Oh Good Grief!! Tech Support nightmare

So yesterday as I was having a nice instant message conversation with Aiden's Mimi suddenly my internet connection goes kabloie. I have cable internet and interruptions are uncommon but not unheard of. So I look down at my modem, Well 4 green lights and a flashing orange light. That typically means good signal.

I consider myself relatively tech savvy, so I tried a couple of things. Reboots, hardware resets, all the stuff the first level tech support person at Comcast is gonna tell me to do. Still nothing.

So I give in to fate and call tech support. Outage listings don't include me, that's good. I finally speak to a lady on the phone who has me go through all of the things I have already done. I tell these people I have already done it, but they always want you to do it again while they are on the phone. Futility at its finest. Eventually she has me look at the configuration settings on my LAN and we find that it has assigned itself an IP of 169.254.x.y She says that means the computer and the modem aren't talking. OK. The computer is new, the modem seems okay. She thinks it is the cable. Well that's easy enough to fix I've got cables out the wazoo. So I try another USB cable, no luck. Maybe the usb slot in my pc is bad? try a different slot, no joy. Switch to Ethernet? Sure, but still nothing doing. Houston, we DON'T have a cable problem.

Time to call back and see if we have a modem problem. I call Comcast once again and the next girl who answers listens to me run through everything that I did previously and she agrees that if changing connections on the PC is doing nothing, we probably have a bad modem. Off to Staples with you!

I go out and purchase a new modem at Staples, the only cable modem they carry, called a Zmodem. Never heard of it, but okay. Bring it home, set it up and make my third call to Comcast to register the new modem. We register the modem and still no joy. Okay... third call, new modem time to get escalated to the level 2 tech support, which is probably where I should have begun my day. Level 2 guy takes me into my command prompt and we run through a string of ipconfig commands trying to release this IP address which is caught in there. No joy. After about 8 tries of the same ipconfig /release ipconfig /renew he decides the problem isn't with the modem and Comcast can't help me, I need to cal Microsoft.

Lovely. I call Microsoft and speak to someone I can hardly understand named "John" (yes Microsoft is still outsourcing tech support to India). This gentleman explains to me that because my Windows was purchased with the computer he will gladly help me, if I pay a charge, or I can call HP who holds the warranty on my Windows software. Well I am not going to pay John, so I take the HP phone number from him and hang up.

HP and a lovely young lady named Jennifer tries to help me out. I explain were I have been over the past 4 hours and she very kindly only makes me go through a couple of the same fixes I have already tried. She says she can reset the IP but she will need my Comcast username and password. I have never logged in to a Comcast account so I have no idea what this is and tell her I will have to call Comcast. She puts me on hold while she sets up a trouble ticket for me. In the meantime I call Comcast on my cell phone to try to get the username real quick while I am on hold.

Well of course both Jennifer and the Comcast guy come on at about the same time. I am able to get my ticket number from Jennifer and she says she will hold while I get my username. That shouldn't take too long should it?

WRONG! Mr. Comcast Tech support insists on taking me through all of the same steps I have already gone through, and then he puts me in this cycle of restarting and try the internet. After about 4 cycles of this I say "I appreciate the effort, but I have HP on hold on the other line and really just need my username and password". At this point he tells me his computer has been acting up this evening and he is still trying to get to my username. Okay... Jennifer is still on hold, and we go back into the cycle of him clattering on his Keyboard then telling me to restart windows and try the internet.

About 3-4 cycles later I hear the cut off beep from the other phone that means Jennifer has finally given up on me, I don't blame her, she has other customers to attend to. I let this guy take me through a couple more cycles without anything happening and then I just decide we aren't getting anywhere. "No offense, but we don't seem to be making any progress and this cycle of restart and try again is getting really frustrating, is there anyone else there who can give me my username?" A resounding No, I ask if I am better off to wait until morning. "yeah". Okay... say that in the first place and be done with it. I'm done.. Click.

Raquel has a Blackberry from work and so I get on tiny internet to try to explore what the heck is going on, because I am no good at "wait till morning". I find a couple of possible fixes that take me to disabling the IPAutoconfig feature in the registry. No luck there. Turns out my computer is not finding a DNS or Gateway, which is why it is defaulting to the local network, i.e. the 169.254.x.y until I fix the DNS there is no point telling the computer not to assign the local IP.

I finally find an article that talks about this problem in relation to Norton Internet Security 2008. Seems that one of the updates is the cause of this problem for some folks and the only recommended solution is complete removal of the software. But hey, Windows Add/Remove program function won't completely uninstall Norton, you have to download a utility from Symantec for complete removal. But I can't get on the internet to download the removal tool. Does anyone else see a problem here?

At this point it is 2am, Aiden just finished his middle of the night bottle and I am exhausted. In the morning I would have to try to figure out how to get this silly removal tool onto the computer that cannot access the internet.

6am and Aiden is up for his next feeding. Raquel is starting to stir awake to get ready for work, so Aiden doesn't settle right back to sleep after the 6am feeding. So I may as well take the time to work on the computer. I try finding ANY dial up trial software I may have to install and try to dial in to get the software I need. There is an OLD copy of AOL on one of my installation disks we are talking 4.5 or something. I try to install that... Oops, it's in German and only has access numbers for Germany. No luck there.

I decide maybe once upon a time I actually bought a box retail copy of Norton instead of just downloading it and go to explore the attic looking for the box. Nope.... but there is something else I can try. My old computer is in the attic, and it has a good hard drive in it with Windows XP and has been used on this modem. Out comes the old PC and the old hard drive gets installed in the new computer. Yay! I am online. Wait! I can only access the Comcast configuration page. It wants to know if I am adding a new cable modem or replacing an old one. Well Neither, but that isn't an option. And I can't navigate away from this page.

Call #4 to Comcast. They have the wrong numbers for my modem in their system. That is understandable since I tried a new one from the store last night and am now back on the old one. She tries to get it to come up but while I show four solid lights and blinking activity, she shows the modem as offline. She asks if she can send this to her Supervisor and call me back in a few minutes. Sure, no problem. The house is quiet now so I will lay down and wait. 20 minutes later no call has come in and of course I haven't fallen asleep, so I go to check on the computer. Load Yahoo... It Works!!

Okay, so I am on the internet, but I still have a problem to solve. Go to the Symantec website and try Tech support. They should know if their update is screwy and tell me how to fix it without losing my Firewall right? Norton Internet Security help chat... okay sure. You are in Queue as #45. uhmmm.. no thanks. Aiden fell asleep and I need to try to do the same. This will have to wait for later. I sleep for about an hour and come back, put myself in Queue again, this time as #47. Give Aiden his bottle, after which I am up to #18. Then my Internet Explorer decides to crash and takes out the chat client with it. Reload... You are in queue as #51. Aww forget this.

Download the uninstall utility. Connect both hard drives and boot long enough to transfer the utility from the old HD to the new. Disconnect old HD. Run Utility. Reboot Computer. Try Internet. There it is. Yup. I am back online after about 18 hours of trying and 6 hours on phones with tech support. I had to download ZoneAlarm to have a firewall for the time being, but at least ZoneAlarm is letting me get ON THE INTERNET.

I know this story had very little to do with Aiden, and guess what, every now and then you will see those. :-) I just needed to get that lovely story out there and let you all enjoy my tech support nightmare!