Does my warranty cover that?

I'm contemplating throwing my laptop out the window.

Not to bore you all with the details, because it isn't a very exciting story, but I spent a good part of yesterday on the phone with Dell, telling them all about what was wrong with my CD drive (ie, it doesn't work and the computer pretends that it's not there) and doing what they told me to do. When I got off the phone with them, my computer decided to have a complete meltdown and pretend like I don't have a hard drive either. "Who, me? I don't know you. I'm not even a computer. I'm just a black slab, la la laaaaah . . . "

I called Dell back to tell them that they are horrible people who are going to roast slowly in hell because whatever it was they had me do actually made the whole thing worse and now my computer wouldn't do anything and my files weren't backed up and even if I wanted to back them up I couldn't, on account of the slab factor and the no-CD-drive factor. The number they told me to call had a wait, and then some automated lady got on to say that they couldn't even be bothered with putting me in the queue and just cut me off. So I called a different number, found a person, and in short, clipped, barely-keeping-it-together tones told him what happened.
He told me I should call the first number.

I told him they were refusing to speak to me.

He said he would find someone.

I said thank you, that would be good. I explained again that I had spoken with a Dell rep on the phone, they told me to do things, and now my computer gives me nothing but a black screen with a menu that says "Hah hah, you're stupid and I'm eating all of your England pictures right this very second!"

Before he transferred me, he told me that I could always try www.support.dell.com. And that's when I came about thisclose to saying the word that rhymes with canker.

"Ah, thanks for that, but I actually can't try www.support.dell.com, because my computer doesn't actually work. I can't do anything. This is why I am on the phone with you now."

It started working again on its own when I was on the phone with technical support, so I spent most of last night putting everything in "My Documents" into my Gmail account as attachments until I can do a proper backup. Today the laptop gave me these two new strange error messages and shut down. So in the morning I'm running out first thing to buy blank CDs and do the backup--if the CD drive works tomorrow.

Also, I'm thanking my lucky stars the thing still has 2 months of warranty left, because I may just tell them to send me a new one that doesn't throw unreasonable tantrums in the manner of a toddler of Satan.

Posted in: England