I purchased a Dell XPS laptop in January 2009 and then promptly hopped on a plane to Mexico for a few months of vacation time. Almost immediately (within days) I started having problems and the laptop crashed. Contacting Dells XPS support and using the operating discs, we were able to get it back up and running again and the problem has persisted ever since until today, January 21, 2011.
I am currently back at our winter residence in Mexico again until April and once again it has crashed again. Worked the night before and the next day I get yet another boot up screen that says "NTLDR is missing, " on the first line and then "press any key to continue" on the second. I press any key and get and get sent back to the same page again. This has been an ongoing problem (14 times!) for the last couple of years that now has me at the end of my rope! It is a problem related to Windows Vista that when I contact XPS support, they tell me it is a Microsoft problem and when I talk with Microsoft, they tell me it is a Dell issue, not theirs. Last time was in September or October and I actually was hoping the issue might have been resolved because I dealt with Microsoft directly who told me after having taken control of my computer for some time that it was resolved and I would never have the problem reoccur again. Needless to say, my response was I'll talk to you in 4 or 5 months and sure enough, here we are yet again.
Just got off the phone (thank god for Vonage!) with tech support in India after 62 minutes who tell me I have to change my ownership countries to Mexico because this is where I currently am. You see having thought maybe, just maybe it was resolved I seem to not have brought down my operating discs and in order for them to send me another one (which has already been replaced once, as well as the hard drive being done also) it needs to be registered in Mexico. I have told them that is not acceptable and I am once again going to put a stop payment on my account (dealing with Dell Financial which is a separate company and doing so will adversly affect my credit rating!) and now go to the media and publish the issue. I say once again above here because I did so last fall which was the only reason I was able to deal with Microsoft directly, but now this is finally it, I have reached the end of my tether. Can't get any satisfaction trying to deal with Dell directly...all I want is to have the system work without interuptions or losing all my info when it crashes. I don't care if they would give me a Windows 2000 system disc or an XP disc or even a Windows 7 disc that would work and I would pay the difference between the cost of Vista and 7 but they won't accept any repsonsibility at all!