Are blue screens compatible with Vista?

Thus begins the unfolding saga that is My Piece of Dell.

This screen is the result of trying to use a micro SD card in the card reader. Regular SD cards worked fine, but a micro SD card in its SD converter resulted in this beautiful cobalt screen.

It took me an hour on the phone with a Dell representative for him to believe me that there was no readable text on the blue screen. More than an hour and a half after that, after being told this was a software problem and that I needed to wipe my hard drive and reinstall Vista (their fix for everything) they finally concluded that I needed to test my micro SD card on a friend's computer to see if it was my card. I told him that I had two brand new micro SD cards (Kingston and PNY) and they both worked in my camera and get the same blue screen every time in the Piece of Dell. It's not the cards.

He then suggested that maybe Vista wasn't compatible with micro SD cards.

I asked, "Wouldn't you know, or wouldn't there at least be some documentation if Vista universally could not work with micro SD cards?" He said no and asked me again to find a friend's computer and test it.

I said, "No one at Dell knows whether you can use a micro SD card with Vista and you have no way of finding out?"

"No, is there a friend's computer you can use?"

"You are telling me that at Dell's headquarters, with all of your resources, there is not a single laptop you can try using a micro SD card on and see if it gives you a crazy blue screen? And no one connected with Dell has at any point tried to use a micro SD card? Instead you are asking the customer to go find a friend, test a basic compatibility question, and let you know?"

"Um, let me go talk to my supervisor."

(At one point in this 3+ hour conversation, I had to go to the bathroom and the representative admitted he had to as well, so we made a plan as to how we would figure out who got back first and wait for the other person. It was quite the bonding experience.)

So, after talking to several people we finally figured out that my computer hadn't updated the video driver. Of course. The video driver. That makes sense.



"Sir, would you like to take a customer satisfaction survey?"

"Why yes I would...."