New low or bad setup?

[Skyhooker]

I'm working on a friend's daughter's laptop, a Compaq Presario F700. Apparently it had stopped connecting with wireless networks a few weeks ago, and when he had procrastinated in calling me long enough, his wife took it to Geek Squad (I had only met her once, briefly). They first charged $199.99 "diagnostic and repair" fee. When they came back and said the HDD was bad, and told them what it would cost to replace and restore data, they declined, at least until they talked with me first, and got a refund of the "repair" portion of the bill, paying $70 instead.

I brought the machine back to my shop, and decided to run a scan with MHDD before anything else; there was no indication of damage, and only 2 slightly slow sectors. I then booted to Windows, and while it was a little slow, it was nothing out of the ordinary, especially for a laptop running Vista on only 1GB RAM. I realized that the slowness was due to a Trend Micro program update that had begun automatically, since I had plugged in wired ethernet before I booted up. While that was running, Windows found about 45 critical updates that hadn't been installed, so I started installing those while I poked around a bit. There was no wireless device found in the device manager, which would sure explain the lack of a wifi connection, and I decided to open the access panel to try reseating the wireless card after the updates had finished.

The Windows updates seemed to be going slowly, so I started looking for other running processes and examining hardware. While doing this, I saw that the HDD had only about 1.8GB free... of 24GB total! Huh?? This machine is maybe 3 years old, and I had never heard of such a small drive installed in a modern computer. Upon further examination, I found that there were also 87GB unallocated! OK, now I'm smelling a rat. I called my friend to ask whether this computer had ever had any other service, and he said no, GS was the first to look at it.

So, what do you think - was this computer badly set up at the factory, partitioned with only a 24GB C-drive and the rest unallocated, or would you suspect foul play? I found that the internal wifi card was indeed dead, and GS had charged them for a Netgear wireless adapter (USB), and another $25 to install the software for it, but other than the screwed up partitioning, this HDD is running fine. I just finished backing it up, and I'm getting to repartition it. I'm taking screen shots of the disk manager, so there will be no doubt, and I'm going to write a letter for him to take back to GS to get a refund of even their bogus diagnostic fee.

- Took a break in writing this to check out a hunch and go through the event logs. I found that the logs had been cleared deliberately while at Geek Squad - sure doesn't sound like standard operating procedure to me, at least it isn't in my checklist.

 

[Puff]

Write what you want but if I were you, I'd write my buddy off.

Isn't it odd how he was suddenly cured of his procrastination only until after the GS sticker shock? If a friend of mine did that to me, I'd tell em to screw.

The machine probably hasn't been touch by a professional in the three years he's had it and it's running Trend. I'm sure that it looks like a bomb hit it.

Unless you've got some proof of wrong doing, I'd be careful of what I wrote down on paper and handed to someone.

That's just my two cents.

 

[jvcomputerservice]

i agree with Puff.

Now, i had a gateway last week which had two partitions:

OS and Data

I think i was set up that way from factory.



It my be a good idea if you know what you doing, but i dont recommended since most of the people dont understand the concept of having two partions.

"her DATA partion was completly empty"

 

[Skyhooker]

While I appreciate the replies, first, I did not ask for relationship advice, and second, you did not pay attention. I said the drive had 87GB unallocated, meaning raw, unpartitioned, unavailable to any operating system. There is no second, or data, partiton. The only partition was only slightly larger than the data it held.

 

[Hercomputers]

While I appreciate the replies, first, I did not ask for relationship advice, and second, you did not pay attention. I said the drive had 87GB unallocated, meaning raw, unpartitioned, unavailable to any operating system. There is no second, or data, partiton. The only partition was only slightly larger than the data it held.

