[jlgreco]

It doesn't really sound like he got himself into this situation because he struck out on his own and broke something.

It sounds like he got into this situation by calling up and trusted customer support and doing what any normal consumer does: then calling the fixup guy who is supposed to do this stuff professionally.

They said to make a backup and everything would work. He made a backup and it didn't work. From there, everything got worse.

I know that is pretty much the opposite of what I, an undoubtedly overzealous "technology guy", would try to do. Though, as a technology guy I probably would have said "Fuck it, lets install linux" not even halfway through the trouble he was having (and if it were still 2003 and the linux distro I was trying to install were Gentoo, the effort required between the two probably would have just about evened out).

Sticking with it and trying to work with customer service is a very "normal trusting consumer" thing to do.