Tonight I spent more than an hour and a half chatting with Dell technical support.
Some of my favorite phrases that I suspect are straight off of the "nice things to say to keep the customer happy" guide:
"As a consumer myself I can certainly understand your problem, that is why I take the responsibility to resolve this issue today."
"Mary, need not worry."
"You are most welcome. We are always here to help our valuable customers and make them happy & we assure you our best support."
So, the first solution was: the OS is fucked. "This kind of error messages come because of some corruption in Operating System. You need to repair the Operating System of your system. You will not loose any kind of data from your computer."
Now, the boyfriend ran diagnostics while I was threatening a complete breakdown over the Blue Screen of Death situation. I knew the OS was not the issue. The harddrive is the issue.
But I let him get all the way through the "I'm sending you a new CD." jibber jabber. Then I popped out with information regarding the harddrive.
"Great! I appreciate your technical skills."
"Mary, I would like to tell you that this error codes indicates that the hard drive has gone bad. You need another one. Need not worry. In order to resolve the issue I am sending another hard driver for you."
So this is the point where CanadaDave advised me to pull for the new computer. So, I broke out with "For more than six months, everytime I adjust the screen or move the computer, it turns off. Will a new harddrive fix that?" I then gave him a list of incident report numbers from all the times I have contact Dell regarding the screen problem.
"Mary, in order to resolve the issue I am going to pull your laptop to our Repair Depot. The perfect technicians will check and make it up and running."
So, I have to send my computer to Dell. Where the perfect technicians will make it up and running. I have been promised a new harddrive, a portable laptop and possibly even the end of the occasional "computer won't turn on, unplug everything and do the power button reset" problem.
I have hope. Or at least nine months left on the warranty.
