Chat with Dell Tech Support

Here are parts of my conversation with Dell tech support. I saved the chat log, but that turned out to be unnecessary as they emailed it to me a few minutes later.

09/07/2007 06:33:15PM	Session Started with Agent (Harshavardhan_77570)
09/07/2007 06:33:27PM	Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "Thank you for contacting Dell XPS Premium Support. My name is Harshavardhan and my rep ID number is 0177570. How may I assist you today?"
09/07/2007 06:34:08PM	Colin Kern: "I have just installed Windows XP on my XPS 410, but ethernet and sound doesn't work."
09/07/2007 06:34:22PM	Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "I will assist you with the issue."
09/07/2007 06:34:40PM	Colin Kern: "Thank you."
09/07/2007 06:36:29PM	Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "When was the first time you had this problem ?"

Notice it was a about 2 minutes of silence after I stated my problem before he asked that question. Also notice I have already answered it in my initial statement.

09/07/2007 06:37:37PM	Colin Kern: "I bought the computer from Dell with Ubuntu Linux installed, and everything worked fine then. But I have just installed Windows XP, and the sound and ethernet don't work."
09/07/2007 06:39:02PM	Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "Have you made any software or hardware changes?"

Umm....I'd say I made the biggest possible software change? Also, notice the almost 2 minute delay again.

09/07/2007 06:40:35PM	Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "Have you tried any steps from your end to resolve the issue?"
09/07/2007 06:41:53PM	Colin Kern: "I looked in the device manager to try to diagnose the devices, and they did not appear in the list, so I believe the problem is that I don't have the drivers."
09/07/2007 06:42:15PM	Colin Kern: "I looked at Dell's support website, but was confused as to which drivers I need to download."

I like that I was asked what I had already tried, instead of the normal tech support experience where they take you painfully through everything you've already tried in mind-numbing step-by-step instructions.

09/07/2007 06:43:13PM	Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "All right."
09/07/2007 06:43:34PM	Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "Can I take the control of your system to check with the issue?"

Now, if you read my previous post, you know that I put a wireless card in the computer. But he didn't know this, so I don't know how he was expecting to be able to connect to my computer. I had already told him one of my problems was with ethernet device. Luckily, I did have the wireless card. The Dell software to do this failed the first time, but it worked on a second attempt. After connecting, there was a delay of a few minutes, followed by him opening Device Manager, then another long delay. A total of 12 minutes after he connected to my computer:

09/07/2007 07:13:59PM

Agent (Harshavardhan_77570): "You need to install the drivers on the computer."

I waited for more, since I had stated above that I was pretty sure this was the problem but that I didn't know which ones to download. I finally asked where to get them and he said he'd give them to me; then navigated to the driver download page and began downloading. It was going to take 40 minutes, so I told him I had a slow connection and that if he just gave me the URLs to the drivers, I could download them and install them on my own. He gave them to me, and even asked me if I wanted him to call me the next day to see if it worked. I told him I'd just contact tech support if it didn't. I guess this was a pretty good tech support experience, compared to others I've had. From beginning to end it was 1 hour and 15 minutes, but during a lot of that I was waiting for a response, and could watch TV.

Finally!

Ok, here's how I finally got Windows on my computer.

In Ubuntu, I was able to apply the SP2 update to the files I had copied from the CD using Wine. The problem was with burning it back onto another CD. I extracted the Windows boot image, but it wasn't in a normal format, and as much as I searched on the internet, I couldn't find a Linux tool that could do it. I burned a few duds that contained the data but weren't bootable. The next thing to try was running trial versions of Nero or Roxio with Wine. Neither would run with Wine, so it was finally time to install Windows XP on my laptop. I got back to the point I was at before, and then got the trial version of Roxio. But guess what? The trial version doesn't allow the option I needed. I tried Nero and found out the same thing. So it was back to the drawing board. I finally discovered a program called nLite, which does everything for you. I downloaded it and had my slipstreamed CD within fifteen minutes.

