It isn’t over yet, there is still much to be done. IE 8 is o.k. but I still like Firefox better so I need to get a copy and get it loaded. I did save all my links in the backup process; at least I hope I did. Speaking of backups, I will need to figure out a good way to transfer my old files back onto this box, and set up a good back up program. I should be able to use the one that came with the portable unit I got at Costco and since that is where I stuck my files anyway it may be a good way to transfer back the files. At least that was the thought when I picked it up in the first place. One back up drive should be able to support two different computers, right.
Optimist.
As I think back over the last few months and having to try and come up with solutions to the problems I faced, one thought ran over and over again in my mind; if I can’t get this working again then I will just have to get another computer, but if I had to get a new computer what would I do now? If I had it to do over again would I go this same route or would I try something different? Because of the problems I have had the last thing I want is something that will give me more problems, and I don’t want to spend any more money on this than I have to.
On my last three computer buys I have spent the extra money up front thinking that I was getting better quality, performance, and time before obsolescence only to find that I only got a small increment if any and that the problem quotient was still there. I readily admit that I will think long and hard before even considering an HP again. This has left a bad taste in my mouth for their products, and I do mean that with a plural. Maybe it is the platform and I should switch from PC to Apple.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about that one also, but like the PC, Apples are not perfect. They are far from being cheap let alone inexpensive. If they were half the current price on any and all models the whole story of personal computing would have to be rewritten.
They are also every bit as proprietary as anything out there. This is both good and bad. Good in that they should be in an excellent position to tackle compatibility issues but bad in that there is definitely a monopolistic feel within the platform. But with all this control they should also have a handle on quality issues, especially for the money they charge. That expectation is not born out based on some things I have read. My brother put it best when he told me to go to the local Apple store and take a look at the line at the service counter.
For now I will give the old HP one more shot. I kind of have to with all the time, effort, and money I have invested in this thing. It is too bad that the world is moving so fast and technologies are changing so quickly because some days I would like to go back to an older box that ran simpler software and still seemed to do what I needed it too without too much fanfare. Actually it seemed to do the basics at least as fast as the current boxes do. Bulky is bulky no matter what your time-frame of reference is. It is hard to say which technology is pushing which. Does new software require new hardware or does new hardware dictate new software? All I know is you can never have enough of either when it comes to gaming. And lately it all kinda seems like a game. And one that is getting harder to win.
Either way I will press on and let you know what happens. A lot has been happening in the world lately and without a blog to share my comments with the office has been taking the brunt of my soap boxing escapades. They will probably be glad for the reprieve.
As always, I am Ed Nef with a view from the Farr West.
Click here for Part One of the HP adventure or
click here for Part Two of the HP adventure.
25 February 2011
Tales of the HP, Part Two.
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.
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.
Tales of the HP, Part One
O.K. so I have been off line for a while. Not totally a bad thing but not a great thing either.
The computer finally gave up on me. What a pain. First one side of my dual core processor locks up making everything run very slowly. This lasted about a week. It was at this point that I contacted the American Express warranty people. Since I bought the computer at Costco and used my Costco American Express card they extended the warranty by one year. I am kinda glad I did.
I have had issues with this HP Pavilion box on and off since day one and it finally got so bad that it became unusable. I was never sure what the cause was as the problems acted differently each time. Of course the first thought is that you have picked up a virus or some nasty software but that is the first thing I checked for and except for a few spy-ware cookies I was clean. (Practice good surfing habits people.)
In the past I have contacted Costco’s concierge service which comes with new electronic purchases. They act as an intermediary for user issues and are very friendly, patient and helpful. If they are unable to solve directly (I am guessing the 80/20 rule were 80% of all new customer problems can be handled with the same 20% of the questions/answers) they will contact the manufacturer on your behalf. The first contact was to help me create the initial back up disc for the operating system that no one seems to ship with new computers anymore. The machine would not cooperate in making the disc for me so HP agreed to send me the backup Disc directly. Problem solved, back to work.
The next time was when the Hardware and/or Memory started going flaky. I never could tell which if either was really bad but during the experience I got a lot more familiar with some of the system diagnostic tools. With the support of the concierge I ran many different diagnostics but without a clear, consistent indication of what was wrong we couldn’t proceed to fix anything. This is also the time when I began to suspect that all the different Microsoft updates might have had something to do with it. It seemed like every time I turned around there was a new critical update that needed to be loaded, and when I did load them sometimes things got better and sometimes things got worse, sometimes much worse. It was in this phase that I learned about Vistas ability to return itself to a previous version. That came in handy a couple of times but again I never really was able to identify what the real problem was or what really fixed it.
