"And then a miracle occurred . . . ." Well, not exactly. SupportAssist still doesn't work, so I've decided to wait for the next release and hope that will fix the reinstall problem. But that was only the tip of the iceberg of my Windows woes. So many other things had gone flakey (my backup program, Acronis Cyber Protect Home and Office, wasn't working properly; if I right-clicked on a drive in File Explorer, File Explorer closed; Windows detected two brand new SanDisk flash drives I recently purchased, but wouldn't display them in File Explorer; Windows said there were no restore points saved), I was all set to do a factory reset of Windows. I tried to download the Dell OS Recovery tool on my Dell laptop, and nothing appeared to be happening (via WiFi; the laptop doesn't have a port for a network cable (grrrr!)), so I downloaded it to an older Toshiba that does have a network port. To cut this long story short, I installed the recovery tool and system image to the one flash drive I have that Windows would recognize on the Dell laptop, and ran it. I followed the recommended sequence of tasks, and it offered me a restore point that Windows claimed didn't exist. I took it, and most of the flakiness (except for SupportAssist not running properly) seems to be gone, without my having to do a complete reset. Scannow found and fixed a few issues that it failed to find previously. File Explorer even recognizes the SanDisk flash drives now! I'm using Dell Update to check for system updates. All hail the OS Recovery Tool! And thanks for your copious suggestions. They were very helpful. Terry P.S. I'm marking this "Accept as Solution" because there are so many valuable points made, but it's really only a partial solution since the original problem with SupportAssist remains. Dell still needs to do better.
I've been trying for the last several days to run Dell SupportAssist (version 3.13.2.14) on my Vostro 15-7500 laptop. All I ever get is the message, "This is taking longer than expected. We recommend restarting your PC and trying again later." This hasn't worked in the last several days. If I run the installation file, SupportAssistLauncher.exe, I get the message that the latest version of SupportAssist is already installed. If I try to uninstall the program, I get a Windows Installer error, "The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable. Click OK to try again, or enter an alternate path to a folder containing the installation package 'SupportAssistx64-3.13.2.14.msi' in the box below." The path to this file is: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Temp\SupportAssistAgent\cd4af687-1452-4994-be2d-6421b9b830db\ but that directory doesn't exist. The path:C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Temp\SupportAssistAgent\77d42f07-0023-416a-9efa-f8258bc3b4ae\ does exist, but it doesn't contain the .msi file. There is no option in Control Panel to do a repair installation of SupportAssistAgent, IMO a lapse on Dell's part. How can I get the actual installation program, not the SupportAssistLauncher, so I can get an actual working program? Thank you.
SupportAssist: Won't Run, Can't Uninstall or Reinstall It