I still plan to finish my WSOP trip report (at least two - cash games and the 2k recap).
I was having laptop issues before I left for LV. It wasn't a huge deal - my battery (and replacement battery) wouldn't charge. I had a few other glitches related to an attached monitor and incredibly long load time at startup. Dell decided the fix was to replace the motherboard.
The replacment motherboard and tech arrived Friday morning. After he finished installating the new mb, he turned it on and everything seemed to work fine.
I got home early Friday night to watch the kids because my wife, sister-in-law and nephews were heading to the Dane Cook show. I decided to pass on the show after falling asleep at his last Orlando show (combination of lack of sleep, too many beers, him coming on 1 1/2 hr late, and him just not being that funny). After I got the kids to bed, I fired up the laptop with plans to play a long cash game session. My laptop had other plans. Windows XP wouldn't load all the way and I could only start it in safe mode. After 4 hours on the phone with Dell and several diagnostic tests later, they informed me that it had to be a software issue because nothing came back on the tests. I suggested, "Umm, I dunno much about these here computer thingies but it seems like the new mb might have a loose connection or be bad since I didn't have this problem until it was replaced earlier today." The Dell rep from India named "Bob" informed me that because the tests came up negative for hardware problems that it HAD to be a software problem.
Sunday, I got around to calling Dell back and they walked me through the reinstallation process. The Windows XP re-installation was complete about 45 minutes later. The machine went to start and wound up in the exact same loop as before. Yeah, definitely a software problem. aklfjafkdlafjslkl.
They are now sending another new mb and hard drive (with some preloaded software) tomorrow. Hopefully, this fixes the problem. As of now I am working on a new desktop that I bought today that will double as our new server once my laptop gets fixed.
I'm jonesing a little for online poker since I wasn't able to play over the weekend.
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Good luck getting much cooperation from Dell on this. I had almost exactly the same thing happen with a Dell desktop and it was a friggin' six-week nightmare getting it resolved. My problem started when their tech screwed up the installation of a replacement power supply, but they blamed it on software issues too--until Windows repeatedly failed to install.
I spent several days dancing with their customer service people and actually was told by a "supervisor" in India that there was no one in the entire company who could authorize sending me a replacement computer. At that point I went commando and tracked down every name and email I could find that appeared to belong to someone who could help me and wound up with someone in their executive customer resolution group who did get me a new computer. I still have her name and email if you need it.
Jestocost
4:15 PM