XPS - SupportAssist - what's it all about?

Question

Thinking about buying a new XPS. As of this moment the only thing delaying this purchase is whether I should get premium support and, therefore, SupportAssist. First, I understand the importance of diagnosing and fixing any problems on my PC. From what I understand about SupportAssist, it is always running and helps Dell tech support fix broken computers. I just read a thread from around summer last year titled "How to remove Dell SupportAssist permanently?" about some user who had a heck of a time with this thing running on his/her computer.

Is there now an *easy* way to disable this process? If I'm having a problem I would then maybe enable it to help tech support solve my issue. Also what kind of data is it sending back to Dell?

Am I the only one who thinks having a process such as this running at *all* times is too intrusive?

I'm hoping to hear from new Dell users who are using SupportAssist or Dell support people and hopefully with news that removing or disabling this thing is a lot easier than as discussed in the above thread.

Thank you.

DELL-Stefan R · Answer

Hi CuJoe,

I understand your doubts. To bring a bit more light in the dark, please read the article and related resources in our knowledge base Dell SupportAssist for PCs and tablets.

Most features work with basic support, but if you would like to take advantage of the proactive or predictive features you'll need to have the Premium / ProSupport enabled on your system.

Anyways I recommend you to get in touch with our sales team, they are able to describe you the benefits more detailed.

Hope that helps a bit.

Cheers
Stefan

CuJoe · Answer

Hello Stefan and thank you for your reply.

But, you didn't really answer my question and I would like an answer in order to move forward
with my decision on whether to buy this XPS and get the premium support.
I clicked on the linked, watched the little video and understand what SA is all about.

I've talked to 2 different sales rep: one told me is couldn't be disabled or uninstalled; the
other I just couldn't figure out what they were telling me as I couldn't understand them.

There are posts in this forum that say it is possible to disable/uninstall this thing (but most
are from last year: would like an up-to-date response).
So, which is it? Here's my question again a little more expanded:

Is there an easy and safe way to disable or uninstall the SupportAssist process - and all
of its sister/child/related processes - on my new XPS desktop?

If something goes wrong, I could then enable or re-install SA to help tech support (I actually
would prefer the "old" days when I would simply allow your tech support people to remotely
log into my machine to diagnose and fix problem - that worked great).

Thanks,
Joe

DELL-Stefan R · Answer

Hi Joe,

well, it's completely up to you if you want to uninstall or keep it

You'll find the steps to uninstall it here in the user's guide.

This will uninstall the software from your system then.

You may reinstall whenever you want.

I guess this is what you wanted to know

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

Cheers
Stefan

SupportAssist for PCs

XPS - SupportAssist - what's it all about?

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