OT: DELL Computer Died - Full Recovery

boomhower wrote on 2/13/2005, 7:18 PM
FYI for all you Dell folks out there........

My editing desktop is a Dell 4600 P4 HT etc.... and on Saturday it went dead and would not start again. Got on the laptop and went to the Dell forums (much faster than calling India) to find an answer and found many many many people with the same problem on the same series desktop and all dying about the same time frame (13-15 mos after purchase). Dell was trying to tell everyone to buy an extended warranty/ replace the mobo/dance in a tight circle while chanting "Gateway Sucks" etc.... Someone figured out (after buying mobo) that it was the power supply but Dell refuses to acknowledge they may have purchased a huge lot of bad ps's. They are still telling people to buy a new mobo and or an extended warranty.

I went to CompUSA today and picked up a new ATX ps and, like magic, it started working again. Strange thing is, I had the tech test my old ps and he said it should be working based on his diagnostic tool. Strange......

I doubt Dell will ever fess up and reimburse me for the ps but I can always wish.....Just glad no damage was done to the system (lots of Vegas stuff on there).

I'm adding the Dell forum to my list of forums I'm thankful for (short list.....it and this one)

[edit] Not too long after purchasing the same Dell, my DVD burner stopped working (would not recognize the DVD) I called and they told me to REFORMAT my hard drive! I told the guy that was kind of like burning down your house because you saw a roach but he insisted that was the ONLY answer. I hung up and it hit me I was using a new batch of DVD's. Changed to a new batch and it worked fine.....gotta love that tech support!

Comments

richardfrost wrote on 2/13/2005, 7:37 PM
Glad to see you didn't lose any of your work. Last summer, I bought a new PC for the house and gave the old one to my son for his stop motion work. I remodelled his room, installed a new computer desk and shelving, and a storage system for his Lego (he makes Lego stop-mo films). I got the old PC and spent a couple of days tidying it up, upgrading software, checkdsk, defrag, the works. For a three year old PC, it really was running well. with a 900MHz Athlon and 684Mb Ram, it could run Vegas 4.0 really sweetly.

Anyway, the last thing I did was remove the side panel and vacuum out all the dust. I replaced the panel, took the PC upstairs, plugged it in and KABOOM. The best guess is that I dislodged some dust cleaning out the machine and caused the PS to short circuit. The surge took out the motherboard, both HDs, the DVD ROM and DVD Writer, the Graphics and Sound cards. Only the firewire card survived (and lives on in the replacement PC).

In all that work I put in, I never backed the machine up, as there was nothing crucial on it - except my son's 3 months painstaking stop motion work! I was gutted and he nearly killed me. He missed the deadline for the competition he was working towards, and he only finished remaking the film this last Christmas, having needed to take a few months to steel himself to redo all the stop-mo.

The moral of this story - backup, regular, thorough and often!
theceo wrote on 2/13/2005, 8:09 PM
I remember Mike from when he used to run those ugly full page ads in Computer World or whatever, we used to get calls way back when to buy their junk. We used a major local distributor then so if something went wrong, we knew they would be around. Amazing how Dell actually became something, from their original ads we thought they were a scammer. Never owned a Dell and probably never will. Even though a buddy of mine pays a huge amount for lappies for his team to always be up.

I guess I'm just a sucker for buying name brands at retail stores now. Way back when we did use some local guys to put together boxes for our programs, some are still working 17 years later. Amazing what you can buy from a local shop.

Never bought a Dell, his first ads turned me off. And I've bought thousands of computers over the years.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 2/13/2005, 9:07 PM
> I went to CompUSA today and picked up a new ATX ps and, like magic, it started working again.

You were very lucky. I had one of the Dells that had a proprietary PSU and Mobo (8100). The connector was the same but it was wired different. The replacement paltry 250W PSU was $135!!! And they didn’t make a bigger one. Needless to say I never bought a Dell again.

> they told me to REFORMAT my hard drive... he insisted that was the ONLY answer

You misunderstood him. What he was trying to tell you is that it was the ONLY answer he knows how to give! ;-)

~jr
TheHappyFriar wrote on 2/13/2005, 9:22 PM
My HP DVD drive stopped working a couple months ago. I got the extend warrenty from Circuit City ($15) back when I bought the player (almost 3 years ago now for $200). Well, I called the CC support number, they said "blow in the drive." I did. They said "we'll send you a new one or we'll give you your $$$ back."

Ends up I got $200 back. :D So, I went & bought a brand new Sony DRU-710A for $150. I also got the $15 warenty. If I can manage to wear them out every two years I'll ALWAYS have a new burner. :) I like that kind of tech support.
theceo wrote on 2/13/2005, 10:43 PM
HP = Happy People most of the time