Help, I need ammunition.... 1

[kjonnnnn]

My church bought a computer (without my knowledge), from a guy about a year ago. The computer has no name on the front so I assume the guy made it.

The other week the computer would not boot up at all and gave the error message that it had an Master Disk Failure. I booted it from a floppy from A: and it showed no C: drive existed. Since it was under warranty, I told them to take back to the guy to have him fix it. Well he fixed it, but wants us to pay. He say his warranty only covers hardware.

He says we loaded HP Laserjet 5 drivers corrupted the sectors on the hard drive, so there for its a software issue, and it was OUR fault and we have to pay to get the computer back. Then he says nothing lasts forever.

The computer was only a year old, and the HP drivers had been on there since we got the computer. Im telling him those drivers DID NOT corrupt the sectors on the hard drive. Something MUST be wrong with the hard drive. Then he tried to point out all the things WE could have do to corrupt the drive. I think he's scammin. Who's right? And if I'm right, what ammunion can I get to get our computer back. [sig][/sig]

 

[kjonnnnn]

Does this make any sense? Since the computer would boot up, wouldnt whatever is wrong have to be wrong in the boot sector? So since the printer drivers are not in the boot sector, how could they cause the PC to not boot, even if the print drivers were bad? [sig][/sig]

 

[edfair]

So you understand where I am coming from on this reply. I do hardware repair and build systems. I also am a member of a church and have issues with church management about software and hardware issues within the church.
The fact that the hard drive was not recognized on bootup indicates that either the hard drive was not spinning or the partition table was corrupted. Since the drive was repairable it is more likely that it was the partition table. And they can get corrupted lots of ways. Since the repairman can see the printer drivers it is likely that he restored the partition table, which would have made the drive bootable again. And if he tried to print, and it clobbered the partition table, then he has a very good arguement that the printer drivers are the culprit. And printer drivers, as anything else, can get corrupted easily, in spite of what Microsoft says.

So my advice is to pay what the man charges. Don't argue with him. He probably saved the church money on the front end so write off some of those savings. And don't antagonize him since you may need him again.

Further, if the church intends to continue using a computer, somebody in the church needs to be responsible for the hardware issues that come up and to have a say in the software issues that impact the hardware issues. [sig]<p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>
[/sig]

 

[kjonnnnn]

Thanks for your advice. But I disagree. I handle the computer issues at my church. So i know whats being put on the computers and how they are maintainedd. We have 5 other computers that run fine, as I maintain them. I had him fix this one because is was supposedly under warranty. When I hard drives starts getting bad sectors after only a year (once a week use), thats not a good sign. At first he told someone it was because the floppy drive was bad, then when talkn to me, he changed the story to the drivers corrupted the drive. A a relatively new drive should have corrupted sectors that will totally disable it. I've got 4 WD drives that are over 6 years old that are running fine. [sig][/sig]

 

[edfair]

Did it have bad sectors? Or a corrupted partition table? If there are sectors reporting bad, then it is another issue. But failing to id the drive is boot sector problem and if it is now working then it was either fixed with /mbr or was reformatted. And I don't know what was done. If partition table then I give the benefit of the doubt to the repair guy. You should have been able to do that without invoking warranty issue.
Of course this is also being harsh on you which I don't need to be.
Your WDs are past due to start crashing. [sig]<p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>
[/sig]

 

[maverick]

Well, I support a very large network...
And all I can tell you is that there is no perfect Operating System ! If Microsoft would consentrate on one thing they could be the best, but they have there greedy fingures in everything! as you well know...
But it does help if you run ScanDisk then Defrag on a regular basis, that means once a month at least.
But, Your very best Bet is to secure the system your-self for example; regular backups to a Zip or Jaz Drive, or Ghost the drive so you can get it up and running in 15min.
I burn it on a CD after I have the perfect setup just the way I like it with Office 97...and all my settings

I'm truely Sorry You had problems but in reality it's the users responsibility to maintain a system if he has no IS Dept.
Hope this help you understand....our inperfect world :-(
[sig][/sig]

 

[Kjonnnn]

Excuse me. I do all the above. This issue isnt that sectors got corrupted, but techbrain say &quot;I&quot; caused the curruption by adding HP drivers to his computer. [sig][/sig]

 

[edfair]

