computer repair from Hell

[alcattle]

It started about Thanksgiving. I think there was a power surge. (note to self: get a good surge protector) The computer went black and did not want to reset. I went to bed. Next day, I try to start and get a little ways and the system errors out in the DOS like loader screen. Basically it could not find the hard drive. Tried a couple things with no luck. So I figured to take it to the shop.

Take it in and the next day they call and say it was working fine, cleaned up some things and so on. I pick it up and take home, same problem, won't boot.

We take it back a week or so later, and this time the problem happens to the shop folks. Says the HD is getting old (1 year or so?) and I need to replace it. I bring it home, order a new drive from Newegg and wait. Comes about 5 days later, so I put in the drive. Nothing happens. Back to the shop. We took the XP disk but they needed the key. Next day we take them that. No luck.

Now they say the MB and CPU are fried. OK I agree to replace/upgrade those. Wait 3 weeks, no word so I call. Turns out the parts had just come in and they were waiting for the guy to come in to put the stuff together. Wait another week, so they call and turns out the PSU does not have the correct output for the MB. I thought I had a PSU but that one did not have the 8 pin either. So now I am waitng for the new PSU to come in.

Someday....I will box

[jettzypher]

wow...thats a long timeline just to get a computer fixed. maybe find a better shop?

[Yamio]

Either you live in a small town where this kind of thing does happen, or you took your machine to a bunch of nincompoops. In any case, I agree with Jettzypher in that you need to find a better shop.

[Owltoid]

Wow, you must have a nice computer to spend all this money trying to fix it! At some point it may be better to salvage the parts you think work and start fresh

[Freddie]

Unfortunately everything in life is like this. Be glad it happened with a computer repair shop and not a doctor.

[alcattle]

I don't think the Seattle area rates as a small town. Sometimes I have my doubts ;(

I was hoping to build a new system this year. These repairs end up being what the new box would of had except the Vid card. The 8800 is next to go, probably for a 4850 1G.

No I won't go back to this shop, if I had time, I will fix it myself.

[Starbuck_Jones]

Outside the fun of building your own. I cant see a reasonable reason not to go with a major PC manufacturer these days and just spend the extra $200 to max out the warranty on them. Abuse the hell out of it and get a new one every 4-5 years when the contract is up.

In all honesty there was prolly nothing wrong with your computer to begin with. If you had a power outage and on post the Hard Drive was no longer seen there's a good chance all that needed to be done was clear the NVRAM and perform an automatic IDE detection and let the system reacquire whats attached to it. Your power supply will blow out 1000 times before anything else will if you truely had a power surge. That and what youve told us so far about your experience to me conferms that your getting milked.

[Kaynin]

thats some weird shop.

When a computer is borked, the best way (for a shop, or for yourself if you got the equipment) is by replacing potential baddies with a temp new or working piece of equip. Always starting from PSU->MB->CPU/RAM/Cards in slots/HDD's, etc.

Suppose the PSU is borked, it could very well have a malicious effect on just about any card in your comp. :P



Whomever attempted to fix your PC sucks. :P

[Clanked]

I would agree that you are getting hosed.

I can't think of any case where your computer would be able to give you warning errors, if both the MB/CPU were bad.

[alcattle]

I got the computer back finally. Bill was $960. That includes the Q6600, a P45 MB and an Antec 850W PSU. They also added some to install and test things. It was running in the store as I paid. I don't have time to try it out during the week. I might go ahead and upgrade vto 8 GB RAM and Vista 64. Still thinking about a new graphics card but that has to wait for the bank account to recover from the damage. You're right, I will never go there again. I should have fixed it myself or just scrapped it out and upgraded the left overs.