Laptop and PC World

[marcopolio]

Hi everybody!


I bought a laptop from PC World in January this year, which has worked perfectly well until about August. Since then, various parts of the computer will fail and not allow me to access anything on the system. As I also paid for the full insurance, and I have had to re-install the hardrive 8 times, do you think I would be entitled to an equivalent model straight away?

I ask because I use the laptop for work and cannot afford to be without this for any period of time. If not, as I have paid for the insurance, if I was to 'accidently' knock a coffee into the system (obviously through drinking coffee while at work), what type of turnaround is it for a new model?

If anybody can answer, I would be damn grateful!

[dilli-theclaw]

Originally Posted by marcopolio

Hi everybody!


I bought a laptop from PC World in January this year, which has worked perfectly well until about August. Since then, various parts of the computer will fail and not allow me to access anything on the system. As I also paid for the full insurance, and I have had to re-install the hardrive 8 times, do you think I would be entitled to an equivalent model straight away?

No I don't - I think they'll send it away to be repaired.

But I could be wrong - so wait for a cleverer person than me to pop by

Originally Posted by marcopolio

I ask because I use the laptop for work and cannot afford to be without this for any period of time. If not, as I have paid for the insurance, if I was to 'accidently' knock a coffee into the system (obviously through drinking coffee while at work), what type of turnaround is it for a new model?

If anybody can answer, I would be damn grateful!

No comment on the coffee thing - other than to say I don't think it'd get replaced any quicker as I'm sure they'd have to assess it and all that

[Strzelecki]

It will still get sent away for repair. If you have business coverplan then you can have a loan laptop whilst yours is away for repair. If you 'accidentally' damage it it'll still be sent away for repair/assessment. We've sent a laptop off the got run over by a car and they didn't replace it, they just rebuilt it (still can't work out why, it must have cost more!). For the fastest service call PC Service Call on 0870 901300, they can collect it from your home via courier, have it repaired/replaced and couriered back to you. It's faster than taking it into store as it just goes in their job queue then gets booked for repair exactly the same way as you can do from home. Feel free to ask me any other queries, I'll try and help out!

[Gareth]

It might be worth asking Strzelecki for his opinion on this, as I believe he works for PC World.

Personally, I doubt they'd swap it immediately. IIRC, the insurance scam, oops... I mean arm of PC World is the same one used throught the DSG Group, so it'd have to get sent to them for inspection rather than being examined in your local store. Anyway, I'm sure Strzelecki can confirm this.

[Gareth]

Heh, in the time it took me to search for that PC World thread, he's already replied Good job Strzelecki

[marcopolio]

Originally Posted by Strzelecki

It will still get sent away for repair. If you have business coverplan then you can have a loan laptop whilst yours is away for repair. If you 'accidentally' damage it it'll still be sent away for repair/assessment. We've sent a laptop off the got run over by a car and they didn't replace it, they just rebuilt it (still can't work out why, it must have cost more!). For the fastest service call PC Service Call on 0870 901300, they can collect it from your home via courier, have it repaired/replaced and couriered back to you. It's faster than taking it into store as it just goes in their job queue then gets booked for repair exactly the same way as you can do from home. Feel free to ask me any other queries, I'll try and help out!

Thanks for the quality response.

If you don't mind taking the time, another question!
Have you any idea why the hardrive needs re-installing every few weeks? The laptop is a Toshiba Satelite, which was priced at £1199 in Jan/Feb (sorry, cannot remember the exact model - this one is the CD writer rather than DVD writer version), with Win XP Home. Basically, all the programs stop working, meaning that I cannot open anything in Office, Add/Remove any programs or access any games (only game on there in the last 3 mths has been Championship Manager 03/04). Once the recovery discs have been used everything seems fine but then fails again. I have called the Helpline listed on PC World literature and their advice was to re-install the hardrive. Telling them that I have already done this seemed to fail to register - I was told that this would resolve the problem and it would'nt happen again!

So, any ideas would be gratefully recieved!

[Strzelecki]

