Cable Forum - View Single Post

rovert · 19-04-2005, 14:25

I am just wondering if anyone else has been as foolish as me in entrusting their computer to PC World. Having had a few problems of late and, as it was free by virtue of my 12 month maintenance agreement, I thought a spring clean might be appropriate. How wrong can you be?

A previous healthcheck led to only minor inconvenience in that a couple of programs were disabled from the start up menu and a call to the store guided me to restore things to their previous state. However, on this occasion, PC World excelled themselves. On switching on after bringing the pc home it appeared to start up normally although I noted that the icon for Norton Internet Security did not appear in the taskbar. I could not connect to the internet by either IE or Firefox. Further investigation revealed that a total of 8 programs had been disabled from the start up menu. Six of these related to Norton but in addition "HIDSERV" and "SYSTEMTRAY" were disabled. Even with my limited knowledge of computing I know that System Tray is fairly crucial to pc running.

The call to the store to query their actions is another story in itself. It appears that there is only 1 telephone number to the whole of PC World which is, of course, an 0870 number presumably to maximise income from those in queues and ploughing their way through the various menu layers. Eventually, after a wait in one of the aforementioned queues, I got customer services who after some persuasion connected me to the store. This turned out to be a total waste of time as I was basically told to return the pc to the store the following day to have the errors rectified. No explanation or apology was forthcoming. I decided against another visit to the store and restored the start up menu myself using "msconfig".

I had on my pc both Ad-Aware and Spybot which I normally run weekly. As a week had gone by since the healthcheck I decided to run the programs. However, although the shortcut icons were there, Windows was unable to locate the programs. I can only assume that they were removed during the healthcheck perhaps as part of the unnecessary files process! Clearly PC World staff have something to learn here.

I am posting this as a cautionary tale to anyone considering using PC World for similar services.

19-04-2005, 14:25	#1
rovert Inactive Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: West Yorkshire(Kirklees) Age: 75 Services: Ex VM now P.O. BB & phone, Freeview. Posts: 95	PC World Health Check I am just wondering if anyone else has been as foolish as me in entrusting their computer to PC World. Having had a few problems of late and, as it was free by virtue of my 12 month maintenance agreement, I thought a spring clean might be appropriate. How wrong can you be? A previous healthcheck led to only minor inconvenience in that a couple of programs were disabled from the start up menu and a call to the store guided me to restore things to their previous state. However, on this occasion, PC World excelled themselves. On switching on after bringing the pc home it appeared to start up normally although I noted that the icon for Norton Internet Security did not appear in the taskbar. I could not connect to the internet by either IE or Firefox. Further investigation revealed that a total of 8 programs had been disabled from the start up menu. Six of these related to Norton but in addition "HIDSERV" and "SYSTEMTRAY" were disabled. Even with my limited knowledge of computing I know that System Tray is fairly crucial to pc running. The call to the store to query their actions is another story in itself. It appears that there is only 1 telephone number to the whole of PC World which is, of course, an 0870 number presumably to maximise income from those in queues and ploughing their way through the various menu layers. Eventually, after a wait in one of the aforementioned queues, I got customer services who after some persuasion connected me to the store. This turned out to be a total waste of time as I was basically told to return the pc to the store the following day to have the errors rectified. No explanation or apology was forthcoming. I decided against another visit to the store and restored the start up menu myself using "msconfig". I had on my pc both Ad-Aware and Spybot which I normally run weekly. As a week had gone by since the healthcheck I decided to run the programs. However, although the shortcut icons were there, Windows was unable to locate the programs. I can only assume that they were removed during the healthcheck perhaps as part of the unnecessary files process! Clearly PC World staff have something to learn here. I am posting this as a cautionary tale to anyone considering using PC World for similar services.