I hate how Dell makes me go through an hour of troubleshooting just to tell me what I already know.
Hi, this is Joe at Dell, what can I do for you today.
Hi, my optical drive has failed. It fails to read cd's and makes a nasty buzzing/clicking sound when it tries to spin up the disc.
OK, let's run through some basic troubleshooting. Reboot your computer and push f12, we are going to run some dell diagnostics.
I've already done that, it throws a read error code.
Let's try it one more time, just to see.
Fine, *goes through the same motions*
It threw the same error code.
OK, let's try updating the firmware.
Are you sure that will help, it's making a lot of bad noises. I think it's the read heads.
Let's try updating the firmware just to be sure.
OK, fine.
*Goes through motions*
Let's give it a try now, try to burn a cd for me.
OK, Roxio now says that it can't even recognize that there is a CD/RW drive in the PC.
OK, let's try to clear the upper and lower buffers in the registry.
Jesus Christ, fine.
*goes through motions*
Nope, it is still broken.
OK, it sounds to me like you have a failing read head in your drive. We are going to send you a new drive for your computer. Let's set up a time so onsite support can hook that up for you.
NO, I DO NOT WANT ONSITE SUPPORT. send it parcel only please.
OK, we'll do that
I mean, seriously, I know he could tell I wasn't an idiot in the first minute of the call. Why do those guys have to stick to the flow chart so strictly.
Oh well, at least it is at work so I get paid to waste time like this.