techrecovery | (no subject)

Okay, so, because I couldnt, at the time, pay for a laptop upfront, I took the route of getting a shiny new Sony Vaio from a national lease-to-own shop. This will be the third I have gotten through them, being that I like how they operate and my credit sucks, so manufacturers dont want to offer me payment options.

Also, because i use this shop quite a bit, the manager did me a favour and got me the Vaio directly out of the box, no standard image.

Recently, the power adapter had become loose, and the battery was not holding a charge. Finally it just gave up the ghost and I couldnt boot it at all. Roughly 3 weeks of data was not backed up (I know, bad monkey, no cookie). I took it in to the shop for service, because they include that as part of the lease agreement.

Being in IT for a number of years now, I figured that they would just replace the board within warranty being that its more of a pain to replace JUST the power port, because that has been the SOP for every company I have worked for.

Also knowing that the chain has a "standard image" that they use on all computers leased through them, I made sure that the first words on the service order were "DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES RESTORE THIS MACHINE - STRICTLY A HARDWARE ISSUE" before I even described the issue itself.

So, I happily drop off my laptop, and the manager of the store submits the service request, being sure to include my request of not to restore, because I had some data not backed up.

A week and a half goes by, and I get a call telling me that my laptop is ready to be picked up. I go and fetch it, and before I leave the store, I decide to be sure it works.

I plug the adapter in, it is still loose, but I no longer have to find the "sweet spot" for it to work, so I can live with that, even though that was the reason it went in in the first place. I pull the battery and it still lives, so the power port is really okay. I pull the power and the battery seems OK as well. So I boot up windows, expecting to see my familiar Skull and Bones wallpaper.

You guessed it.

I get a "Welcome to Windows Vista" type of screen. I am pissed. I am beyond pissed. The store manager is more than a little upset.

We call the "on-call service manager"

He informs us that the Power Management System was corrupt, so they reimaged the machine.

That confuses me, because as far as I know (and I could be wrong) but MOST PMS' are NOT linked directly to the OS. They reside on the board. Most OS' have an INTERFACE to them, but as far as I knew the OS was not the master control for it.

And here is where I get REALLY confused... how does a loose power port on the laptop equate to a bad PMS?? That is the one that really boggles my mind.

So I talk to the "Service manager" and find out that he has only been a manager for about 6 weeks, and has only been with the company for about 6 weeks... before that we was a project manager for an engineering company. So he has no IT experience at-friggin-all, and he determines that a loose plug is the OS fault?!?!?!?

I take it in for a hardware issue and I get back a hardware issue with a fresh OS on it.

I am impressed.

I am now waiting on paperwork from the store... The store manager is just as pissed as I am about this, and he is willing to refund me all my money because of it. I am just going to go take that money to buy a mac... at least their customer service can tell a hardware issue from a corrupt OS.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

then 6 others, then detach it from the sticker.

*using R31*

Still way easier than sony. I read it somewhere that on some early ThinkPad, circa '95, they had a widespread issue that caused keyboard failures inside warranty period, and on that specific model, it took something like 4 hours to replace the keyboard. All ThinkPads after that one were WAY easier to service.

I had an R31 as well, and had to replace the hard drive. I don't remember it being difficult.

Dunno why, but every toshiba/hitachi drive seems to fail in it. I might go SSD when prices drop.