Dell complaints

[glenwood]

This was sent to me as a means of enabling ActiveX so that the diagnostics would display the data required for a hardware support issue.

It is all true. I did not make this up.

Glenwood

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Hello Raymond

Thank you for your email

From reading your latest emails I understand you have a software problem with your configuration, you have been advised to contact software support and advised that this is a chargable service.

We are a hardware support service but we can offer limited software support.

If you are still experiencing software problems on your system you can try debugging your system and formating.

Unfortunately, all the data on the hard drive will be unrecoverable, unless you wish to take the drive to a data recovery specialist.

In order to get the system up and running again, we will have to debug the hard drive, format the hard drive and then reinstall the Operating System. Please carry out the following instructions:

Debugging the Hard Drive:

Insert your drivers and utilities disc. ( Dell Resource CD)

Tap 'F12' on Boot to enter the Boot Device Menu.

Select Boot From onboard or USB CD Rom.

When given the list of options, please follow the below:

1. Exit to DOS session.

2. When At The DOS Prompt “Eg: A:\” Type “Debug” And Press Enter.

3. This Will Take You To A “Dash”, At The Dash Type “F 200 L1000 0”.

4. This Will Take You To Another “Dash”, At The Dash Type “A CS:100”

And Press Enter.

5. This Time, A Row Of Characters Will Appear On The Screen And The

Last “4” Characters Should Be “0100” (Confirm This), At This Row Of

Characters Type “Mov Ax,301” And Press Enter.

6. A Row Of Characters Will Appear On The Screen And The Last “4”

Characters Should Be “0103” (Confirm This), At This Row Of

Characters Type “Mov Bx,200” And Press Enter.

7. A Row Of Characters Will Appear On The Screen And The Last “4”

Characters Should Be “0106” (Confirm This), At This Row Of

Characters Type “Mov Cx,1” And Press Enter.

8. A Row Of Characters Will Appear On The Screen And The Last “4”

Characters Should Be “0109” (Confirm This), At This Row Of

Characters Type “Mov Dx,80” And Press Enter.

9. A Row Of Characters Will Appear On The Screen And The Last “4”

Characters Should Be “010C” (Confirm This), At This Row Of

Characters Type “Int 13” And Press Enter.

10. A Row Of Characters Will Appear On The Screen And The Last “4”

Characters Should Be “010E” (Confirm This), At This Row Of

Characters Type “Int 20” And Press Enter.

11. A Row Of Characters Will Appear On The Screen And The Last “4”

Characters Should Be “0110” (Confirm This), Leave This Blank And

Just Press “Enter”. (Very Important To Leave Blank)

12. This Will Take You To Another “Dash”, At The Dash Type “G”

And Press Enter.

13. You Will Now See “Program Terminated Normally”, The HDD Has Now Been Completely Cleared.


Formatting the Hard Drive and Reinstalling Windows.

Insert this time, your Windows XP CD.

Again, go to the Boot Device Menu by tapping F12 on startup.

Boot from onboard or USB CD Rom.

Press any key quickly when you see the prompt.

Blue Screen – Windows Setup

Press Enter to Start Windows XP Setup

F8 – I agree

Escape to Continue Setup a New Version of Windows XP

Highlight the Large Partition

D to delete partition

Enter to confirm

L to confirm Deletion


Highlight the un-Partitioned space

C to create New Partition

Enter To Create

Enter To Select the Partition New Raw

Enter To Format this Partition using the NTFS File System

Count to 100% Formatting

To install your drivers, put your Drivers and Utilities disc into the CD ROM drive. Once it loads up, navigate to the Drivers page. You should notice a list of Drivers, and each Driver you require will have a ‘tick’ beside it. The Driver which must be installed first is the ‘Intel Chipset’ driver.


Click on ‘Intel Chipset’>>> On the page that appears, scroll down and click on ‘Extract All Files’>>> Now follow the onscreen prompts to install the driver (Next, Continue, Yes etc….)>>> Restart the System for the driver to take effect.

Now follow this exact process for each of the other drivers with ‘ticks’ beside them.

If you have any further queries, please reply to this mail.

You may receive a separate e-mail inviting feedback on the email service you received from Dell. Dell encourage you to reply, and give us your views which we will use to improve our service to you in future.


