Outsoucing - A Horror Story With a Happy Ending

From: Granny the CDO Troll (anonymous_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 03/12/04 

Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 19:32:27 -0800

I have worked in the same office for 12 years. I was the
office manager for the first 5 years I was there. Two of
the people I work with have been there the whole time I
have. One is an engineer and the other is a "tech" person.
At least once a month the engineer would go running to the
"tech" person completely panicked because something was
horribly wrong and his pc wouldn't boot. The "tech" person
went running over to see what the problem is and ran back
panicked because the pc wouldn't boot and there was an
ominous message that probably meant the computer is shot.
He called another tech to help solve the problem and at
least once the engineer got a new pc. After the 2nd or 3rd
time this happened, I went over to the engineer's office
and pulled the floppy out of the drive and restarted the
pc. AMAZING! It booted. Wow! I only had to do this 7 or 8
times before the engineer started wising up. I don't know
if the "tech" person ever wised up but I am going to find
out. Thanks for telling your sad tale of tech support. It
made me remember all this and now I am considering sticking
a floppy in the "tech" person's pc tomorrow morning just to
see if he still panics.

>-----Original Message-----
>This morning, I turned on my computer, and received an
error message:
>"NTLDR is missing. Press any key to restart". After
several attempts at
>pressing the "enter" key and getting the same message,
rebooting several
>times and getting the same message, I called Dell Phone
Support.
>
>
>
>The technician somewhere in India told me that this was a
relatively common
>problem, and required reinstalling the file in the I386
folder. He then
>went through a long sequence of steps to try to reinstall
the file from the
>Windows XP reinstallation CD. He kept running into
problems, getting the
>message "Access denied" when we tried accessing the I386
folder.
>Eventually, after about an hour on the phone, he told me
that several files
>had been corrupted, and the only thing left to do was to
re-format the hard
>drive, reinstall windows, and try to rebuild the system.
I was told that
>the process requires about 2 - 3 hours to complete.
>
>
>
>I decided to do so using a local computer servicing
company which had
>previously installed Ghost and made a backup image of my
hard drive. I
>started out by explaining the NTLDR error message. The
following is a
>nearly verbatim transcript of our conversation"
>
>
>
>Local Tech: "Do you have a floppy in the floppy drive?"
>
>
>
>Me: "No --- Wait a minute - yes I do! I guess I should
remove it?"
>
>
>
>Local Tech: "Yes, then reboot"
>
>
>
>Me: "It's booting correctly - Is that what the problem was?"
>
>
>
>Local Tech: "Yes - That's the message you get when you
try to boot from the
>floppy drive - It's a standard cryptic MS error message.
>
>
>
>So how to I rate the advice the Dell Indian technician
provided?
>
>
>
> 1.. Not only didn't he know the simple and apparently
obvious solution to
>what is an extremely common problem - a badly designed
Windows XP error
>message.
>
>
> 2.. Not only did he waste an hour of my time on a
fruitless exercise when
>a knowledgeable tech could have solved the problem in ten
seconds.
>
>
> 3.. But - if I had blindly followed his advice, I would
have at best, lost
>all the programs, data files and everything else I've
added since purchase.
>
>
>To summarize - this incident has severely shaken my faith
in the quality of
>Dell support service, I should mention that when I told
the local tech of
>the procedure that the Dell support tech had followed, and the
>recommendation he gave - the local tech told me "those
guys don't know very
>much - they just follow scripts, and rush you into
replacing equipment and
>software."
>
>
>--
>PT
>
>
>.
>

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