New Network Card, No WiFi

After fighting with Dell tech "support," which kept raising spurious reasons for the problem, cancelling scheduled home visits as covered by my warranty, wasting my time and theirs in lengthy, meaningless phone calls, and so on (and on, and on,) I found a phone number for a part of Dell that deals specifically with warranty problems.

That call took another ninety-plus minutes, but resulted in my computer being shipped to the repair depot; even that was not easy, as the box that Dell sent was too small for the computer. To avoid still further delay, I paid for a proper box; I doubt seriously that Dell will ever reimburse me.

It did not surprise me to find that the repair depot found a faulty network card. I cannot state with authority that what they found was that the card installed at my home was at fault, as the depot's on-line statement is quite short, referring only to what I assumed was the actual part, and when I Googled that, all I found that the part is a network card for Dell Inspiron laptops, which I don't own.

At any rate, after my telling tech "support" many times that there was a hardware fault, that is exactly what the tech at the repair depot found. The computer is now awaiting delivery, but as FedEx is closed today, I don't expect to receive it until Wednesday. I certainly expect that when I turn on the repaired machine, I shall find that WiFi has been restored.

If I should receive a survey about this extremely poorly-handled case, my replies shall be of a rating well below zero.

"Have mercy on oure woe and oure distresse." Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales: The Knight's Tale.

Continuing the saga, the computer was shipped last Saturday, for two-day delivery,, but as Monday was a holiday, delivery was scheduled for Wednesday. In checking the FedEx tracker Tuesday morning, it suddenly changed to state that, as the business was closed, the package could not be delivered, and there was no known delivery date. I managed to get an on-line chat with a FedEx specialist (don't recall the specific title,) who investigated, and told me that was an internal message, not really intended for me.

Computer was delivered yesterday; the depot report stated that the network card had been replaced, as had Windows 10. This entire episode was absurd: A new card was installed at my house, which did not work; the tech opened a new ticket, gave me the number and the phone number to call. That conversation began with the Dell employee making the preposterous claim that my ISP must have changed its configuration during the short time that my computer was turned off. I rebutted that by pointing out that my wife's computer and my smart phone continued to work correctly.

Suffice it to say that, over a period of more than three weeks, what ought to have been done the day after the new card was installed, a second card was installed at the Dell repair depot in Houston, Texas--and I had to spend ovre $24.00 to avoid waiting a few more days for Dell to send a return carton that the computer would actually fit into.

Opened return carton, plugged things in, started computer, which very quickly recognized my WiFi network, but could not connect. After two or three tries, it occurred to me that the MAC address had likely changed, so I used my wife's computer to disable MAC, whereupon my computer connected and proceeded to set up the new instance of Windows 10.

When that finished, I installed Macrium Reflect, changed the bios to boot from the DVD drive, where I had inserted my Reflect rescue disk, and proceeded to restore my computer to the state it had been in the morning of 27Dec2016, before shipping it.

According to Reflect, the restore had been successful, but to my great dismay, the computer would not boot into Windows. (I did notice, in changing the bios back to normal, that there were two entries for Windows boot, which I thought was odd.) I tried a few different ways, whereupon a built-in Dell repair module started, but that ended with a message that it could not fix the problem.

Reset bios to DVD, started the Macrium rescue, quickly found, top left on the screen, a `fix boot' entry; ran that nearly instantly indicated that there was one file too many. Given my state of anguish, I paid little or no attention to what that file was called, just told Macrium to fix the problem. It did, I booted into Windows, and opened my Windows profile as it had been on 27Dec., with WiFi working.

There is more, but this is enough, so I will conclude by stating that, this morning, I got a welcome email from a man who is covering for woman had been dealing with, in response to my email to her yesterday that the computer was now working, but that I was still very upset by the way that this case had been totally mishandled. The man asked if we could discuss this in a phone call, to which I replied that I appreciated the offer, and told him when he could call.

(As an aside, the woman had sent me an email yesterday stating that their FedEx records showed that the computer was scheduled for delivery to the depot yesterday. I corrected that inanity by pointing out that the FedEx record actually showed that the carton had been loaded on truck for delivery to me, not to Dell, a few hours earlier.)