Tech Support From Hell

Last night, I turned the computer off. Wow, I hear you say. Wow indeed, because when my mum came to turn it on this morning, it appeared to have given up the ghost and gone to live in silicone heaven.

It loaded the BIOS just fine, and I was even able to use F2 and F12 to get into Setup and the Boot Menu. However, after the BIOS screen, we were faced with a ‘message’ which the computer’s electronic rectum had evidently thought hilarious to expel. The message was ‘L 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99… etc’.

After much fannying about, many phone calls, and a run through Dell’s hardware diagnostic CD (which produced ‘passes’ for every piece of hardware), my mum rang DHell’s Tech Support centre. The woman on the other end of the phone, after playing us a tinny rendition of some 1980’s pop song for 5 minutes, eventually got round to offering us something in the way of help. First, we were told to just try and let the computer boot up normally, and explain the message. It took another two minutes for her to brain to process the incoming vocal transmission, and she finally told us to unplug everything, and leave just the power cord in the back of the tower. Quite how she managed to diagnose anything with the monitor cable unplugged is a mystery to me. She realised the rather fundamental flaw in her plan, though, and we were advised to plug the monitor back in.

Still no luck. Then, we were told to unplug everything and hold down the power button for ten seconds, which apparently performs a power drain, or something. Whether or not this actually did anything remains unknown, but we plugged everything back in and it still didn’t boot.

The next thing Mrs. Remote Assistance told us to do was press F8 ‘while the Dell logo was on the screen’. She wanted to get into Safe Mode, though evidently she didn’t understand that she was asking us to use the keyboard before it had been loaded. Needless to say, we were informed of a ‘keyboard failure’ by the computer, and the L 99 message reared its ugly head once more. The help woman then told us to try another keyboard. How the hell did this crazy bitch get a job?!

She then said that the only way we could use the computer again, would be to get a technician out to wipe the hard drive, then reinstall Windows. When asked how we’d go about getting a backup, she said ‘I’m not really sure’.

At this point, my mum got a bit stressed, and ended the phone call by saying ‘You haven’t been very helpful. Goodbye’.

The problem was still there though, and it didn’t appear to want to go away. I remembered reading about the problem somewhere, (I think it was black0ps), but I couldn’t remember if (a) there was a solution, and (b) if there was, what the hell it was.

Then, I had a brainwave.

Sometime last year, I installed Mandriva Linux LE 2005. It was great, but I couldn’t get it to work with my BT Voyager modem, and thus it was rendered a bit useless. When I uninstalled it a couple of months ago, though, I never removed the LILO boot manager. I thought that this might have been the cause of the problem, so I decided to try and reinstall Linux.
This took about half an hour, and when it had finished, lo-and-behold, LILO returned, and I could boot into Windows.

It turns out the problem is because of a corrupt Master Boot Record (MBR). I’m not entirely sure how it got corrupted in the first place, but there you go.

So, not only is Linux a better OS all round (nonexistent support for BT Voyager Modems notwithstanding), but it can help lesser OS’s get their arses back into shape.

Three cheers for Tux!

Oh, and if I ever meet that bloody tech support woman…