I found one (a portable backup hard drive), looks about right, on sale, says it’s easy to use, preloaded with backup software…let’s try it.
After much rebooting I was able to get the computer up and running longer than 3 minutes, plugged the backup drive in and started to copy files over. The best I was able to do was move 1.9 Gb before it crashed. This is not good.
I was not going to trust my data to someone I could not talk to first that should be able to save the data before rebuilding the computer. I chickened out and took it to a different local PC shop, one that advertised free virus scans and one I had been in once before when I went shopping for a particular piece of computing hardware with a friend. I was hopeful.
Too hopeful it turns out. You can’t run a virus scan if you can’t get the computer to run at all. Minimum diagnostics charge was $69, thank you very much, but they go through it totally and test each part then let you know what it will cost to repair before fixing…yada, yada, yada. I got the call the next day saying come pick it up it is ready to go. I go there and the lad tells me that they ran a hard drive check disk, found some bad sectors, repaired them and it ran fine. I asked if they ran the free virus scan and he plugged it in to their monitor to show me. It crashed three times before he sheepishly turned to me and said “You probably want to leave this with us a little longer.”
Several days go by and still no word so I stop in after work to see what the verdict is. He thinks it might be the memory but he also is not getting consistent readings. He has been pulling components out of my box and putting it into one of theirs then running the test piece by piece so at least this time they are using good method. The techie tells me that the hard drive is working fine. This is good news to me since that is where my data is. So I ask “Can you save the data?” to which he replies “yes, we usually charge $79 to transfer data.”, and I reply “WHAT, you have got to be kidding me?” but he wasn’t.
I then decided that I could do that part of the job myself if I only had the right tool. I found it in their shop, a box which will act like a portable hard drive when you insert your internal hard drive into it and then power it up and plug it into the USB port of another computer. I talked him into giving me a break on the price, he gave me $5 bucks off, and off I went $100 poorer but at least on my way to saving the photos.
Having a little mechanical savvy I was able to open up the box, pull the internal hard drive, build the portable unit, plug into my wife’s laptop that she is using for school, transfer the files, return the internal hard drive to its original position inside the HP desktop box, put the case back together and start feeling hopeful again.
I then immediately hooked up the new recently bought portable backup drive from Costco to the wife’s laptop and did a proper backup of all the files on her computer including the newly transferred files from the HP. This was another ‘whew’ moment.
Off to the UPS store and the computer was now on its way to PC repair store number two, the original one intended to do the repair work under the extended warranty. The repair tech contacts me a few days later saying he couldn’t find the power cord that I know I took with the box to UPS to be shipped, but he said it was o.k. he had one available. He then asked me several times making sure that I had backed up my data. I assured him I had made every effort to do so and that is why it took so long to get it to him from the day I first submitted the claim. This to me was confirmation that I had done the right thing in making sure I had my files off the computer before sending it in, a system rebuild was in the works and I could feel it.
A week went by but being busy with work I hadn’t had time to notice or do much with home computers anyway so I just let it be. About the time I did start to wish I had it here though it showed up from UPS, on a holiday no less. I unpacked the box trying not to get the packing peanuts everywhere. There was a note inside stating that they had replaced the System Board (Mother Board for us old timers) and power supply (evidently the power cord got lost along the way), and had run a “burn-in for more than 19 hours and everything is working fine”. They also installed fresh OS with all driver and window updates. Does this mean I am truly back in business and that I can run my computer without fear for the first time in its life? Honestly, I don’t know.
Only one way to find out, plug it in and try it out. So that is what I am in the process of doing. I took care to plug all the various wires and cords back into the same places they came out of (more or less). With fingers crossed I hit the power button and waited for the lights to dance. Of course the first attempt ended in a mouse that wouldn’t operate and a keyboard that quit after a few taps of trying to operate a computer without a mouse. I quickly called back the PC store who suggested I buy a new mouse since they sometimes go bad or try plugging it into a different slot and see if that works. The mouse and keyboard worked fine before I started all this so there was no reason for them not to work now and besides, I have a serial mouse, not a USB mouse so there is only one place to plug it and the keyboard into, and they are color coded from HP and no I didn’t get them mixed up thank you very much. It turns out Microsoft is still not as plug and play as they want you to believe so the computer had to decide what drivers to use and then needed a reboot. One reboot later the computer recognized the keyboard and mouse and I could try again.
Next thing I noticed is that I have in essence a new box and that there is nothing loaded on it but the newly loaded operating system. All the rest is gone. I still have the software disc for MS Office and such so not a big deal although it does require reloading everything with subsequent re-registering and reconfiguring and rearranging and just redoing everything that you had done once before. (These really are remarkable time saving devices aren’t they.) So I have Office on here now and IE8, both running on the newly updated 64 bit Vista with Service Pack 2. I also have my Anti-Virus software package running; it was the first thing to get loaded and updated.
Of course I have already done several system updates as suggested by Microsoft’s Windows update and currently have another 18 waiting for me since I just loaded MS Office. I have also had to reload a version of Adobe Acrobat reader which is required to read all the manuals and read-me docs that seem to be everywhere these days. I also tried to load Adobe Flash Player but that one got hung on me. In fact I already have 4 system problems that need checking for solutions, 2 for the HP and 2 for Windows. Actually when I pressed check for solutions it went looking for 18 of them. I hope this is not a sign of things to be with this system.
I will try to follow the software manufacturer’s suggestions, keep everything current and updated, treat this computer with the kid gloves I always have and hope that things are going to be different this time around, thinking that maybe I did just get a quasi-lemon last time and that I am fully repaired and now I can surf the web and compute without fear, and my productivity will go through the roof as my creativity soars by with the broken barriers of hardware limitations.
Optimist.
This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farr West. If you are ready to see the conclusion Click here for Part Three of the HP adventures. If you missed the beginning Click here for Part One.
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