;

lol...it's obvious that yes, the hd was paritioned incorrectly, very possibly from the factory but at the same time, if GS alleged the drive was bad, they could have done something too. I've had issues with customers who have taken their computers to GS and they end up doing something else. This happens all the time. You figured it out yourself, relax-

 

[Screwloose]

Ok ... I really doubt GS was up to anything other than just being overpriced and not really troubleshooting. They would have had to either back up the data and repartition/format and restore to the smaller one or use something like Partition Magic to re-size it to 24gb .... why would they even bother doing that if they are saying it is bad?

It doesn't make sense... I can see if they were telling them it was too small and they were up-selling to a bigger drive ... it would be obvious they were up to no good but to re-size the drive then say it is bad ... that doesn't make sense to me.

I would stay away from getting into a pissing match with any competitor ... and I would say it is possible that the drive wasn't set up right from the factory ... if it were me I would just tell your "friend" what you suspect and if they want to go fight with GS then let them have at it ... especially if they brought it to me after the fact like I was the second choice for their tech.

 

[Hercomputers]

[QUOTE
I would stay away from getting into a pissing match with any competitor ... and I would say it is possible that the drive wasn't set up right from the factory ... if it were me I would just tell your "friend" what you suspect and if they want to go fight with GS then let them have at it ... especially if they brought it to me after the fact like I was the second choice for their tech.[/QUOTE]

That I will agree with too. Screwloose, I haven't seen you post in a while, long time, no hear...how are you doing? I always liked your username....lol

 

[rrnut65]

I agree with the two posts above me in that it's always better take the high road in a situation like this. Instead of attempting to blame anyone I would tell the customer.

"First your wireless card was bad and I replaced it. I also tested your hard drive, which was fine but noticed it was not setup to use the full space. I repartioned it so now you can access it all. Not sure how it came to be partitioned that way but it now is set correctly. Finally after looking at your system I found it had not been cleanup up in a while so I took care of that for you."

When the customers gets back a fixed and much better running machine, done at a fair price, they will be back. Just my two cents

 

[Screwloose]

[QUOTE

That I will agree with too. Screwloose, I haven't seen you post in a while, long time, no hear...how are you doing? I always liked your username....lol

ahah .... Yeah I got laid off from my corp IT job of 14 years and spent 6 weeks finding a new one which is a bit different than my old job in that I am getting to work with SCCM and doing scripting/packaging work so I haven't been on TN that much for the last couple months .... just getting settled back down so I will be around a bit more

 

[Hercomputers]

ahah .... Yeah I got laid off from my corp IT job of 14 years and spent 6 weeks finding a new one which is a bit different than my old job in that I am getting to work with SCCM and doing scripting/packaging work so I haven't been on TN that much for the last couple months .... just getting settled back down so I will be around a bit more

Ahh, well good to see you're back. I got laid off a second time from my IT job and after two months of being 'on my own' I realize that I don't want to ever go back to the corp again.....maybe part-time if I had to-

 

[Skyhooker]

Thanks for the advice. Still, awfully damned suspicious...

 

[wimwauters]

Thanks for the advice. Still, awfully damned suspicious...

Yup, maybe Geeksquad shrunk the partition in preparation of fitting a replacement?
But that's assuming they advise customers of having bad hard disks for the sake of shifting new ones

Or, maybe they did replace the hard disk, but never finished the expanding of the partition & raising the invoice for the new HDD

 

[Puff]

Yup, maybe Geeksquad shrunk the partition in preparation of fitting a replacement?
But that's assuming they advise customers of having bad hard disks for the sake of shifting new ones

Or, maybe they did replace the hard disk, but never finished the expanding of the partition & raising the invoice for the new HDD

maybe = speculation

I seriously doubt that GS stooped so low that they would partition someone's hdd just to make it look like they were out of space.

I remember a case where a laptop came with a hard drive that was actually larger than advertised but partitioned to what was advertised in the specifications. It's not unusual for computer computer manufacturers to switch hardware during production and I'm sure there are cases where they've installed larger hard drives yet continue to image them using their production image which would account for the partition sizes the way they are. They're not going to change their production image because they do not have to and they're not going to go back to each of the computers and repartition the drives manually.

