Compaq Tech Support
Aug. 2nd, 2004 12:22 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
boredevilperson.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
techrecoveryInteresting. Mid last week my sister in law called me to say they were having problems with my brother's computer (a year and a half old Compaq) It kept running slowly and shutting down.
She already figured it was Windows XP getting bogged down with Internet crap so she backed up the important stuff and tried to do a restore. The restore disc was not working.
So she calls Compaq Tech support and they send her out a new set of restore CDs. Starts a restore again, same thing. She managed to get it to a point where Windows would at least come up but it was still running very slowly and shutting down.
From what she said it sounds like Compaq didn't do much troubleshooting and told her that a fan must have gone bad so it's overheating and she'll need to take it to a service center. She wasn't left with a good feeling after dealing with these people. Plus she didn't want to take it to a service center.
So she called me up to see if I could take a look. I got out there yesterday and started it up. Yup very slow and just doesn't seem to want to work well.
I restarted it and went into system setup looking for Diagnostics. I stumbled on a Hard Drive diagnostic utility built into the BIOS. Was actually thinking this might be a memory issue but I figured "Why not" So I run it. "This will take 50 minutes to run" about a minute into it the message said "Hard drive needs replacement"
So we run to Circuit City, buy a Western Digital (those are still good right?) and replace the Maxtor drive with that. Computer restores fine and is back to normal.
I'm just surprised that Compaq tech support didn't have her run any diagnostic utilities on the system to determine the problem. Particularly when it's built into the BIOS. Then again, maybe I'm not surprised. I guess it's not a huge deal because the service center would've determined the cause and fixed it (for a fee) but still. Just seems that they didn't try at all on this one. I could be wrong though!
Oh well.
She already figured it was Windows XP getting bogged down with Internet crap so she backed up the important stuff and tried to do a restore. The restore disc was not working.
So she calls Compaq Tech support and they send her out a new set of restore CDs. Starts a restore again, same thing. She managed to get it to a point where Windows would at least come up but it was still running very slowly and shutting down.
From what she said it sounds like Compaq didn't do much troubleshooting and told her that a fan must have gone bad so it's overheating and she'll need to take it to a service center. She wasn't left with a good feeling after dealing with these people. Plus she didn't want to take it to a service center.
So she called me up to see if I could take a look. I got out there yesterday and started it up. Yup very slow and just doesn't seem to want to work well.
I restarted it and went into system setup looking for Diagnostics. I stumbled on a Hard Drive diagnostic utility built into the BIOS. Was actually thinking this might be a memory issue but I figured "Why not" So I run it. "This will take 50 minutes to run" about a minute into it the message said "Hard drive needs replacement"
So we run to Circuit City, buy a Western Digital (those are still good right?) and replace the Maxtor drive with that. Computer restores fine and is back to normal.
I'm just surprised that Compaq tech support didn't have her run any diagnostic utilities on the system to determine the problem. Particularly when it's built into the BIOS. Then again, maybe I'm not surprised. I guess it's not a huge deal because the service center would've determined the cause and fixed it (for a fee) but still. Just seems that they didn't try at all on this one. I could be wrong though!
Oh well.
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Date: 2004-08-02 07:48 pm (UTC)About customer support: I have *never* liked Compaq, either in my own experience or through friends' stories. You're right that the first thing they should have done is run some kind of diagnostics. I have called Dell support a few times for a friend, and every time I've had a knowledgeable person (speaking excellent unaccented English, heh) who recognized I knew what I was talking about and directed me to the diagnostic software.
Now the general public is finding out why HP shareholders fought so hard to stave off the Compaq merger. Anyone who knew anything about HP and Compaq knew HP was getting a raw deal.