Alienware Tech Support bricked my PC. Say call never happened.

gattssbbyy

Noob

I called Alienware Tech Support today for some assistance upgrading my BIOS from A01 to A14. My Alienware Area51 is out of warranty and has been for a few years.

I called at 7:59pm EST and was on the line for ~9 minutes. During that call he said the best thing to do is to upgrade straight from A01 to A14 from a USB despite me saying that online I saw people saying it was a better option to go one update at a time. Me being a normal person, I listened to the advice of their tech support and went through with all the instructions he told me exactly. When I finished, I was given no errors or anything and my PC continued on. It got to the Windows 10 “Please Wait” screen and the circling dots just say there frozen. I left it for about 15 minutes and then called their tech support again to check if there was anything wrong with this taking so long and just as I got through all the automated voices and gave the person on the line my service tag my PC shut off. It then tried turning itself back on for about 3 seconds at a time before shutting off again and I asked the rep if I should unplug it, he said yes.

He then went on to say that my original call never happened (I do have a call receipt on my phone and I can contact my cell provider for the same) and went on to try and transfer me to different departments. They all treated me like I was insane and that my phone must be broken and that the call never happened. Now they’re trying to get me to pay upwards of $300 CAD to get my problem fixed (or at least looked at).

I’m at a loss right now as I can’t afford fixing my PC that was broken under the instruction of their tech support representative and when I try asking them for help they just try and get me to pay and keep saying my call never happened.

The phone number I obtained was from this dell page (https://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/alienware_tech_support?c=us&l=en&cs=19). Does anyone have any advice on who I can contact or what I can do to fix my PC or am I basically forced to pay because of the damage they caused to my PC?

Thanks.

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Antworten • 4

Dadawada

Noob

Pretty sure all support calls are recorded for just this reason. Keep calling and ask for a supervisor.

MattB79

Enthusiast

That is terrible. You never bypass that many BIOS updates. You should never upgrade the BIOS more than 3 updates ahead but doing them one by one is the best option. They should know this.

I would stop the phone calls and start emailing them with all the information you have. Get everything from this point in writing.

LinkRS

Elite

Howdy Gattssbbyy,

If the BIOS update bricked your system, you would have never seen the Windows logo. A BIOS brick means your system will not even get to/through POST (power-on Self Test). What probably happened is that some setting in your BIOS has been toggled on that your installed version of Windows does not support, causing it to fail at boot. You have two free things you can try. First, get into your BIOS setup program (press F2 or F1 not sure which, but it should be splashed on the screen). Once there, look for the option that says something like 'Setup defaults.' Load those, and let your system restart. If that fixes it, done deal :-). IF it doesn't, go back into your BIOS and look for a 'fail safe defaults' or something like that, and load those and restart again. If Windows DOES boot, that means some setting in the BIOS is causing your issue.

If only the fail-safe defaults work, or neither of them work, you second option is to just do a Windows re-install. You can get media to do that from here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/15088/windows-10-create-installation-media Use that to re-install Windows. If you are running in the 'Fail-safe' settings, make sure to go back in and re-load the 'Setup Defaults' first. You should be able to do a non-destructive Windows re-install, where it keeps your settings.

Good luck!

Rich S.

BamaBushWookie

Noob

Can’t really add to what Rich said.

Fyi... support keeps a record of calls by your service tag.

FORUMS

Alienware Tech Support bricked my PC. Say call never happened.

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