I wouldn't think he said you caused the corruption by installing the drivers. More likely that the hardware drivers corrupted the system. And that is possible, maybe even likely, depending on driver age and the operating system they are loaded on. Thats why HP keeps upgrading their drivers. And why they have a web site to make it easy. I know I've had to download my share from them.
To make a fair assessment, what OS are you running on subject machine, whats the date of the HP drivers, and what service packs are installed? Have there been any errors from lost sectors showing up? System crashing for unknown reasons? Any strange printer problems ?
Crashes come at inopportune times. Sometimes months after installation, and some can be attributed to install order of programs and drivers. So this may be one of those.
Probably time for negotiation, not confrontation. Without hands on time I would be very hesitant to step in the middle or to come down too hard on either side. And on a technician level I'd be interested in hearing the other side. Running fdisk /mbr isn't a major time investment. Neither is scandisk or reformat if it was needed. [sig]<p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>
[/sig]

 

[Alt255]

Kjonnnn, I rather doubt that your drivers hurt the hard drive. From your original post: &quot;...gave the error message that it had an Master Disk Failure&quot;.

This error indicates hardware failure. Perhaps nothing catastrophic... perhaps something as simple as a bad connection. &quot;Techbrain&quot; probably exceeded the limits of propriety when he told you the HP drivers caused this (he may have crashed his personal credibility when he expected you to believe it). &quot;Techbrain&quot; may not be the most honest man in the world but, by definition, there can be only one.

Ed Fair made a good point: don't burn your bridges behind you. If your belief system allows it, live and let live. Pay the man and forget the incident ever happened.

Personally, my belief system is a bit more restrictive. I tend to distrust those who insist that &quot;black&quot; is actually &quot;white&quot;. In this instance, I wouldn't let &quot;Techbrain&quot; come within a mile of my computers. I would find somebody else to handle the tech stuff or I would grab a screwdriver and start asking questions at Tech-Tips. We are willing and able to help 24/7.

Just don't dwell on the question of who is right and who is wrong. Get the computer up so the members of your church can use it again.
[sig]<p> <br><a href=mailto: > </a><br><a href=

http://www.vorpalcom.com>A

plain black box</a><br><i>"To run Visual Basic, you must have certain hardware and software installed on your computer.<br>
• Any IBM-compatible machine with an 80286 processor or higher.<br>
• One megabyte of memory."</i><br>
<br>
<b><u>Visual Basic Programmer's Guide</u>[/sig]

 

[kjonnnnn]

You make good points. And I feel as you do. I press the point because I believe he scams. Several people have purchased computers from him only to have to return them several times within a year. As far as needing him in the future, that is not an issue. I do tech suppport for a living. It may have been a loose cable, or a virus, but since they paid for a warranty I told them to take it back. When the guy first talked to a nontech person, told them we put a bad floppy in (which was untrue). Then when he talked to me he changed the story to the HP drivers. [sig][/sig]

 

[Karl Blessing]

two things you can do
1) if they have a online store goto resellerratings.com and rate them (let them know about this site)
2) There should be a better busniess burue or something you can contact
3) keep records of everything he does, even request written documents describing problems, and his proposed solutions.

and anything else, also getting your problem out publically hurts them in the long run.

Do that above, if he continues to give you a hardtime. [sig]<p>Karl<br><a href=mailto:kb244@kb244.com>kb244@kb244.com</a><br><a href=

http://kb244.com>

</a><br>Experienced in : C++(both VC++ and Borland),VB1(dos) thru VB6, Delphi 3 pro, HTML, Visual InterDev 6(ASP(WebProgramming/Vbscript)<br>

http://www.brainbench.com/transcript.jsp?pid=629151

[/sig]

 

[axslinger]

