I used to service Dells.
Dell Tech support? Pffff.....
I learned a long time ago to just tell them the computer is DEAD.
That was the only way i could get the part i need shipped without spending 2 hours with them and their scripted troubleshooting methods.
I learned that myself after the first two or three. My PHB-ette at the time would get rather touchy about it since to her it was more productive (fantasy) to go through every step. This was the same person who rather spend hours trying to boot a flaky windows box up instead of putting drives in caddies or using a Linux Live disc to lift important user data.