Tuesday, August 22, 2006

The Dell Looniness Continues

We haven't had the Dell for even 6 months yet and it has had the hard drive replaced, the fan replaced, and USB ports act up randomly on it. Believe it or not, there's more!

The HP printer that was hooked up to it just suddenly died out of the blue about a week ago. It won't work on that computer, and it won't work on any computer. The ink cartridges still have ink, but we tried new ones anyway. It simply won't work regardless what we do.

A few days later, a Dell-specific BIOS message started popping up everytime the computer is started. It basically says that there's something not right about the hard drive and that Dell recommends backing up all the data on it. Windows still boots up and my dad can still use it, but we're really worried about the data.

I put the Microsoft Backup program on the machine, and when I put in my pen drive into the USB port, the machine kept reading from it but wouldn't do anything. No files would show up in explorer or anything. I restarted the machine and the light on the pen drive continued to flash. I had to turn off the machine and turn it back on to get it to quit reading from my pen drive. After that, it worked fine.

We called Dell and they said they'd replace the hard drive. We told them about the USB ports, but they said they could only send "one part at a time". To make things even more stupid, they won't replace the machine or refund our money because their policy doesn't allow this after having it for 21 days. We have a 1 year warranty with them that so far has been spent replacing parts. It's obvious to me that there's something wrong with the machine that is causing the USB ports to not work right half the time, cause the relatively-new HP printer to die, have 2 hard drives go bad, and cause the fan to go bad.

I said this the last time and I'll say it again -- I'll never ever buy anything from Dell again. I don't want their refurbished junk. Some people thought I was going a little overboard the last time I said this, so lets see what they have to say now.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm a formal dell tech w/6yrs of hands on troubleshooting. I read your blog and it appears to me. The problem is the MB (motherboard). Whenever I had multiple failures of a system. I ALWAYS go straight to the MB and replaced it. 9 times out of ten it fixed the system. You need to run the diagnostics that is embedded in the system. Also visit the dell tech site for further troubleshooting. Good luck on them replacing the system after the 21 day period. FYI, they do have a dept in dell to handle problems just like this. You just need to be persistent in pushing them, otherwise they could careless. DLD

Damian said...

I appreciate your comment. Thank you, and I will keep trying! =)

Anonymous said...

Damian,

My name is Brad and I work at Dell Headquarters in Round Rock, TX. I came across your site and noticed that you described several issues with your system. Please feel free to contact me at the email address below and I will help you in any way that I can.

Brad
Dell Customer Advocate
customer_advocate@dell.com