A mad man is me sighting.

[UncleImpy]

Not to add to the...okay, maybe I am, but another detail:

Drivers - responsibility of the hardware manufacturer, not Microsoft. Got a spiffy new machine, need a driver for the mouse? The mouse manufacturer is supposed to develop and release the driver.

Its like bitching at Ford because your Bose radio doesnt fit in the dash of your new car. Its not Ford's job to make sure their dash works with your radio. Its the radio manufacturer's job to make sure it works with the dash.

SO go ahead and get the new machine, FDISK, boot and load XP on it. Go nutty.

[Rahmota]

Well obviously we have different perceptions on this subject so I'll just make a few last summary commetns and then move on.

1: I did not like being told my only option was to bend over and take it or waste all the money we had spent on the laptop and the "service plan" If a company sells a service plan then they are morally and ethically obligated to service the item, not replace it unless the end user wishes that. I do not want a new laptop, I do not need a new laptop, I wanted my laptop repaired. I tried being reasonable at first but the attitude of the person behind the counter and over the BB phones was this situation is resolved suck it up or deal with it. I am just quite glad that there was someone at HP willing to actually work with the customer and take care of them (Which is not caving in IMO) and not just care about taking their money and screwing the customer just because they tried to save some money.

2: I have been told that Vista is unable to be fdisked or installed over by several other technitians including the one I spoke with at HP. I do not know for certain if this is merely big brother's propaganda party line or not but since Vista is a step backwards for me I am not going to bother worrying about it as I am not going to get a computer with laptop on it.

3:Kinkioid: Here is some food for thought as well: Even saints have their limits and when pushed beyond them by uncooperative or unfair policies can go off on people, and I aint no siant for sure! To paraphrase Teddy R. "Some people are born sucky others have suckiness thrust upon them."

4:I4wolves: No pretty much the only option BB was offering me was take the new POS or take my old one back. They refused to take or discus any other options.

5: And before anyone else says anything about me not knowing how retail works yadda yadda yddda. I have worked in retail as a greeter, a tech, a security officer, and a TA in college. I run my own business on the side of farming. Generally if the person on the other side of the counter does not cop an attitude with me and we can work thigns out then fine I"m willing to be flexible. Cop an attitude with me and provoke me or otherwise try and tell me my ONLY option is to take what they are offering is one way to get on my bad side.

6: And finally I never said I wasnt being a sucky customer at this juncture. I thought you might find it interesting to see how even the good guys can loose it sometimes.Also I needed to vent some about getting shafted (IMO honestly yes but in the end that is what matters to me) by a big megacorp because I didnt spend a buttload of money. All BB cares about is the customer's money and how much they spend not how they can actually work with the customer and make thigns right and good. Yes I was a Sucky customer, yes I used evil means to have a good end result (good being relative in general and in this specific instance good for me) of having my laptop fixed. Oh well, such is life.

[Pedersen]

2: I have been told that Vista is unable to be fdisked or installed over by several other technitians including the one I spoke with at HP. I do not know for certain if this is merely big brother's propaganda party line or not but since Vista is a step backwards for me I am not going to bother worrying about it as I am not going to get a computer with laptop on it.

Just a word of note: They are wrong if they have told you that. It would, technically, be possible to create an operating system and motherboard bios such that once the OS is installed the machine cannot be rebooted without it.

It is also so impractical to do that the only use for it would be the world's nastiest computer virus. No operating system would be built this way, ever, and Vista is no exception. Not even Mac OS X does this, and Apple is even more restrictive with the hardware than any other PC manufacturer out there!

No, I can guarantee you that Vista can be removed. If nothing else, use the Mandriva link mentioned earlier, or Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/ ), and then use this command, and you will have an empty hard drive (without even a restore partition or diagnostics partition, so you have been warned: This will destroy ALL data, including data you don't know about, that's on the hard drive!!!!)

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=65536 ; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=65536

And be prepared to wait. You're going to be waiting a very long time while the hard drive is completely erased. After that's done, you can install XP, Vista, NT, whatever, and none of them will complain. And all of them will offer to repartition/reformat your drive, since it sees this as an empty drive.

Just in case anybody could have any need/use for that info

[Sliceanddice]

ive been where you were, mine was a motherboard problem.
But i own XP so i could just reinstall on my new one.
You where out of line for screaming and cussing but every thing else was reasonable. Yours was an easier than mine and probable cost all of 150 dollars where mine cost all of 400 for parts, they just didnt think it was wrth it to send ot have someone ele do the work and make sure all the stuff worked. SO they thought passing you a new one instead would be their best bet.

You over reacted but i think you were justified.

[tollbaby]

Okay, let's be perfectly honest here. It's not that Best Buy was unwilling to work with you, it's that your expectations and demands were completely unrealistic. Your wife bought a laptop ON CLEARANCE. That means Best Buy isn't selling it anymore. Said laptop was broken, doesn't matter whose fault it was. You want the screen swapped out, except that THEY DON'T SELL THAT MODEL ANYMORE. Thus, there are no spare screens sitting around to swap yours out with. They obviously can't just glue the thing together, so that makes REPAIR IMPOSSIBLE. Thus, under your service care plan (and yes, there is a clause in there about this), if they can't repair the item, they are perfectly within their rights and legal responsibilities to offer you another item of similar value. They are abiding by the terms of the contract you entered into, and because that's not good enough for you, you throw a fit.

YOU. WERE. BEING. UNREASONABLE.

And yet, when HP offers you a new laptop (which was EXACTLY what BB offered you), suddenly they're saints who are willing to work with you whereas BB was not. In addition, just about everybody who has responded to your post has agreed that you were being sucky and unreasonable, and yet you cling to your self-righteous "I did what I had to do" attitude.

