escape to insanity

My new laptop from HP has been plagued with issues from day one. The optical drive didn’t work, had to be sent back, Windows 7 has been buggy at best (I’m the administrator! I will save files and open folders wherever I damn well please!), etc. Well… it got to the point where I had to do a factory reset. Bad news.

The recovery manager failed. So I tried from the recovery discs that I created when I got the machine. Failed again. Tried from the hard drive again. Failed again. No helpful messages, just failed. So I get on HP’s site and try out the HP Support online chat.

ISSUE DETAIL: System recovery runs but fails each time. Have tried once from recovery discs and twice from hard drive partition, and all three times it fails with “incomplete” message.
Michael Smith: From your issue description, I understand that you are not able to perform the system recovery using the disc or partition. Am I right?
Me: um, correct.

Brilliant minds they have there. Wait… is there a mind there at all? Not sure. Couple minutes later, disconnected while I ran a hard drive diagnostic as requested. Signed back on and got this guy:

ISSUE DETAIL: System recovery manager will not successfully complete. Have tried several times, from both hard drive and recovery discs.
Samson Roy: Could you elaborate the issue?
Me: Sure. I had to do a system recovery, but the process will not complete successfully. i’ve tried several times, from both the hard drive partition and from the recovery discs, and each time it ends with an “incomplete” message. my only options are “details” “save log” or “retry.”
Samson Roy: Thank you for the above information.
Samson Roy: From your issue description, I understand that you are unable to do system recovery. Am I right?
Me: yes, you are correct

SERIOUSLY? At this point, I’m convinced that at no time did I actually converse with a human being. Even someone who doesn’t natively speak the language (I’m going to assume that all the discussions I’ve seen are true and HP outsources 100% of their tech support to India) should be able to handle these issues a little more smoothly. And these were just the intros.

I was debating whether to just outright ask “ARE YOU A COMPUTER?” but figured it might be even more unproductive than just sticking with it. So now I’ve had to order new recovery discs from HP (at cost to me of course), and while they’re in transit I have a very expensive paperweight on my desk. AWESOME.

Just more reasons to never ever again buy HP, and to convince everyone I know never to buy HP. Ever.