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Lou Pickney's Online Commentary

My New Tower

Friday
March 23, 2007

It hasn't been the easiest of weeks for me; punctuating that was when, as I played World of Warcraft on Wednesday night, my computer suddenly froze up and gave me the dreaded Microsoft "Blue Screen of Death."

A familiar site from incarnations of the Microsoft operating systems of years gone by, the BSOD page warned me that a problem had crept up with my computer and that I needed to reboot it. So, I did... only to reach a screen warning me with the following message:


Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:

WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/CONFIG/SYSTEM/

You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup using the original Setup CD-Rom.


I tried (and tried) to fix my computer, trying to use the various backup discs that came with my machine (or "Mak-hine" as Baba Booey would say), but nothing could get me in a position to fix the errant files.

My Dell computer had been outstanding for me since I bought it in June 2006, with hardly any problems during my time of ownership. And, luckily for me, I was still within the one year limited warranty that came with the system.

Tonight, finally with some free time to handle the situation, I called the Dell help line. I had to do this from my cell phone; my landline cordless phone starts cutting out after 20 minutes of use, and my old plug-in phone has volume issues (I'd buy a new one, but when I move I'm going to be without a landline phone line, making such a purchase a bad idea.)

I was on hold for about 15 minutes when it rang twice... and went to silence. Ugh. I waited for two minutes, and when nothing happened, I hung up and called again.

The second time around I called and waited even longer before finally getting a customer service rep. We ran through a battery of tests within the diagnostics of the system. I know computers well enough to where I had done most of these checks and attempted fixes myself already, but I played along, hoping that maybe the rep would be able to find something I didn't.

Unfortunately, we had no luck finding a resolution. At one point the rep told me that I'd have to either reformat the hard drive or take it to a computer repair shop to see what they could do. I was not pleased about this; I told her that I needed to think about it, and she put me on hold, presumably to talk with her supervisor.

She came back on the line... and said that they have another option: Dell is going to send me an entire new tower. I was floored. "I've never seen anything like this in a year and a half of working here," the woman on the phone told me.

As you might imagine, I agreed to this plan, and I was told that my new Dell will be arriving in 2-3 weeks. By that point I was nearly to the two hour mark on the call, but it obviously was worth it.

So, for now, I'm using my old computer that I luckily hadn't yet scrapped, literally typing this column on here on my old Dell Dimension 4100. So I'm without the nice computer for a few weeks, but Dell is replacing it, so I'm thankful that they lived up to their warranty.

The weekend is here, and we're in store for some great college basketball games. Should be exciting...


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