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You gotta love average PC users......

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Level42:
No this is not a war against any certain OS.

But do you guys recognize this: since you're pretty handy with computers etc. People ask you to look into their PC problems.

So, my cousin comes over and hands me over his laptop saying, yeah it doesn't start up anymore, I have no idea why.

So I power it up and hear the unmistakable sound of a physically crashed HD. Of course I get a S.M.A.R.T. warning that I should back up right away. I bet this message has shown lots of times but was ignored....

I ask if he had any important data, and if so he should be aware that he's lost it. Of course he didn't back up anything.......

Since I had upgraded the HD in my Mac Mini recently I still had a spare 80 GB HD that I offered him. So, next I ask him for the system restore DVD's he should have created when he bought the laptop. You may guess what his reply was.

(Of course, any decent manufacturer of OS'es actually still delivers _factory_ DVD's with the system for these situations, but hey, some will do anything to make even more money right ?)

Anyway, next he tells me his CD/DVD drive wasn't working anyway......since I have no USB DVD drive I was completely out of options. I realise I might be able to install XP from a USB stick etc, but frankly I was fed up with so much ignorance and told him he would be better of buying a new (decent) laptop.

Sigh....and this is a young person who you'd expect to have grown up with computers.....

Sorry about the rant :D

(By the way, the drive was a Hitachi. I _strongly_ advice against that brand of HD's. I've seen lot's of those going bad. It already started when it was still IBM drives. I think IBM decided they were not capable of building decent drives and sold the business. Smart move.)

I tried the "freezer" trick but didn't expect, and didn't' get any results from it.

SavannahLion:

--- Quote from: Level42 on August 13, 2009, 05:05:00 pm ---(By the way, the drive was a Hitachi. I _strongly_ advice against that brand of HD's. I've seen lot's of those going bad. It already started when it was still IBM drives. I think IBM decided they were not capable of building decent drives and sold the business. Smart move.)

I tried the "freezer" trick but didn't expect, and didn't' get any results from it.

--- End quote ---

Interesting, it's an Hitachi drive I'm trying to recover. I forgot Hitachi bought out IBM HDD operations. Piece of crap can't read past 1.3GB. Tried the freezer trick as well and it did jack ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.

IBM hasn't made anything decent outside of straightforward PC's for years. IBM is like certain car manufacturers, they can't get their ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- together. Anyone remember their Lexmark line? I had one of their printers and the piece of ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- wouldn't power up four times out of five. IBM had the gall to tell me I didn't have a proper ground.  ??? I bet there's no proper ground, too bad it's in their ---smurfing--- printer. So I had a choice, leave the printer on 24/7 which dried out the ink three times faster (keep that in mind, I'll back on that point) or turn it off and pray to God it powers up when I need to print a paper on the day in needed to be turned in.

When the ink carts started costing $60 a piece and there was only one store in a fifteen mile radius that carried them, I got so sick of it, I gleefully took a hammer to that plastic ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---. I found out that the "cap" for the ink heads was nothing more than a sponge with a drain tube (leading down to what would've been my desk). The sponge and tube were so clogged with ink that the ink heads couldn't sit properly and they dried out every single time. Never could figure out why it couldn't power up 100% of the time.

At least the AMD K6 PC I bought from them was half way decent. Took everything I threw at it for years.

Nipedley:
I have to say the most rugged drive I came across was a 20gb Fujitsu which is still going, then it has to be Seagate's (I have 2 of those going). I had a hitachi here but never had any trouble with it (got sold when I upgraded to a seagate), WD gave me trouble for years with random MBR and MFT corruptions (I had 4x and they were all susceptible) and also years ago I never had a Maxtor that lasted more than a couple of weeks.

From my personal experience it has to be seagate's hands down, as that fujitsu was a business rather than retail model and I'm not even sure if they make retail drives, I've never seen one at least.

And I concur, all of my friends rely on me to fix their computer troubles. I don't mind though, as a £5 a time does start to add up :)

Level42:
Hah, family and friends expect free repairs here !

TOK:
I'm working on a friends computer as I type this. Its going through a spyware/malware scan.
This is the most screwed up computer I've ever seen that is actually still running. The crap on here is so bad that it won't let you download or run things to repair it.

He couldn't find any of his original software, or I would have just blown it out and started over. I've probably spent 3 hours dicking around with this thing over the course of the last few nights. The worst thing is that I know when I give it back clean, it'll be all screwed up again in two months.

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