WTF, Dell. Thank you SO MUCH for your unhelp.

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

System: You are now being connected to an agent. Thank you for using Dell Chat!
Agent: Hi! Thank you for using Dell Chat for Small and Medium Business. My name is Mike, how may I help you today?
Me: we have a latitude E5500 that currently has COM1 issues
Me: "You must have Write privileges in registry for this device in order to modify advanced settings"
Agent: I'll be glad to assist you with that issue. Please give me 2-3 minutes to pull up and check your account. Also, can I have the phone# that I should be calling in case we get disconnected?
Thanks!
Me: brand new, just out of the box, dell ships it with the special-ordered COM1 serial port disabled in the registry
Agent: Like what for example?
Me: i'm sorry, i don't understand your question?
Agent: like for exmple you said Write privledges in registry for this device is this relating to installing certain applications?
Me: That's in the driver properties window of the device, in device manager
Me: this is related to being able to open the com port; with the registry set not to enable Write on this device, some of the applications that need it cannot open it.
Agent: you mean to say that there is a yellow question mark under a certain driver?
Me: i already took the step of disabling the internal modem in the BIOS, but we still need to edit some registry keys
Me: no, the driver is loaded properly according to the device manager
Me: we had a second one of these machines that had the exact same issue brand-new out-of-box, and i previously went through about 4 hours of google research on necessary registry edits, and ended up modding some 40 or 50 reg keys as possible solutions
Me: *one* of those mods solved the problem
Me: but i'm hoping you, as the manufacturer, can point me at the proper reg key directly
Agent: is that what you did with the other computer?
Me: yes
Agent: try doing that one first then i'll follow.
Me: doing which one first?
Agent: moding one of the reg keys.
Me: i do not know which of the numerous mods solved the problem
Me: i'm hoping you can save me some of that time
Agent: wiat.
Agent: *wait.
Agent: what port do you want to open by the way?
Me: com1, the serial port
Agent: is it located at the back?
Me: left side, towards the rear
Me: there are no connectors on the rear of this model, due to the hinge design of the lid
Agent: because if you mean your trying to activate the modem. your system doesn't have a modem.
Me: no, i want to activate the SERIAL PORT, on channel COM1
Me: so i can connect it to a medical testing device
Agent: what medical testing device do you mean?
Me: it's a computer-controlled audiometer
Agent: is it where you connect it at theback?
Me: again, the serial port is on the left side, towards the rear
Agent: You mean the security cable slot?I can't really see here what you mean.
Me: these laptops were special-ordered with serial ports
Me: It's a DB9 connector
Me: that windows will allow us to map to the COM1 port in the software
Me: on the left side, it's behind the SVGA connector
Agent: Yeah, that rectangular slot.
Agent: is that it?
Me: Yes.
Agent: So it's software not really on a certain port?
Me: yes, for some reason, dell shipped these units with the write permissions disabled in the registry
Me: it's physical location on the machine is actually rather irrelevant
Agent: Okay, so you mean you need to edit the registry?
Me: yes, that's what we need to do.
Agent: Okay, in this case here. Since im a Hardware expert and in terms of editing the registry, i cannot go further with supporting you with that because i'm basically not trained for that if you really wnat me to edit it for you, you can back it up first and then i'll do what i can do.
Me: ....so i might as well do what i did with the other unit?
Agent: Yes.
Agent: Just to make sure.
Agent: because i might damge it.
Me: i'm not trying to blame you, as i understand that your training (and options) are therefore limited.... but this does not really endear me to dell
Me: is there anyone available that we can escalate to?
Agent: The software people.
Me: will that be faster than doing the research myself?
Agent: Yeah you can start with your research if that's what you like because it's kinda complicated in terms of registry editting it's very delicate.
Me: I'd love to speak to someone who knows why dell chooses to ship custom-order machines with the custom parts disabled in registry.
Me: send me to the software people so i can hassle them about it, i guess.
Agent: so, is there anything else?
Me: aside the escalation, not really.
Me: thanks for your time!
Agent: your welcome let mke give you a case number.
Agent: Your case # is (redacted) . Use this case # if you need further assistance regarding this issue. You may contact us back using this link: www.dell.com/chat. You will be receiving a transcript of this interaction. It will be sent to (email address).
System: The chat is closed!

Resolution: ignored it for awhile, then later made some educated guesses on which keys to edit; got it in three.

Just.... what.