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Rekna · 05-22-2007, 08:56 PM

First let me start with a little background. I am a certified PC technician with a bachelors in CS and i'm currently 3 years into my PHD in CS. I have worked extensively with windows and linux many times going into the source and tweaking drivers by hand. I would consider myself an expert on computers.

So naturally every time I am forced to call Dell tech support I get slightly annoyed by the techs there. First before I ever call tech support you can bet that I have tried all the general fixes to my problem, second you can bet that i've read at least twenty forums on the issue i'm having and have been unable to come to a solution to my problem.

Now onto the problem I was having today. For the last 2 years my wireless has disconnected all the time. Every time i'd start to download the wireless would disconnect after a few minutes. Every time i'd ssh into work after a few minutes it would disconnect. This would happen on any access point. You can see how this would get quite annoying. I have called dell twice in the past on this issue and they always say the same thing.

1) update drivers
2) reseed the card
3) flash your router
4) ect

anyway after i spend an hour telling them i've done all that they have done tonight they finally referred me to an expert in the area.

So I get on the phone with this guy and he tells me to go through all the steps above. Great there goes another hour of me explaining i've already done all of this. Finally the guy is grasping at straws and suggests "well you are using mozilla firefox to download and firefox causes problems because it is more secure". My jaw dropped. How can anyone who is an "expert" in computers suggest using IE over firefox. IE is so insecure.... anyway I just had to rant at them telling their customers to use IE. That is just ridiculous. Every good technician will tell there customers/friends/family/ect to use something other than IE.

Anyway in case your curious after a few hours we finally got the problem resolved. It turns out dell's quickset is known to cause problems with wireless connections. Updating that to the latest version fixed it. Of course there was no mention of this in their support docs. Also I would have updated it myself had I known that quickset was somehow even remotely related to the wireless drivers.

05-22-2007, 08:56 PM	#1 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	Why I hate tech support First let me start with a little background. I am a certified PC technician with a bachelors in CS and i'm currently 3 years into my PHD in CS. I have worked extensively with windows and linux many times going into the source and tweaking drivers by hand. I would consider myself an expert on computers. So naturally every time I am forced to call Dell tech support I get slightly annoyed by the techs there. First before I ever call tech support you can bet that I have tried all the general fixes to my problem, second you can bet that i've read at least twenty forums on the issue i'm having and have been unable to come to a solution to my problem. Now onto the problem I was having today. For the last 2 years my wireless has disconnected all the time. Every time i'd start to download the wireless would disconnect after a few minutes. Every time i'd ssh into work after a few minutes it would disconnect. This would happen on any access point. You can see how this would get quite annoying. I have called dell twice in the past on this issue and they always say the same thing. 1) update drivers 2) reseed the card 3) flash your router 4) ect anyway after i spend an hour telling them i've done all that they have done tonight they finally referred me to an expert in the area. So I get on the phone with this guy and he tells me to go through all the steps above. Great there goes another hour of me explaining i've already done all of this. Finally the guy is grasping at straws and suggests "well you are using mozilla firefox to download and firefox causes problems because it is more secure". My jaw dropped. How can anyone who is an "expert" in computers suggest using IE over firefox. IE is so insecure.... anyway I just had to rant at them telling their customers to use IE. That is just ridiculous. Every good technician will tell there customers/friends/family/ect to use something other than IE. Anyway in case your curious after a few hours we finally got the problem resolved. It turns out dell's quickset is known to cause problems with wireless connections. Updating that to the latest version fixed it. Of course there was no mention of this in their support docs. Also I would have updated it myself had I known that quickset was somehow even remotely related to the wireless drivers.