The bad just got badder. 1643

1. even if you had gold tech support, that wouldn't help your problem. 2. it seems like you are doing something wrong with your usb device, like not giving enough power. or perhaps not buttigning it in disk management utility or conflicting with another device letter or a bad cable or any number of other things that could be going wrong. 3. gold tech support is avail on every small biz purchase or greater, however it is no longer called "gold". it is now labeled as "business standard", and you will see is an upcharge of at least $68 plus 1 on most items. usually found on the second order screen. home users dont seem to have thjis option, but they have something else called "one care", which sounds like it can do the same thing. i guess dell figures they will need more hand holding. but even this will not solve your problem as i said before you are doing somethign weird there. and its hard for any tech to see over the phoen when they are not in front of it. i'll bet if you get your computer to a real tech, they can solve your problem.

if you want help solving that usb problem, we can help you there, but stop beating that dead horse already. dell support and products are among the best available. they sell tens of thousands of systems each month, and i've only read about a dozen or so bad experiences here online. i'd say that's pretty good for a company. unfortunately, your experience is one of the oddities and it is near impossible to fix that kind of problem over the phone with your eyes only.

this newsgroup is a great resource for dell expertise outside the normal channels. use it wisely! Jay