Windows Vista crashed! Part 2

It has been over a week since my HP desktop crashed.

I have tried everything in the troubleshooting manual, as well as the online help available on the HP site. I have tried several times to recover my PC back to its factory state. But to no avail. It still doesn't start up properly, hanging at various stages during the startup process.

I have been trying to contact HP to get them to come down to take a look at my PC. To no avail. After trying for two days to get through to their phone support, I still couldn't get through, so I emailed them with my problem. The reply? They told me to call phone support. But I emailed them because I couldn't get through to phone support!

So I tried again. Nope, cannot get through. Next? I tried the online chat support, but the guy helping me was in USA, and after going through some of the basic troubleshooting steps, he told me to call the local phone support. Again.

Finally, I got through on Wednesday, only to be told that my problem has been registered, a technical specialist will call me on Thursday to arrange a time to visit me, and they should be able to come down within the next two days. It is Sunday, and they still have yet to call me to arrange for a time. Meanwhile, my HP desktop is hanging around in limbo.

If this is the kind of technical support that one can expect buying from HP, I guess I should have bought my PC from one of those "build-your-own-PC" shops in Sim Lim Square.

By the way, I think I know what is wrong with my PC. It should be a harddisk failure. And this is not the first time... previously, I also had a HP desktop, and its harddisk failed after 1.5 years and I had to replace it on my own. But my current PC is less than a year old, and still within warranty. Plus, the PC does not come with a recovery disk. The recovery program and data actually resides on a separate partition in the same harddisk. So even if I buy a new harddisk and install it, I have to buy a new copy of the OS. That seems to be an agreement between Microsoft and suppliers, that they do not include recovery disks or installation disks for computers that are shipped pre-installed with Windows Vista. What kind of idea is that?

So, some advice for those of you out there. First, don't buy PCs that come pre-installed with Windows Vista. Even if you want Vista, it may be better to buy one pre-installed with XP, then install Vista on your own. And secondly, don't believe too much in after sales technical support. With companies downsizing and all that, who knows how many technical specialists they actually have on hand to handle problems?