This solution was found after three, maybe four, chat sessions and one system board replacement over three days (my total time = 20 hrs).
Chat sessions take 300% longer than a phone session from the "old days" before the support was off-shored.
- I was only able to speak with a "supervisor" for about 2 minutes and could barely understand him.
- Each time there was a delay (such as each time I had to reinstall the operating system), the chat session would be placed on hold and when I resumed it, I would get someone new who would need at least 30 minutes to review the case history.
- It seems that you are expected to be 100% attentive to the chat session, but on the other end, the support person must be juggling three different chat windows because they will only acknowledge and respond to you about every three minutes.