So I went to install Windows with my new CD...and I still got the blue screen of death. The error was different, though. I wrote down the important information (some hex numbers) and then started searching around on the internet. I finally found out what the problem is on the Dell support website. My motherboard settings were set to "RAID on", and I needed to switch it to "RAID autodetect/ATA". When I went to change it in my motherboard, I noticed it said that switching could decrease performance, even if I only had one disk (if you don't know, RAID is a method of using multiple disks to either increase performance or backup data). It's interesting that they had this option set for Linux, but it doesn't work with Windows. I wonder if I should try to get a RAID driver and switch back to it. Anyway, once I had changed the setting, I was able to install Windows without a problem. Unfortunately, not everything worked when I booted it up.

The first thing I noticed was that I had no network devices. I noticed later that I also had no sound. The problem was obviously with drivers, but upon getting to Dell's driver download page I couldn't figure out which I needed to get out of the about a hundred that were listed. They were categorized, but there were still something like 5 for networking and 8 for audio. At this point, I was using my laptop to look for the drivers with the intention to transfer them with a USB flash drive. I decided it would be easier if I took my wireless card out of my old computer and put it in this one. I did that and then started running Windows Update. There was an updated driver for my wireless card that I selected to have downloaded, but when got to installing it, there was a flash of BSOD and my computer restarted. Windows booted up, BSOD after a few seconds, computer restarts, repeat. I got into safe mode and uninstalled the wireless card. Rebooted and still had the problem. I tried rolling back the driver, but it said it didn't have any previous versions stored. Instead of spending who knows how long figuring out how to fix this, I just reinstalled Windows. After this, I was very frustrated and just wanted to get things working. I went to Dell's support website and was able to chat online with a technician who eventually gave me the drivers I needed. Look forward to another post containing this chat session. So after getting the drivers, everything works, and I am being careful to not let Windows download that updated driver. I had a similar problem with my old computer, where it always wanted to download an updated driver for my sound chip, but it would always just break sound and I'd have to roll back.

So hopefully this will be the last of these types of posts for a while, as I can now enjoy a working computer. On another note, I have 2 other posts I want to do, and I'm thinking of a 3rd. I'll try to space them out, maybe save some for tomorrow. But expect more posts in the near future.

Monkey Wrench

I went to the "Technology Solutions Center" on campus to buy Windows XP today (see my previous post), but it turns out I have to order on their website and wait for shipping; they don't keep it in stock. Being impatient, I started looking for alternative methods of getting an install CD of Windows XP with SP2 (other than pirating it). I came across this, which I am going to try. Basically, it involves copying the contents of the install CD into a folder, downloading the SP2 update and applying it to the folder, then burning a new CD. First, I am going to try doing it on my new computer in Ubuntu, using Wine and other tools. I would love to be able to say I took an old Windows XP CD and created a (legal?) up-to-date CD using Linux. If I fail (which is likely), the backup plan is to use my laptop and create the CD in Windows. That will be more annoying because I use Ubuntu on my laptop and so I will have to backup files, install Windows, create the CD, then reinstall Ubuntu, i.e., to get Windows on my desktop, which has Ubuntu, I have to install Windows on my laptop, which I want Ubuntu on, so that I can install Windows on my desktop, and then install Ubuntu back on my laptop.

Worse than Dial-up?

It's story time again. This one is about the horrible internet connection I've been living with all summer.

For the past year, we had Verizon DSL, which was fine, although rather slow (downloads were about 90 KB/s on average). The problems started towards the beginning of the summer during a lightning storm. I was at my computer, on SL, and there was a popping noise accompied by my computer restarting. I don't remember there being a lightning strike or anything at that moment, but my only guess is that it was a power surge. When my computer finished booting (thank god it booted, the popping noise was not unlike that of a capacitor taking on too much charge), I noticed the internet was not working. I went down to the basement and saw that all the lights were off on the DSL modem, except for the power light which was flashing, and all the router's lights were off. I unplugged them and plugged them back in, tried other outlets around the house, still the same thing. I called Verizon, they sent a new modem, and I bought a new router.

