7 circles of technical hell

Last weekend about this time I decided that something was strange with my laptop. It was behaving badly, not recognizing things that it used to and having fits of geekness when it shouldn’t.

“oh frig it, I’ll just reformat and that will fix everything”

Little did I know that that innocent thought would lead me down a black hole of despair and frustration for a week. Here is the sad tale.

Reformatting isn’t usually a bad thing, assuming that one has all of the required software. That is a big assumption that kicked me in the ass. I have always built computers from scratch and never had a laptop. Who knew that you needed the original software that came with the stupid thing. Who knew that the stepson that I bought it from didn’t have it anymore. Who knew that this would almost bring me to tears…..I shoulda seen it coming.

First there was Sony…

Apparently Windows does not have the drivers required to support my dvd drive. Nor is it possible to download them from the Sony Vaio site. They are only on the original disk (you’ll see a trend here). Apparently when one formats a hard drive, the drivers required to get said dvd working work fine until you are actually in Windows and then they crap out and no longer work. Ever. Until you get the original disks.

Here is how one of the 9 conversations I had with Sony went:

“how can I help you today ma’am” (by the way I freakin’ hate being called ma’am!)
“my dvd drive stopped working after I reformatted”
“did you use your OEM disks ma’am”
“no I didn’t”
“you mean you used a retail version ma’am?” (there was a great deal of horror in his voice – cue scary music)
“yes I did”
“oh ma’am you shouldn’t have done that – we can’t support your computer anymore”

Now note that this is after I was on hold for 30 minutes, transferred to 9 different departments and told to call back to numbers which kept bouncing to each other.

Not to mention when I was transferred to Sony Canada they greeted me in Spanish. Oh for the love….

At this point I’m sure I said something not very nice to Tony (and if Tony’s real name is Tony you can slap my ass and call me Sally), and the conversation ended there.

I calmed down enough the next day to call Sony back (again the 7 circles of hell with customer service) and finally got someone to agree to send me out the OEM disks (for a price). They should be here next week.

Then there was Microsoft….

I had reactivated my legally purchased copy of Office too many times. Now I have to call them and get an access code number. It’s mine – I paid for it – why should I have to spend time going through “customer support hell” every time I want to install?

Then there was the ipod…

Somehow in this whole debacle my ipod got corrupted. I tried fixing it by following the instructions on Apple’s site, but sadly misinterpreted step #3. You see, when I, a perfectly logical person read “to reset you ipod”, I assumed that it was a soft boot which would reset it and magically all gremlins would disappear. Sadly, this “reset” term is open to interpretation. To Apple, it means to “reformat”. Yup. Everything. Gone.

Wait, it gets worse.

I had backed up my hard drive to the Ipod before reformatting, thinking it was safer than the external hard drive I had (which had also been misbehaving).

Yup. Everything. Gone.

I have managed to get my laptop limping along by running only the minimum of software. I still don’t have a dvd drive, but hope that when the OEM disks arrive all will be well. Until then, I can’t install any software – no Office (even if I did have the freakin code), no Photoshop, nothing.

I’m going to go do something low tech now – maybe some spinning. Anything that doesn’t involve computers.