Does anybody read these?

Adventures in Warranty Land

So, I thought about the error messages and what's been going on with the laptop, and I realized that it's probably inevitible that the hard drive has gone bye-bye on my precious laptop, and Willard, my new buddy at Circuit City Tech Support seems to agree. I am still waiting for a call from my supergeek cousin, but at this point I've mourned the loss of photos from many concerts and tailgate parties and me and my precious little friends at Kentucky Kingdom and birthday parties. I've found enough info to piece my resume back together, which is on the agenda for later this evening. Basically, the failure with the laptop started with a disk read error. We did troubleshooting with Windows, which couldn't install because the computer couldn't write to the hard drive. I'm thinking that means that my hard drive has been left for dead. But who knows? Maybe the supergeek can extract the data. At this point I'm waiting for a new hard drive before I get back up and running anyhow. I already had to reformat it once in the 10 1/2 months that I've had it (You'd have thought I'd learned the back-up lesson then, eh?) so I am just going to make them replace it even if it's not completely dead. Willard seemed to agree with me. Of course, now I have to have another go-round with my friends at HP/Compaq.

Yesterday, right after the laptop went kaput, I called Circuit City and talked to a nice guy named Charles who informed that not only would Compaq have to fix my computer, but that it wasn't in my name and he wasn't sure how that'd work with the extended warranty anyhow. So today I called Compaq. (Note to computer companies: Don't just expect your customers to rely on your Web site when they are having trouble with their computers. I'm shocked, too, but when your hard drive is fried, it's tough to get on the Internet.) When I called Compaq, a nice gal from India who didn't understand a word I said (every time I told her something she'd ask me the same question right after I got done talking and I'd repeat myself)told me that my warranty was expired. It's not, but she wasn't getting that. So, she told me to call Circuit City back. That's when I talked to Willard who told me I do need a new hard drive and to call Compaq back and if they wouldn't fix it, he'd hook me up. (I need to ask Willard if since my two-year extended warranty doesn't start 'til the day my HP warranty expires if that means I really get two years. I'm thinking Willard will laugh.) So, where we are now is that I have faxed a copy of my receipt to HP, proving that I did not indeed buy my computer the day they manufactured it like their tech person says. I have to call them back in a few hours to see if they got the receipt and if they will send me the new hard drive. I am figuring that if supergeek cannot install it, I can pay my computer whiz co-worker to do it. Willard seems to think I can do it myself, but I'm just not sure about that...

So, it's going to be a little bit longer, I think. Fingers crossed that I'll get my stuff off there, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm sure I'll be begging everyone to send me CDs (Amy, that's you!) and pictures of the yellow-haired boy as soon as I'm up and running...

If any of my geek friends who read this have any thoughts, drop me a note...

posted by Laura at 2:48 PM