Welcome to Dell Hell
April 25th, 2009 . by TexasFredWelcome to Dell Hell
I spent ALL day Friday and a good part of Friday night visiting a place called DELL HELL!!
I have a Dell machine, 2 of em actually, the wife has her laptop, I use the big model at the desk, and the one I use went down. It appears I had an Adware infection that blew everything, and Norton wouldn’t remove it. Norton found it alright, caught 3 parts of it and removed them, but there was one part that just couldn’t be dumped.
So, I visited with Dell Technical Support in India, the ONLY Tech Support they have now, and spent approximately 6 hours on the phone with this guy that finally managed to kill my computer completely. 
So, after the 2nd try he gets it all restored and tells me it was NOT his fault, it was Norton. He told me I could never use Norton again, I could only use a brand of virus/malware protection that Dell was selling. He unloaded ALL of my personal settings, dumped IE7 and Service Pack 3, told me I could NEVER use them again either, they were NOT compatible with Windows XP, and strangely, those are what came ON the thing, new from the factory, but suddenly they are incompatible. 
The antivirus/malware that he recommended was only going to cost us $249.00, but since we were loyal Dell customers they could install it for us at a one time only price of $139.00. As he was telling me this, my wife was online on her computer and found the exact same products at Best Buy, Office Depot and Office Max for around $50.00. Needless to say, we did NOT buy the product from Dell.
I nearly started an international incident but I got *Slum Dog* to clear ALL virus, malware and Adware crap. Once completed I was done with him. A few hours later I had Norton reloaded and updated, I had IE7 and SP3 loaded and running, I got my personal settings reset, the computer was running just like new and I was done for the night. Today it is STILL running like new, Norton works just fine, the automatic setup for virus scan went off just like it was set up to do, it did a full sweep and nothing more was found. IE7 and SP3 are running in perfect concert, I have my Google Toolbar with Spell Check in place and ALL is well in the TexasFred blog world!
A recommendation to ALL, Dell is a great computer in my opinion but I will never own another one, their Tech Support in in India and their true intent is to make more money for Michael Dell, sell all the extended warranty they can and say “Thank you very much” as many times as possible.
I will NEVER buy another Dell product. If you are in the market to buy a computer, beware of the great price and promises of 24/7 award winning Dell Service, the prices are great, but their Tech Support sucks…
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Stop using Norton and move to the free and highly recommended Avast
http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html
Free… You get what you pay for…
Call me old fashioned but I don’t download ANYTHING from the net… I appreciate the thought but I really HATE spyware…
I never open attachments in email either, no matter WHO sends it, if it’s an attachment, I delete the whole email…
I know I miss some good pics and jokes but I miss a lot of other stuff too…
I stopped using Norton several years ago. It wasn’t updating and then it became overnight’ incompatible’ with my system. Norton wanted me to do all these tricks, but since Norton was the problem I just shit-canned them and I don’t recommend them ever! The Norton ‘Help Desk’ was in India and useless as tits on a boar hog. I can’t understand that G/D singsong bullshit they call English!
I use McAfee now, it comes free with my Comcast service and it works great.
Dell I don’t know about, I hear pro and con so far the cons are in the lead.
IT WASN’T NORTON!!
It was an incompetent WOG that had nowhere else to blame HIS screw up when he killed MY system…
I am not trying to solicit testimonials for or against anything, I have used Norton for years, and it works quite well for me, as does Internet Explorer… Dell, and all those Indian sons a bitches can die and go to hell!
I have Norton reinstalled and it is working marvelously… The goddamned WOG said I would NOT be able to access the net if I so much as loaded Norton, and if I updated it I may destroy my computer, I MUST use their protection…
The bastard was trying to sell me some SHIT…
Fred,
I’m no expert but I have been working with and ‘dealing’ with computer issues since 1998 (Bellsouth, AT&T, Charter & Kroger Tech support) and what I use to combat the ‘bad stuff’ and have found to be a rather good combination of virus/adware/malware/trojans is as follows:
1) AVG anti-virus. It’s free. It works better than Norton or McAfee.
2) ZoneAlarm free firewall. Again it works much better than the aforementioned Norton or McAfee.
3)Install Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool. Run it at least once a week. Again, it’s free.
4)Upgrade from IE7 to IE8. Or better yet, install and use the latest Firefox browser (or Chrome-or Iron). THEY ARE SAFER THAN IE!
5)Turn off or uninstall ALL instant messengers. They’re completely vulnerable to ‘bad stuff’.
6) Run a system restore at least once a week. Run defrag and disk cleanup at least once a week.
Again, I’m no expert by any stretch of the imagination but I can claim that I’ve never had any virus/adware issues since well, 1998.
Thanks,
Your bud Butch.
Run defrag and disk cleanup at least once a week? I run em every day…
Fred,
Correction: I wrote run a system restore once a week. What I meant to write is run a system restore POINT once a week.
Sorry…
Mine sets a restore point every day or 2, and I just ran Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool, all is well!!
I have had Norton for two years, no problems. Had McAfee for four years before that, no problems.
Haven’t run defrag in probably a year or more. System is running fine on DSL hookup here.
I do use firefox though being 99% of most viruses are written to attack IE.
Also, I thought Dell had moved their customer support back to the USA, after their customer support ratings went into the trash can with all of the complaints from customer’s dealings with India employees.
I guess they did not move it back after all.
Hopefully I will not need them anytime soon. I let my support drop years ago anyway.
I have had this Dell since 2004, and it has been good so far.
The Dell itself is awesome, their Techs are the problem, Indian sons a bitches…
Norton works great for me too, I got hit with more than Norton could handle, I know where it came from too, but that’s OK, the favor was returned…
Run Disc Cleanup and Defrag Top, it WILL speed you up, run em often, it clear the clutter…
I have a custom system, though it’s pretty standard fare. I use a company I’ve been using since I first went on line back in ’96 or so. They have always treated me right. I use Firefox, Avast, and AVG, and am careful. I picked up a virus a couple of months ago and it fried the hard drive.
I dropped DSL for the very same reasons, I don’t like talking to bum f**k Egypt, India, Sri Lanka, or the Philippines. They can all ‘bite me’.
Butch is right on, I refuse to pay for antivirus, spyware, malware or firewall programs. I use everything Butch said. You definitely don’t need to defrag everyday, that is way overkill and actually bad for you hard drive in the long run.
I am not a “Windows” expert, but I’ve used a windows box of one kind or another everyday, and have so for a very long time now. I fairly proficient with Linux, QNX, embedded hardware and the like, I use very little anti-viral software, don’t need to as I practice safe computing.
* Never ever use IE, I mean never, zilch, zero.
* Only accept commercial emails with Outlook at work, but use Thunderbird at home
* Firefox is set to ask about cookies
* I use noscript to meter who I allow to run java-script on my computer http://noscript.net/getit
* At work I have AVG running, corporate wide thing of course, seems to be decent, but consumes serious horse power though
* Oh, at home, my primary web browsing machine is running MacOS
best of luck Fred.
Fred,
I work at Dell headquarters in Round Rock, Texas and I would like to know if there is anything else that I can help you with. Please contact me back directly at my email address and I will be glad to assist.
Brad L
Dell Community Liaison
I DID contact you at your Dell email address, and I am waiting to hear back…