His buddy probably ran out of space a long time ago which would explain the missing 45 updates.

GS is known for their high prices and their often incorrect diagnostics but I seriously doubt they're going to stoop to this level which would make them criminals who attempt to purposely defraud their customers.

 

[Skyhooker]

Yes, but seriously, a 24GB partition on a 120GB drive? My understanding is that drives are mass-written and partitioned. I can't imagine that there was a mistake that ended up with that - it cannot have been just one machine; if there were such a manufacturing error it would've affected lots of machines, and would have made the forums, at the very least. I think, if not a deliberate sabotage to sell a hard drive & data transfer, it's more likely that, as wimwauters suggested, they repartitioned to prepare for backup & data transfer (why, I don't know).

Funny thing also is that, though their diagnosis was a "bad hard drive," apart from the partitioning issue, there is not one thing wrong with it. Both MHDD and Seatools say it's shiny, not a slow sector in the lot, and the SMART report is clean as well.

 

[DanB]

Ntfs

Last week I worked on a partitioned hardrive that I had set up two years ago. It had two bad sectors and was running slow. In the process of running chkdsk /r part of the drive became un allocated. Ended up removing partition and formatting to fix the problem.

This kind of problem was not unusual in the earlier days of the NTFS filesystem. So I would not write a letter about geeksquad. As we all know stuff happens.

 

[Elemdee]

How old is the daughter? Maybe she's at the age where she fiddled around with the computer...did a few things but didn't know how to reverse what she inadvertently messed up and didn't want to admit what she did.

 

[Paul Rodgers]

How old is the daughter? Maybe she's at the age where she fiddled around with the computer...did a few things but didn't know how to reverse what she inadvertently messed up and didn't want to admit what she did.

I think you may have the answer. People usually don't want to admit if something was there fault. If you see more stuff like this from Geeksquad then you should get suspicious.

 

[atlanticjim]

How old is the daughter? Maybe she's at the age where she fiddled around with the computer...did a few things but didn't know how to reverse what she inadvertently messed up and didn't want to admit what she did.

1+
As soon as I read that it was his daughter's laptop, I expected that might be a salient point. More than once I have had machines used by kids that have been messed up, and the kids would not own up to their "really smart friend" having put their grubby little hacker hands to it.


Most recently I have had a laptop back in (after a mobo change last year) with the complaint from the 17 y/o daughter that it keeps on shutting down randomly. I could not reproduce the issue with a stress test, and we discussed proper ventilation and heat issues, reseated the cpu and the graphics chip with heatsink. When I finally got around to looking at the error logs, there were no events to match the story. Finally I asked the client if their daughter had asked for a MacBook Pro recently, and she said "Yeah. . she asks for one all the time!". Imaginary problem solved.

I really doubt that GS had done any partition work, it would just be unnecessary.

 

[Skyhooker]

When I finally got around to looking at the error logs, there were no events to match the story.

I think the oldest daughter is 12 or 13 - it's possible she monkeyed with it, though more likely a more geeky friend would have done so, from what I gather. I suppose I shouldn't discount the possibility. As for the error logs, there were none to read - the first entries in the System log are that it, the Application log, and one other were cleared, so someone hid the evidence. That was part of what was so damned suspicious. Maybe you're right, that this was a clever and fiendish ploy to wheedle a new computer out of mom & dad. If so, it was a perfect magician's trick, using misdirection: I'm so used to watching GS's fancy hand gestures that I missed the daughter stuffing the rabbit under her cloak

Thanks to all who replied. Still not sure of the answer, but I sure re-learned a lesson about seeing what you expect, not what's in front of you.

 

[Screwloose]

Ahh, well good to see you're back. I got laid off a second time from my IT job and after two months of being 'on my own' I realize that I don't want to ever go back to the corp again.....maybe part-time if I had to

Wish I could do that ... I just have too many bills and my youngest daughter still lives with me so I just cant do that even though that would be my dream. Until then I'll just keep doing side work and my corp job