With the new equipment, we could get back online, but the internet was unreliable. We kept losing our connection (dsl light on the modem would flash green, which means it isn't getting a signal from the ISP). It would come on and off, sometimes just for a few minutes, other times for hours at a time. Also, when it was on it was about half the speed as it used to be. I made multiple frustrating calls to Verizon tech support. Finally I convinced one of them that the problem couldn't be fixed by trivial methods such as turning off the modem and turning it back on, but that there was actually a more serious problem. They put in an order for a technician to come out and find the problem.

The technician came out and said that the line going out of our house needed replacing. You'd think he would then go ahead and replace it, but that would be wrong. Instead, he set up another date for someone to come out and fix it. Are these people really so specialized that one person is trained to diagnose a problem, but then someone else needs to actually fix it? So the line was replaced, and I hoped everything would finally work. Wrong again. The speed seems better, although still fluctuated, and the internet still goes on and off (notice I'm switched to present tense, as this is still the current situation). I didn't bother calling Verizon again, as it's like pulling teeth to get them to do anything other than the basic troubleshooting steps they always go through. Also, I'm now fairly sure the problem is with the internal wiring in the house. Fixing that is something Verizon probably wouldn't cover.

Obviously, this makes SL rather painful to play, which is why I haven't been around as much this summer. Let's take a look.



Now, it's not always like this, just when it's downloading something. So it's like this for maybe 5 - 10 minutes (remember, slow connection) after I teleport somewhere or log in, and maybe 30 seconds whenever a new person arrives. If you're not sure what a ping time of 6476 msec means, it means that if I push a command like 'w' to walk forward, I won't actually move forward until ~6.5 seconds later. The high packet loss rate ensures that a lot of my key presses never even make it to the server...but of course I don't know that until 6.5 seconds later. Add to this the sporadic total loss of internet connectivity, and you have a pretty hostile environment.

Things will finally be fixed when we switch to Comcast cable internet. They are scheduled to install it on September 13th.

The Circle of Life

I broke my computer last week. I was moving my memory into another slot to see if it would stop making the annoying noise it has been making, but something went wrong. I built this computer myself, meaning that the inside is a massive jungle of IDE and power cables, mostly centered over my memory slots. As a result, I couldn't see the slot very well and was doing most of the work my feel, which turned out to be a bad idea. I thought the memory was in all the way, but it wasn't. This resulted in smoke when I turned the computer on and a few of the metal connectors on the RAM had burned. I'm pretty sure putting any other RAM in that slot afterwards would have had bad results. I could have bought some new memory and maybe a new motherboard, but I just decided it was time for a new computer. After this experience, however, I didn't feel like building one.

I came up with a plan that would allow me to get a better computer than I had before for relatively cheap. First of all, I bought a new LCD monitor last spring, so I didn't need to get a monitor. That's about $250 off the price tag. The second part of the plan was to buy a Dell preloaded with Ubuntu Linux. Linux is a free operating system, which means another few hundred dollars off the price of the computer because I don't have to buy a Windows license. This is my gaming machine, though, and so I actually want Windows on it. I have my old Windows XP CD that I can use to install Windows once I get the computer.

I got the computer yesterday, and discovered there was a flaw in the plan. I boot up the computer with the XP disc and after it loads the necessary drivers it attempts to boot into a minimal Windows XP to do the installation, but crashes with a blue screen of death. After trying some things and searching around on the internet, I finally figure out what the problem is. My Windows XP CD has the original release on it, without SP1 or SP2. It wasn't until SP2 that XP supported PCI-E based graphics cards (all new computers now use PCI-E instead of AGP). So now the plan is to buy a new Windows CD. My plan still saved me money, though, because I can get it pretty cheap through the University. I just wish it wasn't Labor Day weekend.