I would like to share how I would handle this issue (I have a one-man PC service company).
1) I try not to sell PC's. It's too competitive and everybody expect's us little guys to compete with the mail-order places, as well as the local mass-merchandisers. If I sell a PC that is anywhere close to the price of a PC at Office Max or Staples, all it takes is an hour or two of my free time doing warranty work and I have just lost my ass. Bad business.
2) If I do sell a PC, I make it clear that ALL LABOR IS ALWAYS BILLABLE, ALL THE TIME. End of story. Most of my clients don't have a problem with this. Mainly because they can't get same day emergency service out of the 'Big Guys', regardless of how good the warranty is. They want the computer running. Period.
3) I don't build hard drives. I don't design them either. Same for modems, graphics cards, printers and monitors. If a product works when it goes out the door, my job is done. I cannot and will not be held responsible for the millions of possible scenario's that can cause a PC to bomb.
What I will do, as a courtesy, is obtain an RMA and take care of the shipping of a damaged product. If it's something I have in stock, they don't have to wait for the RMA. I'll put in a new one and get things up and running.
Let's assume this was a defective drive. That it corrupted itself. Fine. Hold the manufacture responsible, not the guy installing it in a computer. He's entitled to get paid for his labor. He owes nothing to you or Western Digital or anybody else.
If I were him, and I had a customer that insisted on not paying, I would Fdisk the drive and give it back to you. Free of charge. If I had replaced the drive, I would put the damaged drive back in it and return it to the owner. Free of charge. Then they could call WD, get an RMA, wait for a new drive, reload the OS, drivers and apps and maybe, just maybe, two weeks later they would be up and running.

But just think of the money saved!!!

Brian

 

[clivo]

I also sell, repair and service PCs for a living (not a very good one!). I think it's fair to say that all vendors sort of stand between the purchaser and the manufacturer. The manufacturer is the guy who warrants that whatever it is that he manufactures is free from latent and other defects. The dealer is his agent only.

The simple fact of the matter is that if the thing breaks within the stated warranty period, then it (the device) should be repaired orr replaced free of charge BY THE MANUFACTURER.

There are many customers who specify a particular product. For instance, there is a particular brand of hard drive I never recommend or even stock. if a customer requests it I tell him why I dont recommend it. If he insists, well then he gets it. I still, via the manufacturer, honour the warranty.

In all cases, I do NOT charge for labour on warranty work. But I dont believe that this is the correct approach. I should charge, but I am just so weary of all the arguments that arise from charging and quite honestly I can do without the bad vibes and aggro.

With the exception of hard drives and lightning struck modems, computers seldom actually break. Corrupt and / or buggy software is another matter entirely. Just look at this whole forum! 90% of what is here is actually software related. Read the licence and disclaimers that accompany software! Well this is one area where I stand firm. Publishers, Microsoft included, do not even warrant that their products are suitable for the intended task! The only thing they warrant is the quality of the CD press!

In conclusion, unless the hard drive was replaced the problem was software. Whether it was caused by the printer drivers or not (which I truly doubt, but like others before have pointed out, not impossible) is irrelevent. I say pay the man for his labour.


Clive
clive@digitalsky.co.za

 

[tschuy]

This string seems to be very interesting and I can see points made on both sides of the issue. But I have to agree with clivo's post and say that many times the issue of warranty does indeed lie with the manufacture. Although what the repair service that looked at your hard drive which painfully obvious, he scamming and thus if it were me take my business elsewhere. With regards to installation of printer drivers cause bad sectors to happen or cause distruction of the boot sector of the drive, I personally have never seem this in my 10 years of working on PC's. There is a good site that Western Digital has that provides diagnostics that are free to download and test their drives. The address is

http://www.westerndigital.com/service/

Go there and get some very usefull information and download the diagnostic software and run the tests on the computer which does see it. As for handling the arrant repairman, the best thing to do about this is to get the word out to the members of your church and community as to the service this individual had done for you. This will hurt him more then anything else and thereby ensure that he treats everyone with a little more respect and honesty.

I should also point out that there had been a recall of the Western digital drives for chip and platter defects. This might have something to do with you. But do the test/diagnostics and it will tell you if you do indeed have a problem drive, plus you can also generate an online RMA to replace the drive if it is under warranty.

Best of luck to you.

Tim

 

[axslinger]

