Dell complaints

shen · Graduate Dellhater Joined: 27 Nov 2009 Posts: 48

btw, the micheal@dell.com or any variation of it routes back to normally an automated message or if you are lucky to some reps who just look into email support. Its as worthless as always.

I will be honest, I feel bad for the consumer end, people with the gold or the now called pro support get the perks of talking to someone in the states. But literally that may be no better. It ultimately depends on who you get on the phone and because it is run like every other call center, their turn over rate is too high to keep the qualified individuals. But I imagine it is only worse in india or any of the other nations they route consumer support to.

Something that you will get from a us rep that you wont from the consumer line is that they have the forethought to check google if the tools they use are not sufficient to fix the problem. yes, literally they just google your question, but because they likely have more technical knowledge they can sort through the information easier. From what I have experienced anything that isnt in the tools that dell provides (which they cant update as often as they should) any consumer rep will stonewall you.

Though to address your issue you should have taken care of the missing space when you deleted windows.old. But to clarify is it saying your drive is full of 100gigs of nothing or that it shows your drive size is smaller than what it was before? (ie, it says you have 16gigs free out of 80 instead of 16gigs free out of 160) Dell, in their infinite wisdom or cheapness, stopped shipping actual OS disks with most machine because they found a way to put a hidden partition on the harddrive to reinstall the OS if anything went bad (and with most of the crap software that comes with it, it will). Some of the more technical guys here can probably guide you to a better way to find the hidden files if it is still showing the correct harddrive size as I am more experienced with total OS rewrites.

Though on a sidenote, if you are anywhere near the end of your warranty period I would strongly advise you have someone help you completely format the harddrive, hidden partition and all, and set yourself up with a windows 7 copy (you should buy the product, because stealing is wrong... or something like that) and use drivers from the manufacturer (ie, nvidia, intel, etc) and not through dell's bloated software options. You will oddly notice things running a lot smoother then.

Rocke_T_Sinetist · Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 9:50 pm Post subject:

At this point it's reasonable to assert that you could have done better on your own, without asking Dell anything. And you wouldn't have that hole in the wall.

At the risk of sounding cynical or callous, that hole represents how much Dell does NOT want to be bothered once they have your money.
_________________
Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

shawn.elliott · Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 11:06 am Post subject:

shen · Graduate Dellhater Joined: 27 Nov 2009 Posts: 48

shawn.elliott · Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 5:44 pm Post subject:

I already erased the 'windows.old' file which cleared about 35GB's of space, the 94 I have left was after that. It's like something is growing on my HDD, because like I said earlier it started at about 100GB's of missing space, and now it's closer to 200 when I haven't added or changed anything. I understand what you mean that it's not actually missing, but the C:\ says "93.9 GB free of 287 GB", but when I open it and add everything up, the data only totals 13.8GB's. I'm not captain math or anything, but something's not right...

I'm running vista home premium by the way, and thanks for helping.

shen · Graduate Dellhater Joined: 27 Nov 2009 Posts: 48

Hrm... I have run into the same problem and I am trying to remember now what the solution was. This is something that dell will be rather ignorant about as they prefer to just get the system running and then just send you on their way.

You found the hidden windows.old but was it actually a "hidden" folder? By that I mean they should have asked you to change your settings in your control panel under the folder options then Appearance and Customization to "show hidden files or folders". This will basically let you see everything that microsoft would rather you not. Mostly because you CAN cause problems if you start randomly deleting things that is hidden in the windows folder.

Well the reason I ask is that you are having problems finding the space and you are "adding up" what you see. If there is a true hidden folder you wouldnt see it at all (no matter how hard you looked) as the option is still set to hide those files.

Sorry if this is simplistic enough that it borders on insulting but I come across seasoned tech's that forget the most basic things.

If you havent, check to see that you are set to see hidden files and then start adding things up again (just doing properties on each folder in your c:\ then should add up to your full hdd space.) If that doesnt do it... I might just theorize your hdd has created a blackhole and is now collapsing in on itself and your are our first line in defense against oblivion.

shawn.elliott · Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2009 2:16 pm Post subject:

no, windows.old is not a hidden folder, and the hidden folders i have add up to 241 MB, which account's for less than 1.5 % of the missing data.

armstrong · Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 6:39 am Post subject:

I have no solution and I was looking for contact info myself, but I have to at least thank you for the laughs (not at your expense) but at your quite colorful telling of your tale.

I commiserate with you (link).