Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012

Today is not my day. I began this blog and hit a key and the whole thing disappeared.
Here we go again.

I am journaling my experience for several reasons:
It is too unreal;
It might be a great 20 hour bedtime story for my future grandchildren;
If I ever decide to jump off a roof it will be the note I leave behind.

So. Let me tell you.

My story continues where it left off yesterday. I have had a run of Dell laptops with bad luck. Replacements and more replacements. I finally got the needed shipping labels to return two defective laptops that were sent in for repair and that came back, well, unrepaired. And unacceptable. One was a mini notebook and one a 16″ laptop that replaced a previous lemon. I tried for years with all the lemons but was unable to make lemonade.

I received two replacements after screeching so loud, corporate heard me down in Texas from all the way up here in NYC. I shipped the unfixed ones back after finally getting the correct shipping labels.

I received a lovely 14″ computer to replace the non functioning 10″ mini notebook.

After I began to make it my home, I noticed I was unable to modulate the sound with the obvious keys. Mute or on was my choice. I contacted North American tech support for which I pay a premium fee, and after at least 4 hours of remote work on my computer, I was told I needed as a last resort, to reinstall the operating system. Any one who knows computers knows, that is an Oy Vay moment. There wasn’t enough time to do it yesterday so I began it myself but couldn’t complete the driver installation without help.

In the meantime, the 15″ replacement for the previous 16″ computer that wasn’t repaired (and that replaced another 15″ laptop that had poltergeist) also displayed the same sound modulation issues. Too much of a coincidence.

So…I got a call from a lovely lady at corporate who informed me that the way to modulate sound now is to hit the Function key along with the icon key for the sound to be made higher or lower. It was that easy. Four hours on the phone with Premium North American tech support, an attempt to reinstall an operating system and it came down to a function key. The problem was that I was unable to get all the drivers installed without error messages so a new pre-loaded hard drive was shipped. I am the Fed-Ex queen.

Next, from the you won’t believe this department: the snazzy 15″ computer was operable so I inserted disc with an anti-virus program and closed the CD drive. The desktop froze though the cursor was able to be moved. I tried rebooting.

Then I got this message:

“Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. (The only thing I had done was insert my Trend Micro disc into the CD tray.)

To fix the problem:

1. Insert your windows installation disc and restart your computer.

2.Choose your language settings and then click next

3. click repair your computer

If you do not have this disc contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.

File: \Boot\BCD

Status: OxcOOOoood

Info: The windows boot configuration data file is missing required information.

Here I go again. Two new non-working computers.

Yes, my story continues (part 5) and you can find it here.

And the whole sob story begins here!