Alienware Respawn fails continually

Hello Brad,

I'd give it a shot with the Respawn Helpline 1-866-522-6855
Maybe they can help you out.

Let me know how it goes.

I thought I'd save the response until I had some progress with the Alienware Respawn support folks. Well, here's the reality. I've spent nearly a month and a half trying to get help from Alienware support, and it has been a horribly frustrating and futile process. 

I have one email address I can contact support with, and one email address I receive correspondence with (in other words, I can't actually contact a specific support rep), and I have separate conversations going on with three separate support reps, none of whom apparently talk to one another about the status of the incident, and apparently no one is adding any detail or notes into my problem report, because each one has wanted me to start at the beginning, produce a new problem description, screen shots, error codes, etc. 

Twice I have had a support rep contact me out of the blue and ask if my problem had been solved to satisfaction -- this when absolutely nothing has been done on it. The only troubleshooting step which has actually been performed has been reinstalling Alienware Respawn, which I had done myself to no avail prior to even contacting support (and I let them know that up front). 

The first support rep who took the problem and worked with me for several weeks finally admitted that she had never had to diagnose this kind of problem with Alienware Respawn that she could offer no further support assistance, and that the problem needed to be escalated. After being out of the picture for several weeks, she has reappeared despite already telling me she couldn't help me prior, and said that she's now going to help with the problem again, and that Alienware cannot put me in contact with anyone who actually works on Alienware Respawn. 

The second support rep who took the problem said he was passing my information onto the engineering group who worked on Alienware Respawn, but because the first rep apparently didn't record any information about my error messages or store the screenshots I provided, he asked that I produce those again so that I could pass them on. I reran all those tests, not only on one external USB hard drive, but additionally on a second USB hard drive, produced all the screen shots and error messages, and sent them to him. This was a few weeks ago. The last correspondence I had from him was that he was going to be getting a status of the problem from engineering and getting back to me in a day. Then he disappeared off the face of the Earth, and though I have asked support repeatedly to have him contact me, I can't get any contact from him. In fact, the first support rep surfaced again after being absent for several weeks and told me that he wasn't escalated support at all, and that as I mentioned, she was taking over the problem again. So despite it being a national holiday (Veterans Day), having no plans to go into the office, and having prior plans to take my Vet Dad out to celebrate his sacrifice for our country, I'm headed into the office today to await another phone call from an Alienware support rep who told me a few weeks ago she couldn't help me anymore. 

Enter a third Alienware support rep that appeared out of nowhere on Sunday night, and apparently has no knowledge or communication with the other two reps, and he offered to just skip troubleshooting altogether and just refund my $5K+ computer and Respawn subscription and call it quits. After I communicated that I wasn't crazy about punting my time investment so easily, he wanted to diagnose this problem over the phone at 7:30PM on Sunday night (I didn't have access to my computer then), and then after I had scheduled today's afternoon call with the first support rep, he contacts me the morning after wanting to schedule a separate call on a different day. 

Bottom line, here's the deal -- I've spent over $5K+ on the highest quality notebook computer that Alienware sells, and bought an Alienware Respawn subscription. I've spent an exorbitant amount of time over ~2 months which has caused me lost billing time with clients I serve (I'd imagine my cost in lost work to be > $5K) in running repeated tests on Respawn on two different hard drives, gathering screen shots, error codes, and trying to juggle communication with three different Alienware support reps, none of whom know what they are doing, or what the other reps are doing, and to date, there's been no progress on the problem at all, nor will anyone allow me to speak to the Alienware personnel that can actually diagnose and solve the problem for me. 

All I want is to know that my Alienware notebook isn't faulty, and to use it and back it up. That seems like a trivial request. It is Alienware software running on Alienware hardware. But instead I'm getting the runaround, getting stonewalled when I ask to talk to someone who can really help me, and I find the whole thing terribly unprofessional and inconsiderate. For what I spent on my computer, I ought to be getting world class support. Instead I feel like I'm trapped in an episode of "Chuck" dealing with the Nerd Herd. 

If there is anything anyone on this planet can do to help me, I'd appreciate it. I'd really like to have my confidence in Alienware restored and continue to use this brand and develop software for my clients and games for major gaming consoles on it -- my business -- rather than having to start from ground zero, having incurred a significant amount of lost business on my end trying to get this fixed. 

Thanks, 

Brad

Brad O'Hearne, Founder / Lead Developer, Big Hill Software LLC

Brad - I wouldnt bother with the respawn program - I got it to do all those backups but when I needed it to help with installing a new hard drive the respawn program was deader than a doornail - never did a thing.

I eventually installed the new hard drive the old way and dont think I will ever reinstall the alienware again on my alienware x51 desktop.  To me it was a waste of money.  So i now plan to use a cloud backup for my computer- probably the microsoft cloud.  I may try the regular windows backup software not the alienware at least once to see if it seems to function.  

Ed Mullen

Ed, 

Thanks for your reply. I have considered the same thing, but unfortunately because of the reality of network bandwidth, backing up a system that is a quarter terabyte or more of space isn't a real feasible option to the cloud. I don't have a dedicated T-1 or T-3 to pipe that much data across quickly. But I have a few external 3TB USB hard drives which have ample space, that's where I'd like to back up.

What I need is something like Apple's Time Machine for OS X -- which is just ridiculously simple, automatic, and has worked for me 100% of the time on OS X machines. I figured that with Alienware hardware, the absolute best bet for problem-free backups would be Alienware software (Respawn), but that has proven to be the antithesis of the case. 

The problem I have now is most likely because these Alienware support reps don't know how to diagnose the problem, about the only possible explanation they've been able to come up with is that the hardware is bad -- not just the external hard drives, but the Alienware hardware itself. In fact, one support rep was apparently happy to skip troubleshooting entirely and just refund the cost of the entire system and the Respawn subscription. The fact that this support rep's first step was "punt" raises some real questions for me on how confident Alienware's own personnel are in their systems, their software, or both. It suggests that they know something we don't, and if you are using this hardware and software, it is a better idea just to get rid of them than figure out what the problem is. 

So at the moment, I feel trapped, like I cannot walk away from this problem, because it may be the means by which I discover that my system is bad. As I mentioned, I plunked down over $5K for a system and warranty for the express purpose of not having to worry about it for several years and being able to focus on work, but this support process has raised bigger questions than merely the issue of backup -- but rather if there's a known flaw in these Alienware machines -- I need to deal with that as soon as possible. 

If you have any backup/restore software app recommendations, I'd appreciate it. If I ever get out of this mess, I'll look into them. 

What a headache. 

Brad

Thanks Ed -- just curious -- did you uninstall all of the preinstalled Alienware software? 

I have about 200gb of data - mostly pictures and general files - but I figured I would start the first backup and let it run overnite, so it should be done in the morning.  The respawn program as bad as it is took about 3 1/2 hrs to do my system backup.  Then I figured I would set it to automatically update every so often.  So I still plan to do that.

But I have heard that programs called shadow protect and acronis are the best for doing a system backup etc if you have a usb hard drive to put it on, and if you have usb 3 it should be reasonably quick.  

Ed