I bought a Althon Dual Core at Christmas. When I talked to the
salesperson I was told that it was shipped with 64 bit OS. Not true.
So, when I received it I decided no problem I'll just get the
"Trail Version" and install it.. Called Tech support and asked for
back-up disc just in case. Was told where to go to burn my own. The
system allows you to burn one and only one. Spent weeks looking for
driver for basic components such as the sound card, modem etc. The
e-mail site kept telling me to go to HP Tools and reinstall the 32 bit
driver. I guess they are unaware that there's a difference between 32
and 63 bit machines.

I then called the support desk told me that I would need a Windows XP
Pro disk (32 bit). So I got one and ran repair. That made it worse.
Could not run any apps. Decide to scrap the wholes 64 bit install and
just get my machine back to a point where I could do something,
anything with it.

Did a low level reformat and repartition and ran the System Recovery
disk that I had burned. The disks were bad and the machine crashed and
burned. Since you can only burn one set, if they don't work your
screwed. I called Tech support and got a set of recovery disks. Ran
those and the first time that I booted the machine it said that I
needed "Supplemental Disk" called Tech Support and was told that I
did need them. So, I ran the System Recovery program manually.

Then every time that I booted the machine it went into DO NOT shut off
machine wait mode for 16-18 hours and then crashed and burned.

Called Tech Support and did another delete reformat repartition now the
fourth time when through the whole process yet again. Got the same
message from called tech support and was told they would send out
Supplemental Disk, but didn't think that they would fix the problem.

So far I've deleted reformatted repartitioned drive four times, rant
the 'F' Full recovery at least ten times, the 'R" recovery four
or five times. I've had the box for over a month and still haven't
been able to use it.

The Tech Support desk in India is beyond useless. Manned by a staff
that knows nothing about computers you sit there reading scripts and
asking you the same guestions for the same open ticket over and over.

I'm no newbie. Have a degree in CS working it IT for twenty years
designing and deploying desktop apps a few years back. Is this typical
or am I the exception? Has anyone else had this level of difficuty?