There are many circles of Dell Hell. The difference between Dell Hell and Dante’s version of hell, though, is that Dante imagined sinners consigned to different levels of hell according to what they had done wrong in their lives. Your fate in Dell Hell is assigned pretty much at random, according to which model of computer you own, which technical support representatives you happen to encounter, and pure good or bad luck. Apparently, Dan’s first sin was buying an Alienware computer less than a year ago. His second sin, apparently, was having technical problems slightly out of the ordinary.

What more can I do to bring resolution to the problems I have been experiencing with Dell since I first bought my Alienware Aurora R3 last November? I have had to explain, re-explain, plead with, beg and argue with all manner of support representatives from Dell with little, to no resolution to my problems. My first issue was intermittent system freezing. The entire PC would freeze and require a reboot. After researching the issue myself, I found many Aurora R3 owners suffered from the same problem. I read through 8 months of posts on a thread on Dell’s community site and finally found a cause and solution that was having repeated success: Mixed modules of RAM made by more than one manufacturer was causing the freezes. When I brought this to Dell Support’s attention the front-line rep and even the supervisor argued with me about sending the replacement modules. When they finally relented and agreed to send it the issue was immediately solved after installation.

Another problem that I’ve had since owning this machine was that the Drivers & Downloads site could not be properly navigated. I later learned it was not just this machine, and I was not the only person experiencing it. Dell suggested replacing my hard drive (Huh?). Finally after engaging with Executive customer support and once again finding a need to defend myself and my assertion the problem was with their website, the issue mysteriously vanished (for now — it has also been intermittent).

I’m facing other issues as well ranging between the bluetooth radio intermittently disappearing from devices (this MAY be solved after the replacement of an IO component board), to a consistent and extremely frustrating intermittent mouse freezes that last up to 10 seconds at a time. I originally traced this without any help from Dell to 2.4 Ghz spectrum interference from wifi connections. I concluded this because I was able to replicate the issue if I transferred a large file over the network. Dell sent a replacement usb wifi dongle, a replacement internal bluetooth adapter, and a replacement IO board to try to resolve. The new bluetooth adapter would not recognize. However, without any bluetooth or wifi adapter, the issue was minimized. Now, with the original bluetooth adapter back in the system and recognized, which necessarily includes the wifi adapter (but is disabled), the mouse freeze issue is back!

I’m in the 5 circle of Hell with these issues. I have done the executive support carpet bomb twice. I’m getting attention but no resolution to my primary complaint / issue.. Is there anything else I can do with Dell’s support that I haven’t already done before all time runs out and I’m stuck with this lemon forever with no further support? Hm, maybe that’s their goal here.

We don’t have any resources outside of executive customer service. Do problems with freezing and interference even have an easy fix outside of driver updates or replacing the parts that are interfering with each other (maybe even with slightly different parts–now, there’s an idea)?

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