Joined up Dell support

(not)

I previously blogged about the problem with the video card on my Dell laptop.

On the Friday I called Dell up having had no response from their website. They talked me through some tests which included reinstalling the device driver in Windows and reinstalling Windows itself. Neither of these I could do as I don’t run Windows. Besides which it was plainly obviously a hardware problem and not a driver/software issue. Anyone with just a few months of hardware maintenance skills on computers could figure that out!

As I previously blogged they arranged on the Monday for an engineer to come to my workplace on the Tuesday. On the monday afternoon I was taken ill and went home. Before I left I called up Dell and said that as I’d be at home on Tuesday – off work sick – could the engineer please come there to fix my laptop and not to my work address. The guy on the phone told me the engineer was already booked to go to my home address! Good job I was off sick!

So anyway he turned up and replaced the video card, so now all is okay.

Then today I get this email from Dell in response to my website contact. Firstly here’s what I sent to Dell via their website:-

***********************************************
System Label: XPS/Inspiron XPS Gen 2 Europe

Problem: Video Adapter
Operating System: Linux
Error Text: No error message.
Problem Description: The screen output is corrupted from the moment the computer is
powered up, before it gets to the operating system.
Trouble Shooting Steps: Run the Dell Pre-boot System Assesment Build 3017. It
technically passes the tests but the screen is badly corrupted. I have taken
photographs of the problem which you can see by visiting my gallery. The URL is

http://gallery.popey.com/gallery/DellInspironXPSGen2Problem

***********************************************

Here is their reply:-

Thank you for your email.

Click on start, right click on my computer, select properties from menu, click on
hardware tab.

click on device manager, click on plus to the left of display adapter, right click
on graphics driver,

select uniinstall, click on ok to unistall this programme.

restart computer and xp will re-install graphics driver.

check iff this resolves your  problem.

Thany you for your mail.

james.

xpx technical support.

Oh deary dear.