Disapointed with Alienware support

Hey all,

I received my M17x R4 a couple of days ago and untill now it was a great machine but for some obscure reason Windows failed yesterday.

No worries, I bought this Alienware instead of a hand build PC as comes with AlienRespawn and a next business day support, so I tought I was ok, but I wasn't.

I launched AlienRespawn and it did re-install the system but on the wrong drive so it wiped out my data drive, everything lost.The OS itself was then installed on the 1TB 5400RPM drive instead of the 64GB MSATA.

This wasn't very funny, partially due to the loss of some work files, but no worries, there is the support.
Called them for 1H and they couldn't come up with a single decent answer, I even had to explain the guy how the AlienRespawn worked, he never used it.
The only solution they could give me was either to remove physically the drives and then retry, either reinstall from the supplied Windows DVD.
End of the call resulted in no solution and case closed.

So why did I pay more to have a branded system (2900€) with Support and easy reinstallation?
I was wondering if I should take the extra 3Y warranty at 660€ but I might put this off untill a solution has been found, if none is found I might consider selling the system and building a desktop if I need to support it myself anyway.

I do hope they come up with a solution but this was a really cold shower over my excitement off having the Alienware.

PS: The system is in Belgium so I called the support in Belgium but I guess I ended up in France.

 

Hi there, first of all I'm sorry to hear that you had so much troubles with the support on the phone.
It is not necessary to remove the drives from the computer to do the installation, just follow this article and during the installation select the 64GB msata as the drive to be used. Also make sure that you delete and format all partitions that exist on your system. It is so unfortunate that you had this issues with Windows but we both are aware that the issues are not specifically with the computer but with the O.S.
After you get the O.S in you can get all the drivers from DELL.COM and the software that came with the computer can be found on mydelldownloads.
If you are still experiencing issues you can send an e-mail to [email protected] and we'll be glad to assign somebody on your case that will help you as much as he/she can.

 

Thanks for your very much appreciated response.

It is true that this will re-install windows but it won't render AlienRespawn functional. It is sad that I have paid for this but your services (I had to call them again today) refuse to make it work.
They even refuse to restore the machine themselves although I have a "next business day onsite" warranty that stipulates that intervention will be performed for Dell made software, which Alienrespawn is.

 

The next business day warranty is for making repairs (replacing hardware) after a remote diagnosis on the phone, therefore they won't be sending out a tech to make a software work. Anyway, after you do the O.S installation you can get the AlienRespawn and create a new system partition from here.

 

I think that is kinda bad advice being the hidden partition shows up when you are re installing windows, unless you are saying the recovery partition is worth deleting... I think it is better to say delete the OS partition not all the partitions on the system.

 

You can delete it and then re-create it with the link that I posted before this one.

 

I had this same issue- used alien respawn and accidentally wrote to the Ssd not the 64gb msata Ssd and in the process had two OS's and no data drive . problem!

Ended up doing a clean install and kept the alien respawn on a USB drive. Sorry you are having such headaches. It's frustrating I know.

 

but that doesn't give you a factory image, that just gives you an image of what you have installed when you use the software. Which is not what I thought would happen when I tried it. I ended up with a 90 gig image. I think what I am trying to say is why waste the time of deleting it? It serves no purpose to delete all the images.

 

Take out your 1tb drive so that there is nothing but the msata and then do the full factory system restore from the DVDs...

 

The reason why we recommend that is so that you can start from scratch. And yes it creates an image of everything that you have installed. If you have any problems in the future you can go back to that image without the need to reinstall all your software (this includes games as well).