Windows 10: am I alone? - NOT amateur radio

For about a week now my main PC has been unreliable. It was upgraded to Windows 10 without any issues months ago, but it has been problematic recently and says it is now missing a file and won't boot. I recently did a defrag. Although this is a well used machine, and this may be coincidence, I seem to have had issues since the BIG Windows 10 update which took 1.5 hours to install.

Am I alone? Is this my PC or a more general issue? Incidentally the PC in question is a Dell Inspiron  i5 with 1TB hard drive.

Inspiron battery issue

Advice needed! I am in need of some help please.

I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop which recently was updated to Windows 10. Most of the time it was used as the shack computer with a mains cable attached. Recently, it has been used elsewhere in the house mainly for web browsing. It has an after-market battery pack that is not that old.

My problem is the battery (which started at 30% charged) has gradually lost charge and now shows 0% and the laptop only works when plugged in on mains. Despite adjusting all the battery management plans the battery will not charge! I cannot see how to make it charge at all.

My question is....

Is there a way of making the battery charge, maybe by adjusting something in the BIOS?

The joy of Windows or is it Dell?

Last night my new Win 8.1 Dell PC decided it needed to install updates. I chose to  switch off until restarting this morning. It said "Loading Windows updates. Do not switch off your computer". Being a good boy, I obeyed and waited as it got to 81% complete ...... and waited, and waited, had breakfast, went for a walk, had more breakfast and still it said 81%, please wait. In all it had now been 1 hr 40 minutes!

At this point I was about to ring up that nice Dell man in India when I decided to turn off the PC and try again. THIS time it sailed through 81% and reached 100% complete in no time. PC works fine! What the heck was going on?

WSPR with new Win 8.1 PC

I had a surprise today: my Inspiron 15R does NOT have a touch sensitive screen after all. Dell assure me I did not order, or pay for such a screen  This is not an important feature.

The next surprise was a sort of malware program called "optimizer pro" which managed to install itself and wanted me to buy a subscription to reomve hundreds of errors. A free call to 0800 028 2660 ( the FREE Dell support number) soon had this removed and the PC fully checked remotely. WSPR, Spectran and Ccleaner all installed and worked without issues. Ccleaner is a recommended free download to do the same and a lot more. I run Ccleaner regularly to check PC health.

I tried WSPR on 20m and 10m and the software ran without issues under Win 8.1. A nice surprise with Win 8.1 was that the PC's clock is already sync'd to an internet time server so that timing was not an issue with WSPR. No need to install special software for this purposes.

As far as I can see, Win 8.1 seems to do all I need.

Dell - they listened

A few days ago I mentioned my run-in with Dell support and their refusal to repair my laptop's power connector socket under their 4 year hardware warranty claiming it was "wear and tear". Well one of my readers Mark G0NMY kindly sent Michael Dell's email address michael@dell.com - he is the founder and MD - so last night I wrote a well reasoned letter to him explaining my disappointment with the level of customer service and why I believed they were wrong.

Blow me down, this morning I got a phone call from the corporate office saying they had arranged an engineer to come out next Tuesday to fix the laptop free of charge!  To say I was amazed is an understatement. It took conversations with 4 people and an email to the MD of Dell to get the correct response but, bless them, they've "come good" in the end.

So, thank you for listening Dell. You are in my good books again.

Dell - rubbish service

My wife has a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop which came with a 4 year hardware warranty. It has a year to run before the warranty expires.

For nearly a year now the hexagonal power connector socket has been intermittent. So today I contacted Dell to get the connector replaced under warranty. The socket is on a small daughter board along with a couple of USB and other connectors.  After about 15 minutes on the phone to India I was fobbed off with "this is wear and tear" and I would be charged to get it repaired. A quick look on the net shows pages and pages of people complaining of the same issue.  It is a DESIGN WEAKNESS, as clear as day to me.

The power socket is on the side of the PC and it is all but impossible not to put a slight strain on the socket. Older laptops, ones that do not have built-in obsolescence features that is, have the power connector fixed so that any strain on the plug is not transferred to the socket. One laptop I have is now 12 years old and still going strong.

After being passed up 3 levels at Dell in India, I was passed to the Dell Legal Manager and Customer Relations Manager for UK and Europe who again, despite my reasoning, still stood by the "it's wear and tear" statement. It may be wear and tear, but only because with this poor design it impossible not to have wear and tear!

So, I will attempt the repair myself now, following the instructions on the internet from very many others with the same issue.

Dell will never again be graced with my business. Next time I shall buy from a decent manufacturer who listens carefully to customers and who actually cares, assuming there is one!

In my opinion, this demonstrates a total ignorance of how to manage customers well. In my business life I was taught  to value customers so they came back again and again. At three levels in Dell, not one of them seemed to understand that a dissatisfied customer rarely comes back and shares his bad experience with at least 10 others. By this blog I hope to reach a few thousand.

Dell (or should it be renamed Dull?) - sorry, but your stance is unbelievable in the 21st century.

I now know what DELL stands for: Do Everything to Lose Loyalty.

Dell Heaven!

Well, I have to say I was impressed with Dell today. Having suffered a series of blue screen disasters in the last month or so and having tried various things to fix it (roll backs, defrags, de-installs of software, etc) without success, it was time to contact the technical support help desk. The last I did this some years ago it took me several days to get through. Today I was connected to the Indian help-desk in 5 minutes or so and over the phone they checked the HW was OK. The software guy came on line next to instruct me how to load a clean Windows 7 installation. BTW, they rang me back, so Dell paid for the call after the first 30 minutes. An hour later and I have what seems like a brand new, stable Windows 7 installation. They charge for software support (NOT covered by the 4yr at-home warranty) but I was glad to get my wife's machine working again so quickly.  It is nice to be able to say something very good about Dell and the service from their lads in Bangalore.

Dell Hell

I have just wasted a day of my life ....

My wife's 8 month old Dell Inspiron laptop running Win7 keeps coming up with the blue screen of death (again) and no matter what I try (system restores to various dates) nothing fixes it. I have a 4 year HW warranty  but this does not cover software issues and I suspect this is software. I'm unable to do a full restore to the factory image as no backup is included on the hard drive.  I'm no PC expert and get totally frustrated by this sort of issue and the fact that Dell help is so poor: you just go around in circles.

My little Asus EEE, that I am using now to type this, has NEVER failed, ever.