It’s taken a while, but now, hopefully, I’ll be able to get this system repaired and back to the owner. Frustrating as telephone support was, their email support is slightly better, just don’t expect to get an instant response. I first contacted them on Monday and received confirmation today that the CD’s are being sent.

I’ve tried installing using the setup files in the i386 directory, but no matter what type of disk I boot from, I just get error messages that either Windows cannot find a place to put the swap file (when booting from a Win98 disk with NTFS support), or that winnt.exe is not a recognised command (when trying to run the installer from the recovery console).

In the last couple of days I’ve burned several boot and utility CD’s all to no avail. The only thing that is left for me to do is fdisk the hard-drive, reformat as FAT32, boot from a Win98 disk and try to install from the i386 directory that way. Seems like a lot of effort, for very little gain I thought, so hence my reason for contacting Dell.

I started off my calling the Lo-Call number in their website for Sales. I ended up talking to someone in India, who told me that they would transfer me to the right department. That person then transferred me to another department, who then transferred me back to the first person I was talking to. I eventually got through to someone in the UK who told me that I would have to contact Technical Support. He very kindly gave me a number for Tech Support in the UK. This is despite the fact that when I first rang, I went through the automated system clearing picking the choice for Ireland. I also informed every person that I spoke to that I was in Ireland, yet I still managed to be put through to someone in the UK, who could only give me a number for UK Support. I thanked them for their time and hung up.

I did a quick search myself and found the number for Technical Support and called again. Yet again I got through to India, and after giving all my details again, I was put on hold and I was told that I was being transferred to Part Sales. And this rigmarole continued for another 3 transfers, until I got to someone who took my details, yet again, and after explaining for the umpteenth time that all I wanted was a set of restore cd’s, I was told I would have to talk to Part Sales.

Now I’m fairly sure that I had been told at least twice already that I was being put through to Part Sales, but apparently not.
Once more I was put on hold while I was transferred. This time after a couple of minutes the agent came back on the phone to tell me that the queue waiting to speak with Part Sales was a long one and did I want to wait. No I said, I’ll try again later. Chances are that all those people trying to get through to Part Sales are probably looking for Dell Printer Support. Best of luck to them.

Following on from the initial inspection last week, I received a call from tech support to confirm that another visit was required. Unfortunately, I missed the call as I was at work. The tech agent left a message asking if I would be available today (Tuesday), and to call back to arrange the engineer. I called back as soon as I could, but could only get through to a voicemail. I left a message confirming my availability and booked the morning off work.

So this morning I was up bright and early, despite the fact that it was late when I finished work the night before. I waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually I gave in and called tech support. When I finally got through I was told that no engineer had been booked to call out to me. So the agent I called either didn’t bother checking his voicemail, or didn’t bother to follow up on my message. The next available day is Friday, so I’ll have to wait until then to get the engineer out.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that I ran a speed test tonight, and my upload and download speeds are perfect. So without any intervention at my end, my connection is back to what it should be. Though knowing my luck, the engineer will come out on Friday and by the time they’re finished, I’ll be back to square one all over again.