Dude, suckiness was not thrust upon you. In this instance, you clutched at it enthusiastically, and hugged it tightly to your bosom, cradling it like a beloved child.

(edited to add an aside to Sliceanddice - hon, BestBuy offered to replace his laptop outright... he wasn't having to pay for squat - he simply didn't WANT a new laptop and demanded they fix his old one instead, which was bought on clearance - not quite the same sitch.)

[Rahmota]

Pederson: Yeah I guess impractically able to be removed is what the folks are telling me outside of BB. And as for using that command I ahve logged and noted it for future reference. The only bad thign is that the only actual install disks I have are the old dos 6 win 3.1 system disks as the 98 I have is an upgrade and the laptop came with the restore disk.

Tollbaby: The point is that HP is NOT giving me a new laptop they have REPAIRED my old laptop as a responsible company wishing to keep good customer relations.

And yes there are spare screens sitting aorund. I googled the part for my laptop asnd came up with at least 2 dozen places I could get the screen. BB only refused to honor the service agreement because all they care about is the customer's money not doing the right thing.

REPAIR IMPOSSIBLE Wrong, incorrect and not true mon ami. I called around three local shops all agreed they could replace the screen and it would take around a 1/2 hour and cost around the range of 400-600$ The thing is that BB is trying to push people out of XP machines and push the Vista platform. They did not want to deal with the problem and thought I would just roll over and go away if they threw me a bone. I did not and will not do any such thing. For them to do so that is poor customer care by BB.

offer you another item of similar value Value is a relative thing. You see they could have been willing to give me a 20grand top of the line gaming system and I would consider that a less valuable downgrade than the laptop I have right now.

Which BTW I went and picked it up at the store as that's where HP shipped it for some reason and when I got the refund on the service plan the customer service person apologized for the geek squad and agreed that aside fom the yelling I was right and he wouldnt have accepted a new system either.

So anyhow you have your perception I have mine. I have my sweet sweet XP laptop back repaired and working nice as ever. So things are good again. have a nice day!

[tollbaby]

Again, I stand by what I said, and I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth.I never said it would be impossible to repair. I said it would be impossible for BEST BUY to repair, since they no longer carried that particular model. Obviously, anybody else still carrying it could repair it, but BEST BUY, not carrying it anymore, could NOT.

We weren't talking about other stores, we were talking about Best Buy and what they could or could not do for you. NO mention was made, until your last post, of repairs being sought at other locations. I'm not going to pretend to understand the reasoning behind Best Buy's handling of the situation, any more than I'll pretend to understand HP's.

Obviously, you discovered with HP that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. I'm glad you got your laptop repaired, but in no way did that excuse the behavior you exhibited in the store, no matter how justified you felt it was.

[Jet]

Rahmota the problem is you see, that the stores do not have the parts laying about. Infact the store has absolutely no control over things like that, sure alot of PC repair places have screens laying about because that is solely their job , to repair pcs. Well BestBuy does a heck of alot more than that and does simply not have the ability to stock every replacement part for every laptop they ever had.

Most likely the only option they had to fulfill their service agreement with you was a replacement of a latop. It is not the stores, or the clerks fault that now the new machines happen to have Vista. I sincerely doubt, they are "pushing" Vista on customers to get more money. If someone does not have the capability of doing something, screaming and yelling will not suddenly make them have that capability. Its great that HP replaced the screen, I'm honestly shocked they did. But of course being the ones who manufactured it, I think they were better equipped to provide parts for it.

Also I'm not sure how you're honestly surprised if the cost if the repair is more than the value of the machine that offering you the value back on something new is unheard of and deplorable. I mean what happens with insurance companies when your car gets totaled? Oh you may have loved that little car of yours, but I can pretty much guarantee that they aren't going to fix the entire car and give it back to you.

In the end, I'm glad you got your laptop back and in working condition. Because I don't think the poor counter clerks at Best Buy who have no choice but to follow the policy set by their employer could take much more.

[Pedersen]

Pederson: Yeah I guess impractically able to be removed is what the folks are telling me outside of BB. And as for using that command I ahve logged and noted it for future reference. The only bad thign is that the only actual install disks I have are the old dos 6 win 3.1 system disks as the 98 I have is an upgrade and the laptop came with the restore disk.

Nah, impractically able to be removed isn't even right, not for what Vista does. The only time the behavior I mentioned would be used would be by a virus writer.

Possible Technical Gibberish: When the computer is first turned on, the BIOS kicks in, and does several power on items, including a POST (Power On Self Test). Many computers come with an updateable BIOS, or Flash BIOS, which can be written to by software. As such, it would be possible to update the BIOS such that, before allowing your OS to boot, it would run some small segment of code located somewhere on your hard drive, loading up anything before the operating system gets started. The only use for this would be a virus or other such malware. The operating system would just do its normal thing.

So, you see, no operating system would ever be written in such a way. Not even Vista, king of "You will do what I tell you to do, and no more, puny mortal!". Now, there are other things that could happen which would make XP claim it couldn't be installed. But run that command I gave you, and XP will happily install. You'll still need drivers/etc, but it can be done.

As for missing disks, etc: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16837116195
That link is full Windows XP, Retail, not OEM, with Service Pack 2. Not cheap (at $287), but the option is there to use. Personally, I bought it back in December, to make sure I'd have it.

[Gawdzillers]

punched the side of our van dislocating my pinkie finger in the process.

Christ, man, a laptop is not worth it!

[Titi]

I showed my little brother this post (and he just graduated (last month) summa cum laude with a degree in computer engineering and programming) and his response was "How stupid are some people?"

(and he means the OP)

[Rapscallion]

This one's degenerating, folks. I don't like the way it's going.

Closing it now.

Rapscallion