Dell XPS M1530 broke after 4 months

Ozziej

I've heard alot about customer service issues with dell but never experienced them so heres my experience.
Bought a Dell XPS laptop in June. Refused the extra service contract as say it was under warranty for year. Had to get Vista as they wouldn't supply XP. Vista was frustrating to get used due due to User access control and fact it gave no choice when it updated. Just shut down computer there and then restarted and reconfigured. On thursday it went through this process and I left it alone and when I came back it was off. Upon restart it ran check disc then loaded up as normal but when I tried to do anything on main screen it crashed and screen went blue. Upon restart it ran same check disc with talk of repairing orphaned files then crashed at same point again. So tried this a few times with same results although sometimes it ran startup repair which finishes with no errors.
So I thought my contract was with Dell and rang their service number. The guy went through a hardware diagnostic test and was very polite and mentioned if this went ok he would put me onto software support and they would talk through fixing it. He asked me to run hardware diagnostic (pressed function QA with power button) then when no errors came up rang me back and I was on hold for 1hr 30 mins for customer representative. When he came on phone he said he would talk me through it for 89 euro. Some warranty! I thought my contract for the purchase was with Dell not Microsoft.
Off to Computer Doctor for me.

kikel

Ozziej wrote: »

I've heard alot about customer service issues with dell but never experienced them so heres my experience.
Bought a Dell XPS laptop in June. Refused the extra service contract as say it was under warranty for year. Had to get Vista as they wouldn't supply XP. Vista was frustrating to get used due due to User access control and fact it gave no choice when it updated. Just shut down computer there and then restarted and reconfigured. On thursday it went through this process and I left it alone and when I came back it was off. Upon restart it ran check disc then loaded up as normal but when I tried to do anything on main screen it crashed and screen went blue. Upon restart it ran same check disc with talk of repairing orphaned files then crashed at same point again. So tried this a few times with same results although sometimes it ran startup repair which finishes with no errors.
So I thought my contract was with Dell and rang their service number. The guy went through a hardware diagnostic test and was very polite and mentioned if this went ok he would put me onto software support and they would talk through fixing it. He asked me to run hardware diagnostic (pressed function QA with power button) then when no errors came up rang me back and I was on hold for 1hr 30 mins for customer representative. When he came on phone he said he would talk me through it for 89 euro. Some warranty! I thought my contract for the purchase was with Dell not Microsoft.
Off to Computer Doctor for me.

unfortunetly you only got a hardware warranty. Alot get caught out by this.
With regard to some of the earlier comments. XP should of being available on some laptops in the business section of the Dell website. User access control can be turned off in control panel> User. Make life alot easier.

Did ya get recovery disks, Slap it in and start again.

Ozziej

kikel wrote: »

unfortunetly you only got a hardware warranty. Alot get caught out by this.
With regard to some of the earlier comments. XP should of being available on some laptops in the business section of the Dell website. User access control can be turned off in control panel> User. Make life alot easier.

Did ya get recovery disks, Slap it in and start again.

Ironically enough I didn't buy a business laptop as I am not self employed and was worried I would negate my warranty if they found out. Thank God I backed my photos 2 weeks ago or I would have lost 6 years of them. Do you mean install discs yes I have them. This will mean a full reinstall with loss of data, correct?

Alanstrainor

The laptop isn't "broken" as such. It's hardware is working fine, just needs a reinstall of vista by the sounds of it.

b0bsquish

Turn on the laptop, start bashing F12 like a good' un, put in the install disk, and seletc the boot from cd/dvd option. Then just follow the instructions on screen.

Voodu Child

Ozziej wrote: »

Thank God I backed my photos 2 weeks ago or I would have lost 6 years of them. Do you mean install discs yes I have them. This will mean a full reinstall with loss of data, correct?

You can most likely gain access to whatever is on the drive before you reinstall Vista.

A simple way would be to use a Linux LiveCD. This will give you basically a working OS from the CD drive, and you can access the hard-drive, and copy whatever you want onto for example a USB drive.

If you do a reinstall of Vista, it will wipe whatever is on that partition - this is why some people keep 2 partitions (for example C: and ), so you can keep all your 'files' on the partition, and if you ever want to reinstall the OS, it can stay untouched.

You may not need to actually do a full reinstall, depending on the problem, you might be able to just repair it (from the Vista disc).

Dartz

Repair installs are messy though. If you're going to do it, you might aswell wipe the lot. I get the odd bad update too, such is a fact of M$ life. Recovering stuff is easy, especially with a *buntu live CD. Just save what you want to an external drive, then do a full format and reinstall.

It gives a cleaner end-product, and has the added benefit of removing a lot of crap you don't specifically want to keep.

2: I thought it was possible to turn automatic updating and UAC off. I think I have mine set to check weekly, or something like that. I can't remember because it's usually updating when I ask it to, rather than buy itself. I left UAC on, because it's better to put up with it, than to turn it off. Though I am a bit tinfoil hat about things.

Ozziej

Dartz wrote: »

Repair installs are messy though. If you're going to do it, you might aswell wipe the lot. I get the odd bad update too, such is a fact of M$ life. Recovering stuff is easy, especially with a *buntu live CD. Just save what you want to an external drive, then do a full format and reinstall.

It gives a cleaner end-product, and has the added benefit of removing a lot of crap you don't specifically want to keep.

2: I thought it was possible to turn automatic updating and UAC off. I think I have mine set to check weekly, or something like that. I can't remember because it's usually updating when I ask it to, rather than buy itself. I left UAC on, because it's better to put up with it, than to turn it off. Though I am a bit tinfoil hat about things.

Thanks Dartz. Repair install ran through but no difference so will reinstall Vista. Any tips on doing it in a custom way or is it idiot proof. I think I will leave UAC on for the moment. I will check the updating controls and give myself more control over it.