He'd painted over the gas tap and I couldn't turn it on

[venta]

Some time ago, I wrote Saga, part the first of my quest to get my laptop fixed under warranty.

I'm sure everyone's avid to hear this:

Saga, Part the Second

For two months I've been playing an interesting game with Evesham. It became apparent after around three weeks that their estimate of "seven to ten days" before the laptop was returned to me had been, er, optimistic.

There were two problems: one, they'd had to order in a part. Two, the laptop is out of statutory warranty period, so they had to clear the repair with their underwriting insurers. Both these things were known when the 7-10 day estimate was made, of course. Apparently it was mostly insurance red-tape which was taking the time; I don't see that that was really my problem, but there we were.

There is then a interval of six weeks or so which can be summarised as me emailing or phoning Evesham regularly, saying "Are we nearly there yet?" and them replying "Just round the next few corners".

Current opinion of Evesham: bad

Yesterday, my laptop landed back with me. Sure enough, the volume thumbwheel was poking neatly back out of its slot again. Like it should.

Unfortunately, I think it's meant to go round.

After considerable faffing - Windows needed reactivating, and that involved interacting with an automated phone system and typing 50-digit codes into a phone keypad - I discovered several things about the laptop:

Some "system preparation tools" to which the end-user really shouldn't be exposed had been left running.
All my software has been uninstalled, and a clean reinstall of Windows has been done - unsetting all my preferences and tinkered-with options, of course.
All my data has been removed.

Some exploration (done by a colleague, since I was scared of breaking things) revealed that the volume thumbwheel could be turned if you jam your fingernail into one of the ridges and force it round. I'm reluctant to do this much, since it does involve excessive force, and I don't want the damn thing to come off again. Particularly not when the laptop is nearly out of warranty now.

Another phone call to Evesham. The guy on the other end didn't seem all that surprised, or sorry. But my laptop will be picked up again tomorrow, and put on some sort of "priority" ticket in the hopes it won't be so long this time.

Current opinion of Evesham: really quite bad


Current plan: get my laptop back in a working condition, then play hell with their customer services department.

Comments

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

Or, used an imaging tool like Ghost to lay down the factory default configuration with Windows, Device Drivers, and software pre-configured.

Which probably doesn't bring the versions up to date, thus negating the possible advantage highlighted by wimble. I can't see the Ghost image being re-created every time there's a Windows Update, can you? That would require competence (and quite a lot of effort, too).

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Well, there are ways to update images as they lay without too many problems, if you plan well.

Novell Zenworks for instance, lets you edit the registry of the image as it lays on your storage device. It also provides for a concept called an "add on image".

You put your OS, Device Drivers, and Stock applications on the main image, with a registry queue to run whatever happens to appear in directory XYZ.

then you have an add on image that is a compilation of all the most recent patches, security fixes, etc. It lays this down in directory XYZ.

So, on first reboot after imaging, all the updates are automatically applied. You can easily change, replace, and update the small add on image. It's hardware independent, so you don't necessarily need one such add on for each hardware set, just for each OS.

Do most companies do this?

... Of course not.

[venta.livejournal.com]

In fact, reading the repair chit more carefully, it says:

PC check M/B, MEM, CPU - PASSED. BSOD appears to be SW related.

Does anyone have any idea what a SW is ?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah. Software, I've just been told. Of course.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Translation:

We checked a bunch of obvious hardware possibilites, and din't find a problem. Not having found a hardware problem we have to assume that the crashes (Blue Screen of Death) is SoftWare related.

i.e. not bad ram or CPU, or Motherboard... but something cockeyed about windows... thus the need to re-image.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yup, I got there once I'd had it pointed out to me that SW was software :)

(Apologies if this comment arrives twice, am trying to work out whether my webmail supports reply-by-mail)