Right this sounds like it could be a hardware fault of some sort or a recovery disk problem! Sometimes the recovery disks that come with a machine have drivers that are later found to cause problems, the recovery disk is of course updated to include the new drivers with any machines leaving the factory from then onwards. You could try getting PC Service to send you out a new recovery kit and see if the version number on the disks match. If it's a later version then give it a try. I'm afraid that a mojarity of the people sitting at the call centre for that phone number are as you describe 'restore the machine, that'll fix it', ok so we recommend restoring the machine 1st to rule out software problems, but after that it should be booked for repair if the problems still occur. Unfortunately you just have to keep phoning, explaining that multiple FULL restores haven't done the trick, ask for your customer id after each call (so that number of calls, what's been said can be tracked) and the persons name. If you think it could be a hardware fault you could try running a few tests yourself. I use the UltimateBootCd from www.ultimatebootcd.com for all my tests. You can run MemTest from the bootable cd you can make, plus the full harddisk test (can't tell you what hardisk it will be, depends on the model, go into the BIOS, F2 of Del, and it should say the make there). If it's a maxtor, seagate, samsung or western digital drive you can test it straight away under harddisk tests in the cd's menu, otherwise run seatools (the seagate harddisk test program) and use the generic test in that. Hopefully it'll pull up some errors which you can record and tell the person on the phone (they may not know what the hell you mean, no too bright, but it helps). In store we can call our own tech support, which is full of sensible people who confirm the fault, but we still have to phone PC Service Call to book an engineer, it's a right hassle, had some good arguements with the people on the other end of the phone though (it's amazing what they think they can diagnose over the phone without the PC in front of them!) Good luck and let me know how it goes, I'll try to help!

[marcopolio]

Ta very much - if I knew how to do a fabled green rep that I see people mention then I would! Anyway, cheers

[TheBlueRaja]

Just click the scales (between the green dot and the warning sign) under his name on the left...

BTW - im intreagued - are you still able to load windows when your problems start and what happens when you try to open a program that stops working?

In my experience a faulty hard drive would probably "blue screen" your machine and you would also probably hear quite a few "clicking" noises. Perhaps you mean that they recommended that you reinstall all the software on your harddrive using the recovery disk?

If so then some bit of software is causing it to fail and not hardware - in which case you might not need to send it off at all - just find the cause of the problem which we can help you with here.

Can you be more specific?

[Scrubbs]

Originally Posted by marcopolio

Ta very much - if I knew how to do a fabled green rep that I see people mention then I would! Anyway, cheers

just click on the little silver symbol at the bottom left hand side of his post

[TheBlueRaja]

Originally Posted by theblueraja

Just click the scales (between the green dot and the warning sign) under his name on the left...

*cough*

[marcopolio]

Originally Posted by theblueraja

Just click the scales (between the green dot and the warning sign) under his name on the left...

BTW - im intreagued - are you still able to load windows when your problems start and what happens when you try to open a program that stops working.

in my experience a faulty hard drive would probably "blue screen" your machine and you you also probably hear quite a few "clicking" noises.

Thanks for that.

In terms of the problem, Windows opens fine (maybe a little slowly) on most occasions, although it did fail to open once. When Windows opens, any item that I try to open, such as Word etc, just fails with an error message - something along the lines of "Word (or whatever) failed to execute" and then a bit more blurb. Not a clue what the problem is, but as I said earlier, any suggestions gratefully recieved!

[TheBlueRaja]

Okay, BTW i edited my post above whilst you were typing to try and get some more info - can you comment on that post and perhaps tell me exactly what the error message is?

[marcopolio]

Originally Posted by theblueraja

Okay, BTW i edited my post above whilst you were typing to try and get some more info - can you comment on that post and perhaps tell me exactly what the error message is?

Sorry but I can't remember the error that comes up - I last used the recovery disks a few days ago. Basically, the PC helpline just say that use the recovery disk. When this is done, this returns the laptop to the factiry settings, I fill in all the details such as name etc. The laptop then works fine for a random period of time, meaning that I have to reinstall Office and Works again

I really don't understand as this didn't start happening until 3/4 mths after I had the laptop. Nothing new had been installed and everything worked fine for the first few mths before beginning to fail.

[TheBlueRaja]

There could be a bad sector here as opposed to a faulty hard disk (becuase you can still use the hard disk) - which is basically a small part of the disk that is defective but even then i think its unlikely - can you do this for me when your not needing to use your PC for an hour or two as it could take a while - goto start -> run and type

cmd

followed by return.

A Black window will appear - click on it to select it and type

chkdsk c: /R

followed by return and see if it reports any errors (this is the bit that will take some time as it scans your hard disk). It may ask you if you want to do it on the next reboot as it cant "lock" the drive - this is normal and if so say yes then reboot your machine. This will locate any bad sectors on the drive and attempt to recover any data - i want to know if it finds any.

If there are none then its not a hardware issue.

PC World are being a bit on the slack side by telling you to use the recovery disk as if this was a hard disk issue then they should replace it and if its not then they should find out why this is continually happening.

If this happens again and the CHKDSK i asked you to do above comes back OK (i.e. no hardware issue) kick their ass as they should be trying to find out what the problem is and not just telling you to wipe your disk and start again.

If on the other hand the CHKDSK does not come back as OK then kick their ass anyway as they should replace your hard disk with a new one (post what it says here first though so that we can verify that it is indeed a bad hard disk), as this WILL happen again and you will be doing this again in a few months.

Either way - you should be kicking ass.