Microsoft Stuff

I apologize in advance for my typos and attitude. Elizabeth... will have to fend for herself.

Chat No. 2 - 22 March 2007

Session Started with Agent (RTS Elizabeth L)

Agent (RTS Elizabeth L): "Thank you for patiently waiting. You have reached Dell Hardware Warranty Chat Support. My name is Elizabeth and I will be assisting you today. In order for me to help you, can you provide details about the issue you're having?"

Matthew Anderson: "I have a case number from this afternoon, 1--------."

Matthew Anderson: "I performed the regedit as explained to me, and rebooted."

Matthew Anderson: "But I still can't start the Dell Express Vista Upgrade Assistant DVD."

Agent (RTS Elizabeth L): "To ensure we are working with the correct system, are you chatting about the Inspiron 640M listed on your account?"

Matthew Anderson: "Yes. It's actually the E1405 model."

Agent (RTS Elizabeth L): "Will the drive read other media and dvds?"

Matthew Anderson: "Yes. It plays movies and CDs fine. The problems is strictly with the Vista Upgrade DVDs supplied by Dell. BUT, out of morbid curiosity, I was able to start the upgrade DVDs on a non-Vista capable Latitude. So the DVDs appear to be OK. It's the DVD drive in my Inspiron that can't recognize them."

Matthew Anderson: "And I applied the Dell patch for the Philips DVD drive."

Agent (RTS Elizabeth L): "I'm sending you a link showing how to do it. let me know if this is what you tried"

Agent (RTS Elizabeth L) sends page"

Matthew Anderson: "The links seems more detailed than the guide included with the DVDs. I'll follow these steps and see what happens. However, I can't imagine following those steps is going to make the DVD drive recognize the DVD."

Agent (RTS Elizabeth L): "It doesn't seem like there is a problem with the DVD."

Matthew Anderson: "No. The problem is with the DVD drive not recognizing the DVD."

Matthew Anderson: "This is supposed to be a Vista-capable laptop."

Matthew Anderson: "But to not even be able to start the Upgrade DVD is pretty pathetic."

Matthew Anderson: "Clearly there was a hardware issue."

Matthew Anderson: "There was a CRITICAL update I downloaded that was apparently related to the Vista upgrade"

Matthew Anderson: "But it did nothing."

Agent (RTS Elizabeth L): "We can run diagnostic on the hardware to see if there is any problems. Also to verify if the DVD can be read, boot to the cd, if it is able to boot the hardware is reading the cd fine."

Matthew Anderson: "What should I do?"

Agent (RTS Elizabeth L): "Shut down that computer, then hold the fn key while you press the power button to turn it back on. This will run a quick diagnostic that will test some common hardware problems. When it finishes, it will ask to boot to the utility partition, choose yes, and then choose Custom test and test the hard drive."

Matthew Anderson: "OK. I'll give it a try."