And here is the rub. The computer would go on these ‘rants’ if you will for several weeks marked by excessive CPU time, or constant hard drive activity even when the computer should be in sleep mode, or the most irritating action of all, the reboot out of nowhere. I have heard that you should leave your computer on all the time and I have heard that you should leave your computer off when not in use. I have gone both ways and at this stage I don’t think it really matters either way. Based on the way you use your computer and frequency it becomes more a matter of convenience versus energy savings from my point of view.
Either way, the computer over its life has acted up on several occasions, diagnostics would turn up one problem or another without consistency, and then after a few aggravating days and sometimes weeks the computer would right itself and all would be well again. It would run perfectly normal for weeks and months with no rhyme or reason.
Unexpected reboots are generally not a good sign and that was always a good signal to me that something was acting up again with mine. Sometimes it was in the middle of the night and the next day when you went to use it you would notice that it had done a reboot. Sometimes I think this was legitimate as a new Microsoft update had been pushed out and it require a restart. It would take a little digging to see if that was the cause but it didn’t explain all of the non-use reboots, not by half.
It is when it started rebooting in the middle of what you were doing that really gave cause for alarm, and much frustration. There is the case where you get something hung up and you have to do a hard reboot yourself, it is a pain but that is a fact of life with these computers running Microsoft. It is something else entirely when it happens on its own or is accompanied by the blue screen of death. This last episode got so bad that I could no longer use it for any amount of time without it crashing in the middle of whatever I was doing. Bad news for me…and bad news for my data.
I finally gave up trying to figure it out and contacted American Express Warranty service, described the problem with what my attempted corrections had been and they agreed to send it in for repairs. Now I face my second problem, the service repair shop they use is a local PC store that has a store about 10 miles from home; however, the store they use for warranty work is located about 70 miles from my home. No problem, I could just run it down there myself and have them fix it while I wait and I would be back in the chase. I neglected to think about the fact that I would have to drop it off and leave it with them for who knows how long before they could get to it, diagnose it, repair it, and return it. On second thought, send me the shipping instructions.
Ah yes, the shipping instructions. They were sent fairly quickly…to my e-mail account…that is accessed through the internet…by… (I think you got ahead of me on this one)…my broken computer. O.K. the internet is everywhere and so that wasn’t as big a problem as it might have been but still one I had to work through. The next problem was slightly bigger.
The instructions said to take the shipping slip to the local UPS store, they would box it and ship it for you, all you needed to bring was the box, power cord, back up operating system software, and the signed authorization letter for the local PC store to do the work. On this signed letter was a place to enter your description of the problem and a paragraph warning of the chance that through the repair of the computer it may be necessary to do a rebuild of the system, in other words wipe out everything on the computer and start all over with a fresh load of the operating system and this my friends means that any files and photos you had loaded on your computer that didn’t reside in another spot would be lost forever.
Now you would think that someone that has had this much problem with their computer would know enough to have backed everything up (and at this point probably several times a day) and you would be right…except for the several times a day. I couldn’t remember when the last time I had done a back up so I wasn’t sure where to begin and I knew I had a lot of photos…a lot of photos which means a lot of backup space was required. That shouldn’t be a problem as I had plenty of CDs and DVDs with which to do this but it would be a lot more convenient to get one of those new portable backup drives, plug it in and let it do it all in one big sweep. Now which one do I get, how big should it be and how much should it cost? Back to Costco.
This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farr West. Click here for Part Two of the HP adventures.
The computer finally gave up on me. What a pain. First one side of my dual core processor locks up making everything run very slowly. This lasted about a week. It was at this point that I contacted the American Express warranty people. Since I bought the computer at Costco and used my Costco American Express card they extended the warranty by one year. I am kinda glad I did.
I have had issues with this HP Pavilion box on and off since day one and it finally got so bad that it became unusable. I was never sure what the cause was as the problems acted differently each time. Of course the first thought is that you have picked up a virus or some nasty software but that is the first thing I checked for and except for a few spy-ware cookies I was clean. (Practice good surfing habits people.)
