So this all started about two weeks ago when every time I restarted my
computer (9 month old Dell Inspiron running Vista Home Premium) all of
my network printers were uninstalled. There is nothing wrong with the
printers and all of the drivers were still there and fine, but every
single time I rebooted Vista would not be able to find them anymore.
Since my computer is still under warranty, I started by calling Dell.
The idiots there refused to help me because they were HP printers. I
tried explaining that it was a Vista problem, but they couldn't get past
the fact the printers were made by HP. I think they were just trying to
get out of having to live up to their warranty. Boo!
After digging on the web, I realized that my computer had never
installed SP1 and it was likely causing my printer issues, so I set out
to have it installed. I went through my Windows Update feature, but it
couldn't find SP1 as an update.
Perplexed, I found a place on the web where Microsoft is offering live
tech support just for SP1. I entered a live chat and spent more than 3
hours watching their technician mess with files in my registry via
remote desktop. The guy didn't seem to have a good idea what he was
doing and often spent 15-20 minutes just reading his "resources."
Eventually, he decided that several of my DLL and registry files were
corrupt and deleted them from my computer. He then asked me for my
Vista Boot DVD, which I didn't have with me. He said he couldn't help
me without the DVD and that I'd just have to live with a 1/2 working
computer until I could find the DVD. I made an appointment for the
Vista Research Team to contact me the next morning.
This morning I get a call from the research team and he remote desktops
to my computer and has a look. He says it's not working because I'm
missing some files (duh! the guy yesterday deleted them!). He told me
to insert the DVD and "update Vista." I do this and now my computer is
stuck at "Gathering Files (43%)" for the last 14 hours. The technician
called me every hour all day "just to check" and he kept telling me to
wait because "it will fix itself." He told me just to leave it
overnight and he's going to do some research because he has no idea how
to proceed if Vista won't autorepair. He told me if I stop the
installation, I'll likely have a non-booting computer.
Does anyone have any suggestions how to proceed? My guess is that the
guy is just going to tell me to reformat the whole computer, but man
that sucks. I didn't back up my data because the Microsoft guy told me
it wasn't necessary because this "always works." Yesterday I was just
having printer issues and 48 hours later and with lots of "help" from
Microsoft, I have a doorstop.
Thank you for your help!
--
vistatroubles
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