I needed to get out of the house so I'm at the library.

It was definitely the graphic card that went on it. Bobby Stahr's friend came by my house to wipe the drive of the Dell CPU because I didn't want to send it back with my banking information or programs and their keys inside.  He tried reseating the card but it was in there really tight so it wasn't that it was loose. He put in a different card and it worked.  

I called Dell on Monday to tell them to come pick up their computer because I was returning it for a refund.  They tried to give me $300.00 back if I would keep the system. I told them "NO THANKS!"  UPS picked it all up today.

I ordered a computer locally from Powerland Computers where I had initially planned on going. It's $1800.00 including taxes and has a 22 inch flat screen LCD monitor.  I only went with a basic graphic card because I don't do PC games and only graphics so Bobby, his friend and Powerland said that the card I have will be more than what I need for what I use my computer for and if I ever decide to get into animation and movie making or PC gaming I can always upgrade the card then.  I also have a 5 year parts and labour warranty which cost me a whole $67.00 extra, which is cheap and worth it to me.  Plus I'm getting XP Pro and they will partition my drive for me, so I'm happy.

To try and answer some of the questions throughout this thread:

1. About building my own.  I'm not that smart when it comes to computer hardware so buying parts would still mean having to pay someone to put it all together for me because I couldn't do it myself.  Well, after this experience I probably could now given the fact that I was digging around inside the tower like a real trooper :)  and George showed me how to take out the graphic card, memory chip and hard drive.... so if I ever get another computer after this new one, I may try building my own.

2. About the OEM OS.  Dell did send me a full disk of XP Pro with service pack 2.  It wasn't just a restore disk.  They have a built in PC Restore now that you access through some menu when you are logged in.  So the XP Pro that I finally got installed was a full version of it.

3.  About Dell horror stories.  Thanks for the link, I'll go and read it once I'm online again from my house.  I called the local news paper to see if they are interested in hearing my experience with Dell.  Now I normally wouldn't do something like that, but Dell has really lost site of their customers because of their "procedure and policies".

I was so sick and tired of being quoted "it's out policy" or "it's the procedure" or "we have to follow certain rules"....  I was ready to shove their "Policy and Procedure Manual" down their throats!  It's to the point that they don't care about the customer anymore and they have become very unbending and ungiving because of their damn internal policies.

I felt completely "bullied" when I was trying to talk to anyone there and that just isn't right.  I never get that "defeated" feeling and usually I'm pretty tough and will steamroll my way through a company if I feel like I'm being abused, but I felt like I was beating my head against a brick wall with Dell and I felt completely and utterly defeated. I doubt writing to anyone there would be of any help in getting them to start taking a hard look at how they are treating their customers, so I am hoping to use the power of the media to wake them up a bit. No one should have gone through what I've been put through by Dell.  I also plan on writing to the BBB in each Province so that they can record what happened to me.  I'm mad as hell about what happened to me and I plan on letting the world know it. Maybe something good will come of it and Dell will realize that Policies and Procedures while needed are only a guideline not a law and that what really matters is the customer.

4.  About asking for help here about partitioning.  I would have done that but I didn't have another computer to use to get feed back and help.  It turns out that what they should have done is used Vista's partitioning feature to partition the drive then have me install XP Pro on the smaller volume and then format the larger volume to get rid of the Vista OS on it.  At least now I know how to create partitions and stuff now.  So I guess while it was all a horrid nightmare, I did come out with some positive things from it....I actually learned a whole bunch of new things that I didn't know before.

For those who have purchased Dell and haven't had problems... I'm happy for you. My luck with my laptop and now this has not been so good with them, and even the UPS guy who picked up the Dell stuff today said that mine was the 3rd full system in the last week that he's picked up for return to Dell.  So apparently I'm not an isolated case.  I hope you continue to be happy with your computer and the company that you bought it from: afterall that's all that really matters in the end.  For me it won't ever be another Dell.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi