One in the eye for Dell "Tech Support" huh?
You mean that guy sitting there reading from a book ?
@shortstop-- many companies' so-called "tech-support" are guys who have little real experience --and are reading from a 'flow-chart' type of screen.
In other words he/she is looking at another computer screen-- you tell him your initial problem/it says "start "here/if this occurs do that/and so on... when they get to the end of that chart-- their only other option is to 'reformat'-- because they just don't have any further guidance.
I had a few good experiences when I bought my Dell in 2001. I actually had someone "walk me through" a low-level format via command-line due to a major crash...
I have heard nothing
but bad reports in the last few years. Dell contracted it's support out to India for a while... which would be fine if it worked. I realize that India is a high-tech "power" now-- and there are some highly-skilled people there (not working for Dell...from my experience !) I actually had people answer my calls -- who I
had to disconnect from because I could not understand them-- due to their thick accent. When you are on hold for over an hour -- with a broken PC at 2:00AM-- and all you want is to get it fixed... this is slightly frustrating.
Not very good for one of the top vendors on earth.
As you have unfortunately found out.
This was part of the reason I got interested in fixing/building computers myself-- because I was not going to put up with such nonsense any more...!