AT&T Maintenance Tool

[kariarice]

I called at&t for a simple answer re: email incom incoming ing & outgoing settings on a new mobile phone because at&t is my WI-FI home internet provider.

To make a very long story shorter AT&T (connectech fee based dept) ran a remote PC maintenance tool on my p.c. I had no idea what the heck they said because of the horrible language barrier.

My p.c. will no longer boot up. After spending 34 hours within a 6 day span AT&T told me I need to buy a new computer.

I have run every possible test known to the norm p.c. user and ultimately come up with a blank black screen. I ran a BIOS setup quick and comprehensive test. (I have a partition D drive)

A lovely sweet message appeared that says "replace hard disk".  The 1st diagnostic log result was 0305, 2nd was 03F0.

I am beyond fuming angry with unscrupulous fraud AT&T. Sad thing is there was nothing wrong with my golden Cadillac 2009 p.c.

I could be totally wrong but is drive D the partition that is equal to CD/DVD recovery disks? I asked the idiot Connectech tech if I should do a back up with my Seagate external hard drive. Of course I was told no no no in some gibber gabber language.

So no I do not have recovery CD/DVD disks. I tried to boot with my original update hp Windows 7 disk. Did zero help.

I have cried and absolutely despise AT&T.

To top the cake AT&T will continue to Bill me for the next 11 month's.

PLEASE HELP!!!

[CherylG · Accepted solution]

I'm confused why AT&T even accessed your laptop if you needed email settings for a new cell phone.

Your model should be pretty easy to change the hard drive with a new retail drive. The problem comes with getting Windows 7 installed on a new drive. I think your model shipped with Vista and you evidently used the upgrade to 7 disk from HP? Does that mean you only have a license key attached to laptop  for Vista or did a key come with the upgrade disk?. There are work arounds to getting it done but it isn't quite as easy as it would be with a full Windows 7 version. Is your Vista license key still legible on the label attached to bottom of laptop? You could try one of the processes here depending on what license keys you have

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/31402-clean-install-upgrade-windows-7-version.html

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_install/how-can-i-clean-install-...

[Lil_Boy_Blue]

Hi

To supplement CherylG's excellent answer...

Do you have another working PC?   If so....

It may be possible to make a W7 install disk, but the licence issue is something I cannot help with,....

  This would want to be a DVD.

Of course I cannot vouch for the condition of the Hard Disk.

So please try something and ask again.

[kariarice]

CherylG,

I honestly cannot give an intelligent answer as to why evil At&t found it necessary to run a maintenance diagnostic tool in the 1st place. After I received no answer to what I thought was a simple email question I kept on getting transferred to not only to several agents but agents in multiple departments. My instincts told to to just hang up because at&t is incapable of offering any type of customer support without a customer going through complete hell!!

After an agent could not guarantee me that I had the correct mobile app for my new Android phone I should have shut my mouth and not opened it again until the call was disconnected.

But, I then asked what version of At&t email I had on my beloved hp. At&t changes their services more times than a baby gets their diaper changed. All I wanted to know was what the older classic (now called something else) email version was/is and how do I get it back.

By this time I was on hour 3 with 5th agent.

I couldn't understand a **bleep** word he was saying. The A as in apple, B as in boy, C as in cat etc....conversation was beyond annoying. Agent # 5 told me he could find out if there was an issue with my computer by checking out my windows 7 operating system etc but at that point I was lost at what his intentions were except that he promised me he would fix any problem that my computer was having. Apparently I must have agreed to him downloading an agreement for him to have remote access to run this tool.

All diagnostics passed except for one. Red ! mark by Windows operating system. After 30 minutes he could not find, fix or explain what was wrong. So he said a specialist could find and fix the issue. Idiot me said ok. I was then transferred to a chat box agent. I was told a 15 minute tool would explore and repair my operating system and clear the red ! mark. He told me not to close the chat box and not to leave my computer screen. Again he said it could take up to 15 minutes. 15, 30, 45, 1 hr, 2 hrs and then 3 hours passed and I sat there in front of my computer as instructed. Black empty screen. No way to do a thing I finally held the power button down to reboot my computer but was greeted with a black solid screen. I called back to at&t Connectech and was placed on hold for 2 hours. I will spare you my verbal comments after wasting 9 hours on the phone with at&t.

25 more hours within next 4 days on the phone with various departments, managers and a so called computer tech trophy recepient who came up with the brilliant answer that I needed to purchase a new computer. I will spare my 2.5 hours with at&t billing dept on Saturday .

You are correct my CTO (configure to order) HP HDX was built on Vista and was told I would be sent an upgrade disk to Windows 7 within a month. Actually I received 2 complete Windows 7 upgrade packets.  I still have the original Windows 7 upgrade that I installed (2 disk packet) plus the other non used HP upgrade disks from Vista to Windows 7.

I sincerely apologize for the novel but I hope this gives you a better insight as to why at&t recommended I take my HP Golden Cadillac to the junk yard and that I refuse to.

[CherylG]

Whew, what a story. I have AT&T myself and try to never deal with Support. AT&T email actually runs on Yahoo servers and is accessed via browser usually. It can be set up to use it through Office Suite email app but it sounds like you probably just access it through browser. I wish you had asked here first about getting "classic" version of email back. You go to your email and login via browser, then click the little gear icon at right. This opens settings where you can change font color,background color,etc. If you click "More settings" it opens the setting where you can switch back to classic.

Getting your laptop back up and running is a bigger feat,unfortunately