Personally I don't see the point in giving the guy a bad rap. Perhaps somebody at the church told him that they had installed HP drivers just before it wigged out. Generally the first thing I ask a customer is &quot;what was the last thing you were doing before it started acting up/died/crashed&quot;. If the person tells me they had just installed a new application or whatever, then there is the possibility that that is what caused the problem. I have had PC's crash plenty of times in the middle of installing something. It has no choice but to corrupt the HD. I'm not saying that software can physically damage a HD but it can certainly corrupt it.
I don't think getting a new hard drive is the issue heer, IF it's a bad hard drive. I use a utility called MicroScope that is excellent at spotting a physically damaged drive. If it is physically damaged, call WD directly. You won't even need a receipt. Give them the S/N and they will tell you if it's under warranty and give an RMA. No big deal there. But if the intention is to give the guy a bad rap because he want's to get paid for his labor, I have to disagree. What I would of done, if the PC were brought to me is run diagnostics on the HD. If the drive was good, I would call the customer and offer to reload the OS and all of the software at my standard rate. If the drive was bad I would offer to obtain an RMA from WD, free of charge. And then I would offer to reload the OS and software, at my regular rate when the new drive arrived. Even with one of the &quot;Big Guys&quot;, they would either talk you through a system restore, or send you a new HD and then have you do a system restore. They aren't going to do it for you. The other possibility is that they would have you send the complete system in. Then they would drop in a drive with the image already on it and send it back out to you.
You mentioned that he pointed out all of the things that you could of done to corrupt the HD. He's merely mentioning possibilities. There are a million things that could of happened and he was just throwing some at you. As far as it being YOUR fault, it's not anybodys fault. It's a computer. That about covers it. I worked in a shop for about 2 years that was charging $95 and hour when I started and now they charge $125/Hr. Realistically he could of had 1/2 hr. in diagnostics and another 2 hours into reloading the OS and proper drivers. Anybody that has done bench work would agree that this could be on the low end. Start fighting with the device manager etc. and it could end up being 4 hours. So if his bill is $250 or less, you're doing pretty good.

JMHO

 

[kjonnnnn]

Well my church picked up the computer I've been ranting and raving about. And once again the guy changed his story.

First, he told a member the floppy was bad, thats why it wouldnt' boot up.

Second, he told me, HP drivers created bad sectors on the HDD, thats why it wouldn't boot up.

Third, he told the guy that picked up the computer that the memory was bad, thats why it wouldnt boot. (He then took upon himself to replace the memory and charge for it). I demanded he put the old memory back, since we didnt agree for him to replace it.

Of course the computer works fine with the old memory.

So 3 completely stories he's told....

What a crook.

 

[axslinger]

Judging from what you've posted, he does sound a little &quot;out there&quot;. Be cautious about the memory though. I have seen PC's &quot;run fine&quot; with bad memory before. All the while writing corrupt data to the HD. Then one day, kaboom! The system crashes or starts acting flakey. I trust my DIMM tester, not my PC, to decide whether or not the memory is good or bad.

Brian

 

[kjonnnnn]

Oh yea, I know memory goes bad, but i left out something in my post, he blamed Office 2000 for corrupting the memory. He told my church member Office 2000 was too powerful for the memory.

 

[Comtech]

More and more this sounds like a scam.
[rant] A responsible man would have found the REAL problem, EXPLAINED it to the IT (you), EXPLAINED what his recommended repair procedure would be, and ASKED for approval BEFORE doing ANYTHING.
I am also a 1 man service shop, and I build and sell systems/upgrades, you name it...
I purchase my products from a wholesaler, THEY warranty the stuff from the manufacturer, and I warranty the stuff to the customer. If a part goes bad, I get the RMA, and do the right thing. If it's a software issue, it's simply not covered. Period.
If it's as simple as an HD replacement, I do the labor for free (after all, this is for a Church!), I may even install the OS if they have nobody to do it who knows how (if it's needed).
If all it took was an fdisk /mbr and it works, then WHY is this guy changing his story 3 times, and trying to CHARGE for it?!?!
Scam, scam, scam...
BTW, Office2000 will run (and does just fine) on my kids P133 w/48meg of FASTPAGE ram...so that story is bull.
A floppy drive gone south may create a boot error (error 40) but will still boot to the HD, and has nothing to do with corrupt mbr and such...
HP drivers are very reliable for their printers and scanners (I can't say anything good about their computers though), and I really doubt a printer driver would cause a system crash.
[/rant]

Jim
reboot@pcmech.com

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

Current moderator at

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Staff contributor/moderator at

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Windows 9x/ME instructor.

Jim's Modems:

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[clivo]

I think this thread has establsihed two things:
1. Techbrain is fully of the smelly stuff.
2. He himself has no clue as to what caused the problem.

What bothers me also is first the system reports no HD present (this could even be a flat or dislodged CMOS battery), later we hear of bad sectors and corrupt HD. I mean these are totally different problems, and I for one am not really sure of what the problem was. A corrupt hard drive will report just that, an absent HD is different. we all know that a corrupt HD can be caused by a thousand things, ranging from no shutdown to naughty OS. I still think the guy doesnt know what caused the problem, but simply feels it was not hardware failure. Dunno what's right.


Clive
clive@digitalsky.co.za