Bad Dell Alienware Experience

[Murgatroyd]

I un-boxed my brand new Dell Alienware 17 R3 laptop today. I've been limping on with a 9 year old dell Inspiron 1520 laptop, which takes so long to do anything that I feel I ought to be round the back of it cranking it with a handle. I wanted something with the specs that would play modern, High Spec games, (like "Everyone's gone to the Rapture").

The damn thing won't even start! I have been preparing myself for setting it up for days, finding or renewing all the passwords to all my forums, and other sites, backing up all my files so that I can transfer them to the new one, and whipping myself into a fervor of pleasant anticipation... And I've been sent a Friday afternoon Lemon!

I've tried to start it half a dozen times. I either get a frozen start screen, or a blue screen of doom with error code 0xc000001, and a message that my brand new laptop needs to be repaired! Of course it's impossible to get any response from Dell customer services on a Sunday, and I've sent an e-mail to dell explaining the situation. Tomorrow I expect to get a response from some self important Dell tech-head telling me to open it up and mess with it's innards and I won't bloody do it!

I'm an complete and total technophobe and have the quaint old fashioned idea that when I spend nearly £1700 quid on a top rated, well reviewed laptop it should function as advertised!

I spent extra money on having the RAM upgraded to 16 gig or meg or whatever it is, upgraded the hard drive specs to a 256 SSD + 1 Terabyte "spinning" HD, and to have MS office installed. (That is supposed to have a 25 digit key number to validate it, and I'm damned if I can find that anywhere!). I even invested another £30 odd quid for a nice neoprene carry case (plus P&P which is also bloody expensive!)

All in all I'm chewing nails and spitting out rivets!

Yes, I've tried to charge up the battery by leaving it plugged into the AC adaptor for the 4 bloody hours that was suggested as the first charging time, and still nothing! All I get is a message on the blue screen of doom telling me: "System Thread Exception Not Handled"!

If and when they uplift it and send me one that has been properly tested and actually works I also expect to have the start date of my warranty revised to the day I finally get a functional machine, or am I just whistling in the wind?

[taotoo]

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19523366

https://www.google.com/search?q=0xc000001&oq=0xc000001&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

One option might be to google the factory reset key combo and see if that fixes it.

[MJCM]

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19523366

https://www.google.com/search?q=0xc000001&oq=0xc000001&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

One option might be to google the factory reset key combo and see if that fixes it.

Good Advice, BUT DON'T do anything like that unless you have spoken to Dell Customer Service and they advice you to do that !!

Edited July 11, 2016 by MJCM

[Pib]

Contact Dell or whatever store you bought the computer first.

[DaveBKK]

Relax my man. Computers are complicated tools with a zillion different little parts and connections that all have to work in sync. Something can get jarred loose in shipping or just happens to fail by random chance (it happens), The important thing is how Dell responds to and addresses the problem.

I know you're all excited about the new computer.... but shit happens.

Edited July 11, 2016 by DaveBKK

[Murgatroyd]

Thanks for your words of wisdom and good advice Guys! The good thing is that I'm currently in the UK, and therefor enjoy a degree more purchase protection under the law than I would if I was still living in Thailand. The other good thing is that I paid for it with Paypal, and that gives me a further layer of protection, because I can just tell Paypal that the purchase was faulty and get my money back more easily... However I await Dells response to my polite e-mail to their customer support with considerable interest!

[Murgatroyd]

Dell have agreed to send a courier to pick it up tomorrow and to issue a full refund. So all's well that ends well. Back to the drawing board to select a different high spec replacement!