George didn’t come to work on Tuesday because he has pink eye. Now, every time my eye so much as twitches, I think I’m coming down with it as well. Nevermind the fact that my eyes are generally itchy. It’s got to be pink eye. I’m so paranoid.
So here comes a rant. With apologies to Irwin, I FREAKING HATE MICROSOFT WINDOWS! (Yes, I know Irwin doesn’t work in the Windows division, but he works for Microsoft, so he gets my wrath today.)
Over the weekend, I set up my new computer. It came with Windows XP Home; I had a copy of Windows XP Pro (from Irwin, so he’s not all evil). “Oh,” I thought, “well, I’ll upgrade to XP Pro. The software documentation says to use the upgrade option if you already have XP Home installed.” BIG MISTAKE.
Lesson Learned #1: Never upgrade. Wipe the freaking hard drive and start over. Save yourself the headache.
I came home from dinner last night and the computer was frozen. No biggie, I think, so I hold the button in, computer shuts down, I press the button again, computer turns on. Computer won’t boot. It comes to some DOS screen saying Windows is having difficulties and I need to choose either safe mode, last known configuration, or start normally. Well, none of the options work. Nothing is working. I can’t get the computer to boot, and I can’t even get it to boot from the Windows CD. Also, my new computer doesn’t have a floppy drive; they don’t install them anymore unless you specifically request it, which I didn’t. C’est la vie. At a loss for what to do, I decide to call Dell Tech Support. Now, I have never called Tech Support in my life, and I probably never will again after last night.
Lesson Learned #2: Tech Support people who deal with “peons” like me are condescending and treat you like an idiot, even if you’ve said enough that they should be able to tell that you aren’t an idiot.
The tech support guy was completely unhelpful. First, he said I should never use the upgrade option for Windows. Good advice, but not helpful since I had already done it. Second, he berated me for putting a second hard drive in the computer. (“Why did you do that?” “Because it’s a 100 GB drive, it’s useful, and it has all my data on it.” “But why do you need it?” “Uh…why don’t I need it?” “The 40 GB drive that came installed should be plenty!!” “Whatever, dude.”) Finally, he told me to never tell a tech support person that I’d installed my own hardware, and a different operating system than what came pre-installed. This I knew already, I mean, Dell isn’t required to provide support to stuff they didn’t install, but come on, how is he supposed to help me if I’m lying to him about what I’ve done to the system?!?
Lesson Learned #3: If you do have to call Tech Support, lie to them. (Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to me either.)
After 5 or 6 minutes, it became abundantly clear that the guy was going to be of no use to me, and was only going to tell me what I’d done wrong, and how I shouldn’t have changed anything from the way the computer was shipped. What a load of crap. So I hung up on him. Since all signs pointed to the problem having originated with Windows, I briefly considered calling Microsoft Tech Support, but decided I’d rather not deal with another possible condescending jerk.
I took the Dell hard drive out of the new computer, and stuck it in my old computer. Booted up the old computer, formatted the Dell drive, and installed Windows XP Pro (which takes like a full freaking 45 minutes to install). Took the drive out, put it back in the new computer, started the new computer, and…..now the new computer won’t recognize the hard drive! It says there’s no hard drive found! What sort of CRAP is that?? By this point, I’ve figured out that the reason the computer wouldn’t boot from the CD is that I had the CD in the slave drive (the CD-RW) and not the master drive (the DVD-R); stupid me, I’ve never had dual drives before and didn’t realize that to boot from one, the disc had to be in the master drive. (Gee, I wonder why the Tech Support guy didn’t suggest that when I told him I couldn’t get the computer to boot from the CD. There was his shining opportunity to be useful, and he failed miserably.) So now I’ve got the computer booting from the Windows CD, but the computer can’t find the hard drive!! I try all sorts of configurations in the BIOS and nothing works. I’m at a total loss.
It’s now past 1:00 in the morning. Thoroughly annoyed and frustrated and on the verge of throwing the hard drive across the room till it smashed into a bazillion little pieces, I decide to go to bed. This morning, I get up and am faced with open computers and assorted hard drives littering the floor around my desk. I decide to give it one more brief try before heading to work, and took the Dell drive out of the new computer and back into the old computer.
And that’s when the entire IDE cable came out in my hand. And that’s when I realized that in all the hardware switching going on late last night, the IDE cable had gotten disconnected from the motherboard. My hard drive was getting power, but that was it. No wonder the damn thing couldn’t find a hard drive.
Lesson Learned #4: If Sarah is trying to fix a computer at 1 a.m. and is tired, cranky, and pissed off at Tech Support, she should go to bed and just leave it till morning, at which point she’ll discover that not only are Dell and Microsoft idiots, but she can be an idiot too.
Moral of the story: Don’t use the Windows upgrade feature, Dell Tech Support is crappy, and if your hard drive isn’t being recognized, it might be because your IDE cables aren’t connected to the motherboard.
SIGH.
The good news is that last night before all the computer headaches, I learned how to change a bike tire and now I’m not scared of breaking something, I had a yummy dinner with good friends, and the Astros won behind Roger Clemens’s NL debut. He even got a single in his first at-bat!
Speaking of Dell tech support… it really is crappy. When you get a brand new computer (Dad’s from last summer) where the power button is non-functional, why do they want me to open it up and remove the modem to see if that works? And if they can send someone to the house to fix it if they know what’s wrong, why can’t that person also figure out what’s wrong when they get here, and then fix it?? Why can’t I just send it back or something and have them fix it? Or maybe send it back and let them send me a new one?
Not a good sign when a brand new computer won’t power on for the first time, fresh from the factory (even 8 months later)
I knew I was asking for a rebuttal from Carter when I ragged on support guys. But I’m sorry C, the guy I talked to was a jerk, and didn’t even attempt to help me out. I know he’s not required to since, as you said, within 5 minutes I was messing around with the OS and hardware, but he’s also not required to be an ass.
Let’s be fair to support guys here… You got a brand new machine that worked beautifully. Five minutes into it, you started taking it apart, reinstalling the OS, adding hardware, and he was supposed to peform a sayance to rescue your work? Hmm, no. Lesson: if it ain’t broke…
Support guy would have probably been much happier if you had called him BEFORE jumping in the deep end, and he would have been glad to impart the real answer to your question, which was “don’t ever do that.” (that is almost always the answer in support). Lesson: A stitch in time saves nine.
Also, I’m pretty sure since you could see the system and knew that you had master and slave ROMs, you were abundantly more qualified to realize that you were sticking the CD in the wrong spot. Lesson: Support guys can’t see through the phone.
Though, I agree, the best lesson is… time heals all wounds. Chilling out and looking at it in the morning solves 67% of all problems.
It’s hard to take complaints all day, and it’s easier to not be a jerk to people that follow the recommended guidlines. I have to admit my hair bristles when someone calls and tells me they’ve gone against recommendations. Probably comes across in my tone…
But I didn’t go against recommendations, that’s the point. I followed the instructions included with the software–and it didn’t work.