In the past I have contacted Costco’s concierge service which comes with new electronic purchases. They act as an intermediary for user issues and are very friendly, patient and helpful. If they are unable to solve directly (I am guessing the 80/20 rule were 80% of all new customer problems can be handled with the same 20% of the questions/answers) they will contact the manufacturer on your behalf. The first contact was to help me create the initial back up disc for the operating system that no one seems to ship with new computers anymore. The machine would not cooperate in making the disc for me so HP agreed to send me the backup Disc directly. Problem solved, back to work.
The next time was when the Hardware and/or Memory started going flaky. I never could tell which if either was really bad but during the experience I got a lot more familiar with some of the system diagnostic tools. With the support of the concierge I ran many different diagnostics but without a clear, consistent indication of what was wrong we couldn’t proceed to fix anything. This is also the time when I began to suspect that all the different Microsoft updates might have had something to do with it. It seemed like every time I turned around there was a new critical update that needed to be loaded, and when I did load them sometimes things got better and sometimes things got worse, sometimes much worse. It was in this phase that I learned about Vistas ability to return itself to a previous version. That came in handy a couple of times but again I never really was able to identify what the real problem was or what really fixed it.
And here is the rub. The computer would go on these ‘rants’ if you will for several weeks marked by excessive CPU time, or constant hard drive activity even when the computer should be in sleep mode, or the most irritating action of all, the reboot out of nowhere. I have heard that you should leave your computer on all the time and I have heard that you should leave your computer off when not in use. I have gone both ways and at this stage I don’t think it really matters either way. Based on the way you use your computer and frequency it becomes more a matter of convenience versus energy savings from my point of view.
Either way, the computer over its life has acted up on several occasions, diagnostics would turn up one problem or another without consistency, and then after a few aggravating days and sometimes weeks the computer would right itself and all would be well again. It would run perfectly normal for weeks and months with no rhyme or reason.
Unexpected reboots are generally not a good sign and that was always a good signal to me that something was acting up again with mine. Sometimes it was in the middle of the night and the next day when you went to use it you would notice that it had done a reboot. Sometimes I think this was legitimate as a new Microsoft update had been pushed out and it require a restart. It would take a little digging to see if that was the cause but it didn’t explain all of the non-use reboots, not by half.
It is when it started rebooting in the middle of what you were doing that really gave cause for alarm, and much frustration. There is the case where you get something hung up and you have to do a hard reboot yourself, it is a pain but that is a fact of life with these computers running Microsoft. It is something else entirely when it happens on its own or is accompanied by the blue screen of death. This last episode got so bad that I could no longer use it for any amount of time without it crashing in the middle of whatever I was doing. Bad news for me…and bad news for my data.
I finally gave up trying to figure it out and contacted American Express Warranty service, described the problem with what my attempted corrections had been and they agreed to send it in for repairs. Now I face my second problem, the service repair shop they use is a local PC store that has a store about 10 miles from home; however, the store they use for warranty work is located about 70 miles from my home. No problem, I could just run it down there myself and have them fix it while I wait and I would be back in the chase. I neglected to think about the fact that I would have to drop it off and leave it with them for who knows how long before they could get to it, diagnose it, repair it, and return it. On second thought, send me the shipping instructions.
Ah yes, the shipping instructions. They were sent fairly quickly…to my e-mail account…that is accessed through the internet…by… (I think you got ahead of me on this one)…my broken computer. O.K. the internet is everywhere and so that wasn’t as big a problem as it might have been but still one I had to work through. The next problem was slightly bigger.
The instructions said to take the shipping slip to the local UPS store, they would box it and ship it for you, all you needed to bring was the box, power cord, back up operating system software, and the signed authorization letter for the local PC store to do the work. On this signed letter was a place to enter your description of the problem and a paragraph warning of the chance that through the repair of the computer it may be necessary to do a rebuild of the system, in other words wipe out everything on the computer and start all over with a fresh load of the operating system and this my friends means that any files and photos you had loaded on your computer that didn’t reside in another spot would be lost forever.
Now you would think that someone that has had this much problem with their computer would know enough to have backed everything up (and at this point probably several times a day) and you would be right…except for the several times a day. I couldn’t remember when the last time I had done a back up so I wasn’t sure where to begin and I knew I had a lot of photos…a lot of photos which means a lot of backup space was required. That shouldn’t be a problem as I had plenty of CDs and DVDs with which to do this but it would be a lot more convenient to get one of those new portable backup drives, plug it in and let it do it all in one big sweep. Now which one do I get, how big should it be and how much should it cost? Back to Costco.
This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farr West. Click here for Part Two of the HP adventures.
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