• '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Okay, tendering notice I’m back up and online.

    Could someone PLEASE explain to me why it is important to format the hard drives (both the primary AND secondary!) to fix a broken heat sink and system fan???  Did I miss that lecture while training for my computer repair certifications, did I just completely luck out and not get those questions on my certification exams?  I mean, seriously?  I never knew it was possible to fix a heat sink by formatting a hard drive!

    ARGH!

    Good news/bad news:

    Good news, I had a full backup before I sent them my computer. (like I’d let any one of you get your chocolate smeared fingers on my baby without a full back up either. wink  j/k)

    bad news, it took them over 3 weeks to completely jack up my machine and get it back to me (with a new enclosure, which they could have done in like 10 minutes if they had bothered to go through the complete repair process I had documented for them, including the idiotic steps their phone operator made me do before giving me an authorization number to send the machine in for repairs with) and over 7 hours to restore all three partitions (2 hard drives, primary has two partitions, don’t ask, it’s a stupid HP thing.)

    So I’m back.  A44, we have a few games to finish, they’re probably hopelessly buried now, but if you have em, bump em please.  Everyone else, I’ve got your links rolling, might not get to your game until tomorrow, but that’s because it’s 2030 hours and I still have to make dinner tonight.


  • Welcome back!


  • Games bumped.

    I would assume this is a Laptop as I see no reason to buy an off the shelf home comp, much less let some meat head get their grubby little paws inside it. Since you have a snazzy certification ya must know more about them that I do. I just build and maintain my own. I see no reason to even mess with the hard drive if those components were the same. For that matter I am pretty sure different components could be used without a total reformat anyway.

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Oh, yea definitely a laptop!  I don’t use desktops anymore.

    Laptop ==> Desktop


    Mobile ==> Stationary
    90 Watts ==> 600 Watts
    No Battery Backup (UPS*) ==> Need UPS
    17" X 12" Footprint ==> 24" X 8" (Tower) + 19" X 6" (Monitor) + Keyboard + Mouse + Speakers……

    UPS: Universal Power Supply, if I remember correctly.
    Footprint: The area of the ground covered by the hardware, ie a laptop covers the area under the keyboard portion of the unit, while a tower has to also use up area for the monitor, keyboard, speakers, laptop, etc, etc, etc.


  • There is one are where a desktop beats a laptop and that is longevity. My comp at my house is well into the " my grandfathers axe" phase. I have stuff that is 10 years old on it and those components work very well, better actually than what I could replace them with today.

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Yes, but within 3 years your computer is not only way out of date, but horribly out of date and pretty darn near paper-weight or door-stop status. :P

    I used to replace my computer every 3-6 months when i was self-employed.  It was pretty much the only way to stay close to the bleeding edge of technology.


  • I don’t know about all that Jenn.

    This computer I am on is several years old and from what I understand cobbled together from several different rigs. I recently replaced my 5 or so year old motherboard on my home comp. Not because it was outdated and did not meet my needs but because the PCI bus went south. My keyboard and monitor are 9 years old and they work just fine. I would like to get one of the new wide screen flat monitors but it is no big issue. My speakers are 10 years old and I have not seen speakers of that quality for a computer for a long time.

    Heck for that matter the monitor I am using right now came from a 98 Gateway that a fried of ours was going to throw away. And even that antique works. I have it at home and have been using it for Abattlemap since with 32kbs of RAM it will only play a few of the games I have.


  • I have no idea why they would format the HDs.  Maybe they determined they were going bad because of overheating and replaced them.  Who knows.

    UPS = uninterruptible power supply.

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    That’s right Jermo!  I thought something was wrong with universal power supply, just couldn’t put my finger on it!  Thanks.

    No, I think the HDDs are the same, at least they did not say they replaced them in the documentation.

    My personal opinion?  I think it’s SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) at HP to format hard drives as the very first thing they do, before they even try to diagnose the problem, probably before they even read the paperwork to see what’s wrong.  They say, in the paperwork they send you in the kit they send so you can return the unit to them for repair, that formatting the hard drive is the last step they take, but that seems inconsistent with my experience with them.  Sent it in three times over 4 years because the system fans went bad, and all three times the hard drives were wiped when I got it back.


  • You are probably right.  I’m sure they’ve got entry level people that they hand a list to and say “do these things and if it still has a problem, pass it up the line.”

    Or they could have done it just by mistake.  I’ve had some real head scratchers on electronic repairs before.  And seeing some of the people that have worked in repairs…well I’m surprised you actually didn’t have a bigger problem.  :lol:

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Got off the phone with their manager (well, manager of tech support - phone help) and he said I should have gotten a slip of paper telling me that the very first thing they do to all computers is format the harddrive and reset it to factory default settings.

    So yes, HP has a bunch of uneducated monkeys running their tech support department.  If the format and reload does not work to solve the problem, the monkey is trained to bring the computer to a CompTIA certified computer repair technician, if they cannot fix the problem, it goes to a REAL computer technician!

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