Kind Regards

Deirdre Mc Anee

Dell Techical Support

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

Bloody shame when you can't trust your vendor to be square with you, eh? The 'debug' song and dance may be the only way to assure the boot sector gets rewritten. Or it may be total blather. I've reinstalled LOTS of Windows and never even heard of the 'debug' procedure. If you have access to a working copy of Windows and can navigate the obstreperous 'diskpart' interface, it's much less tedious to do it that way. I only did lab-reference loads that way. Ordinarily, just 'format' and 'install' from the Windows CD does it neatly.

What problem is this supposed to be solving? Dell tells everyone "It's Software" no matter what it REALLY is, just to bilk them of $99. Then once they have your money and you call back with the same problem, suddenly "it's hardware" and they ship you the part they should have shipped you in the first place.

5150 is not a bad platform. Once you get it squared away, it should hold up for a good while (but not like early Dells did).
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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

[FallenAngel]

The "debug" command was rendered obsolete along with DOS. The tool itself hasn't been used by any "real" tech in almost a decade. It was designed with a purpose and at the time of use and inception, was damn good at what it did.

However...

This was also back in the day when the technology couldn't keep up and parts were few and far between. How many people on Earth owned systems back in "the day"? Not a whole Hell of a lot, mostly businesses as consumers simply couldn't afford them.

Now, in a bulk commodity marketplace, they have made away with that command and utilities like it because simply, they are no longer needed or required. The fact that any *cough* "tech" *cough* would insist that this be a part of any troubleshooting just goes to tell you, the consumer, that they are grasping at straws. If Windows 95 and/or 98 were still available and widely used (and supported) then I could easily see the need to use a tool like this with reference to the hard drive and how to format it clean.

This is 2006. Not 1995. Debug is as useful as tits on a stump. Dell knows it. Their "engineers" know it. Hell, anyone with more than 80 IQ points knows this. But they'll still insist that it is a valuable and "neccessary" tool in the troubleshooting scheme of things.

What - a - joke. This support they call "technical" is as technical as Kraft Dinner.

Water...noodles. Got it. Problem solved.

People need to savvy up and stop buying lemons from the lemonade vendor. Force Dell to be accountable for actual technical issues that they know only too well aren't software at all. Make them go out and actually hire TECHS to do the real tech support. Then and only then will things normalize and you'll be supported the way you were back in "the day" when a tech could hear just a piece of a symptom, and know what was going on before you finished your sentence.

Until then, it'll be just another wasted day(s) on the phone, speaking to 15 different people in 10 different departments only to be told that the very first one you spoke to f**ked up. Kinda like it is nowadays. If we got $1 for each call that came in and hadn't been touched by anyone else yet, we'd be poor and having to pay to be at work. That's right, we'd be paying Dell to be at work. If the shoe was on the other foot, where we received $1 for all the cases that have been touched by every Tom, Jane and Abu...then we may be able to buy Dell itself. Or at least a kick ass BMW.

[glenwood]

Thanks guys,

I still do not have any idea as to why an apparently sane Dell Support person should resort to these tactics.

I also do not know enough about the current management of Dell to make a referral to a responsible (and maybe concerned) manager in order to register my disgust at this cavalier attitude to support on my 3 year NBD warranty.

I did not follow the mischievous proposition and am glad to say that the 5150 is doing a great job. What a difference to the 250N which was my first Dell purchase and was a total disaster.

Glenwood
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First time Dell owner. I bought a Smart Step PC 250N.

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

[FallenAngel]

I often wonder how the company can get away with calling it "tech support" when it's abundantly clear that they:

A) don't hire actual techs any longer AND
B) don't have the first idea of what SUPPORT in tech support means

[lucki_bstard]

debug has been used in less then a decade.. I can remember using in '99.

The only advantage was then if you had an oem system with some copy protection in the mbr and the hdd would not clear. That was Packard Bell systems in the UK..and some Apricots as well.

As for why they would wish to you to do this.. I imagine they were having fun at your expense. What you should do is contact your hdd manufacturer and ask them if they would advise this to be run on your hdd, as debug can really muck up your hdd, maybe even forward a copy of the email and ask them to take it up with dell.

Enjoy

Lucki

[FallenAngel]

How many hard drives in North America had this same copy protection fallicy that would require something so drastic, yet archaic, as a DEBUG?

My guess is...not many! The jigged any copy protection into the BIOS to make it impassible unless you pulled the whole chip and replaced it with a new, unmodified version. This of course, wasn't highly recommended.

[CrappyDell]

Kevin Rollins probally watched porn and does not want his wife to know!

LOL!
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Dell Suck