Laptop won't boot: Any suggestions or good repair shops?

[Archan]

Just got my laptop back from HP. They just replaced my motherboard for a fee. They were not supposed to lose any of my hard drive data.

The result...hard drive was pretty much like I just bought a new computer. Everything gone. I called and in true large company fashion, I was speaking with someone in a phone center in India. After not being able to help me, she took my number and said her supervisor would be calling me in the next hour. 3 hours later, nothing.

Serenity now! Serenity now!

[SKB]

Get a Mac and you will be fine.

[Jimmeh]

Originally Posted by Mishap

Sounds like the nVidia bump material failure.

Sucks how a GFX problem becomes a Mobo problem.

Originally Posted by DONNIEANDDONNA417

speaking of computers....can porn sites tear at your computer?

Not if you know what you're doing. You can tell a more trustworthy website from a not so trustworthy one. Most of the time a virus is installed by the user of the computer. Especially these new ones which pretend to be fake antiviruses. They are all installed by the user just not being computer/online educated.

Originally Posted by SKB

Get a Mac and you will be fine.

Macs die too. Nothing lives forever. And when a mac dies there is no one that can fix it. Plus, you'll pay double unless you know how to do it yourself. Also, buy a mac and you can buy three any other laptops for the same price.

Stick to a PC you know you can take anywhere. I wouldn't take that to geek squad. They'll charge you a 100 bucks to tell you they can't fix it. Your best off at talking to your neighborhood's 12 year old computer savvy kid. He might just want money to buy lunch for a week.

[Mishap]

It'd be a better argument if the nVidia chip problem didn't destroy a ton of Macs too. This isn't a virus or spyware...it was a poorly designed/insufficiently tested component that is common to many computers built from 2006-2008. I'm sure more than a few Macs got wiped by Geniuses too lazy to get a password much like every other PC manufacturer service depot.

Macs have decent service assuming you have the time to make a Genius bar appointment but you're in rough shape if you didn't buy AppleCare after that 1st year. At $249-$349, it's as much as 25% of a new Mac or most of the way to another throwaway laptop. Other companies like Dell/Lenovo/HP have next business day or ship to depot options that can run up to 5 yrs if you like that piece of mind. The Dell techs I've dealt with have been pretty good and despite their negative reputation w/ consumers, their business support is very fast.

Sadly the only solution to prevent ham fisted techs that wipe hard drives for fun is to diligently back up your computer. Vista/7/OSX all have good built in solutions for this and I keep external backups on all my systems on at least a weekly basis. If your computer is already down, I'd still pull the hard drive and attempt to back everything up if possible.

I don't know if there's much of anything to be done about the lost data at this point unfortunately. I don't think most repair depots take backup images before taking apart machines and outside them having mixed up your drive and left it on the table, I don't know if there's any chance your data is still around.

[Archan]

Originally Posted by mmartinpeterson

original post deleted.

Thanks! I already sent in my laptop directly to HP. They were only supposed to replace my motherboard and not touch my hard drive. I got the computer back and all my data was gone. That was the reason I sent my computer in, they told me that they would not touch my data. I was not a happy customer to say the least.

[globalnomad]

Just wanted to say that we too have also experienced problems with our HP Pavilion dv9500 (overheating, fan problems, and now the black screen of death).

We have spent hours talking to nice, but incompetent HP service reps in the Philippines and in India.

Even though we paid hundreds of dollars for an extended warranty, HP Phillippines and HP India both INSISTED we give them our credit card number, which we declined to do as there was no reason for them to have this information.

Bottom line: Never buy an HP product or any thing with NVIDIA as these companies are disreputable, sell complete junk, and refuse to stand behind or repair their products.

Here's a link to a helpful HP forum discussion/rant :
hp dv9500 screen problem - HP Support Forum