried but could not re-connect. I called the IP, comcast, who advised me there was a problem with my computer and they could not re-connect me. The Dell in Bombay told me I would have to re-insert the installation disk so he could repair the problem. I did, we re-connected and he broke the IP connection again. Same thing, installation disk, repair, reconnect. Told him I would re-contact Dell the next day as it was late and I was tired. Next day I had no audio and recontacted Bombay with the problem. I vaguely discerned that the tech wanted me to connect head phones. I advised him I did not have any. He wanted me to go to Dell Connect. I told him about the disconnect problem and asked if he could give instructions by phone. Yes. went to controll pannel and checked sound. Error no audio. Told me to check speaker connections. Told him speaker connections had nothing to do with no computer audio, but to humor him checked it again. After about 2 hours, he told me he would check someplace else and told me to call back after about 3 hours. I called back in about 15 minutes as I knew it would be a different tech. This one worked over an hour, no sound and discnnected me. In the meantime I had inserted my router which, having a different protocol would insulate me friom Dell's disconnect problem and called Dell the next day. Got in touch with Julio in El Salvador. Went to Dell connect, worked fine. Julio, I think approached the problem properly, downloading a new driver, etc. Driver did not recognize my system. So Julio concluded I needed a new mother board. Local tech contacted me the next day and installed a new mother board. Booted the computer--same problem, no sound. The tech said MB was not the problem and found a critical setting in error and got the sound working. He told me that he had worked in the remote repair environment and that a supervisor who witnessed an overly long phone call would tell the tech to drop the customer as they worked to get credit based on the number of calls. Crosby, Stills and Nash sound great.
Just think how bad that would have been if you weren't retired and have the time to dink around with those clowns!
Last time I had a Dell computer problem I was on the phone with some guy named Suresh for about five hours. He was in India. At one point I told him I had to stop for dinner and he said he would hold :shock: