Originally Posted by
PTravel
The problem was caused by the Intellipoint software being written so poorly that it crashed when it couldn't find uninstaller data.
Your post said that even Logitech's uninstaller didn't find all of the data. Crash sucks, but still sounds like there's a logitech problem here and you've got all of your rage directed at the company you called. Come on...I'm sure you have enough rage to share with all of them, right?
Perhaps have someone who knew something more about Microsoft software, as well as computers in general, than what he read off a script, like the two "technicians" and the "supervisor" that I spoke with.
You apparently haven't called tech support anywhere in the last 5+ years. First level tech support is almost always done with this script-based approach. It's frustrating for people that know what they're talking about, and I agree with you that it really sucks, but it's SOP. This is why most geeks tend to avoid calling tech support at almost all costs. They walk you through these steps so.....slowly....it....hurts. And when they read them to you, it sounds like they're just reading it themselves for the first time.
I find it impossible to believe that the problem I encountered is unique. I'd say that 3+ hours on the phone, only to be told that someone who actually might now something would call me within 72 hours is pretty poor technical support.
Well, if it's not unique, I'm sure you searched the web before you called them. Or maybe you've done it since then. What did you find?
This points to another problem with first level tech support - the path they take to start helping you with your issue depends a lot on what keywords they decide to search for in the tech support database. Different people will hear different things. Unfortunately, the people that become really good at first line tech support won't stay in it very long
They'll move up to other tiers. Often times, the tech will repeat the problem back to you to make sure they have at least a basic understanding of the problem.
They attempted to help to the best of their extremely limited ability. You're a tech-savvy user, so their ability doesn't come close to matching yours, so this is frustrating. But it's common in tech support everywhere.
Oh, one other thing I forgot to mention. The mouse came with a note saying that, if it was to be used on a Vista machine, it was necessary to download and install a patch from Microsoft. I downloaded the patch, ran it, and got an error message saying, "This patch is not required for this operating system."
Hmmm, what's the link to the patch? I don't see anything extra on their normal download page for the mouse software. I wonder if the support article for this issue has more details on what problem it was supposed to fix.
That's what really gets me: this is Microsoft hardware that comes with Microsoft software intended to run on a Microsoft O/S.
Should be plug and play. Sometimes, there are unexpected interactions with other software. Again, if the Logitech software got in a state where it couldn't fully uninstall its stuff, there's no telling what other things it left in a similarly goofy state to potentially cause this problem.
Incidentally, my Logitech mouse works just fine with the generic USB Wheel Mouse driver that comes with the Vista OS -- the Logitech-supplied drivers are not needed, either.
Well, per your post, you had some Logitech software installed, so it doesn't sound like this is true.
My computer is a Sony Vaio laptop. It is unlikely that the driver stack was non-standard.
As a user, you shouldn't have to care. But in the case of Bluetooth, I think there are several different stacks out there that people pre-install. There's a Microsoft stack, one from Toshiba (that I think some OEM's besides Toshiba use), then I think Widcomm has a stack. BlueSolei is also a name I've seen associated with Bluetooth drivers. Not sure if they had Vista support or not. It's not clear if any of this matters, or if this is a critical aspect of the problem that you ran into.
It did not identify the process. It did identify the application, ctor.dll, as being the problem. As I said, it wasn't ctor.dll that was the problem, but incorrect parsing of the parameters that were passed to it. And it did not identify those parameters, which would have been an immediate clue for me.
I don't know how you can say that ctor wasn't the problem, when it's not clear from what you've mentioned here exactly what the problem was. A quick web search shows that this is an InstallShield file. Not sure if that's used in the MS package, the Logitech package, or both.
How did you determine that the problem is related to invalid parameters being passed to the uninstaller?
I can't imagine what someone who just expects plug-and-play hardware to plug-and-play would have done.
A web search of ctor.dll error installing "wireless presenter mouse" brings up zero hits. You're assuming that EVERYONE would hit this exact same issue, but that's just not correct. There are probably hundreds of millions of hardware + software configurations in the world today. I'm sure nobody has exactly the same setup as you.