Hi Stephen,
Actually, some of us do read these. Sorry to hear about all of this hassle, and believe me, I'm no more fond of off-shore support than you. I deal with them at home and at work.
I understand your situation. Let me make a suggestion that will work with any make of computer.
In virtually all cases, the fastest path forward is going to be a restore of the factory operating system image. This is provided with all Dell machines, as well as Lenovo, Sony and HP. All you need to do is keep daily backups of your important files somewhere safe, then restore the factory hard drive image, your personal files, and problem solved.
With Windows 8, the OS restore is built-in to most machines.