Zoostorm PCs - Avoid

[Simmy]

A customer recently bought a zoostorm PC and has had no end of problems with the PC itself and their customer support. She's asked me to do a report on the machine as they are refusing to accept there is anything wrong despite constant blue screens, surge protection messages during POST and windows error messages. The machine is only 2 months old and has been a problem from day 1 but zoostorm claim it is a software issue despite having had it in for repair once already and reinstalling windows at that time.

As soon as I got the machine back, I booted it up and straight away I saw the surge protection message at the boot screen (it's an Asus motherboard). So I head into the BIOS which is one of those new swanky ones that lets you use a mouse The first screen of the BIOS shows PSU voltages and it's reporting 10.1v on the 12v line and 4v on the 5v line! About 5 seonds later the machine switches off. Problem found me thinks, so I swap in a working power supply and it boots up first time. They're using a zoostorm branded psu which I can only imagine is incredibly cheap and utterly shite quality. The machine booted into windows first time and hasn't crashed since.

Having tested the rest of the hardware, it also turns out there's a problem with the hard drive. GSmartcontrol reports hundreds of errors and the biggest surprise of all that the hard drive has clocked up 25000 hours of use! The drive is either fubar or not new! Either way, they're going to have a difficult time refuting this evidence.

A word of warning to anyone considering a Zoostorm computer - they're cheap and there's a very good reason for that!

 

[tarik]

if the hd is clocking up 25k hours then thats 3 years non stop! i really hope its just faulty. Have you checked the date of manufacture with the serial number on the mfr website?

 

[codegreen]

But Simmy! It says right on their website:

Made here in the UK, Zoostorm PC, Laptop and Netbook systems are incredibly good value, and we stand by our quality with easy to access warranty services all run from our own UK based offices.

Your customer must be holding the computer wrong, or something.

Also, I find the claim that they're manufacturing their own laptops in the UK a bit dubious. Branded in the UK, sure.

 

[Simmy]

if the hd is clocking up 25k hours then thats 3 years non stop! i really hope its just faulty. Have you checked the date of manufacture with the serial number on the mfr website?

Already tried that, but the seagate warranty checker doesn't offer any help. It simply says to contact the place of purchase.

The model of the drive (ST3750640NS) was released in 2006 so the hours of use is certainly plausible.

Infact there might be a date listed on the drive somewhere. Brb...

 

[Simmy]

There's a date code on the drive of 08114. Using a seagate code calculator (here) it says:

08114 corresponds to 2007-09-17

!!!

 

[KompuKare]

As soon as I got the machine back, I booted it up and straight away I saw the surge protection message at the boot screen (it's an Asus motherboard). So I head into the BIOS which is one of those new swanky ones that lets you use a mouse The first screen of the BIOS shows PSU voltages and it's reporting 10.1v on the 12v line and 4v on the 5v line! :eek: About 5 seonds later the machine switches off. Problem found me thinks, so I swap in a working power supply and it boots up first time. They're using a zoostorm branded psu which I can only imagine is incredibly cheap and utterly shite quality. The machine booted into windows first time and hasn't crashed since.

Not wanting to throw a spanner in there but even on high-end Asus mobos there have been reports of the Asus software giving totally spurious readings. (Although I believe that was Windows software for reading CPU voltages etc. - this was for high-end overclocking boards where you sort of want to monitor the voltages.)

I'm sure it's possible that they used a very poor quality PSU but I'd never trust the BIOS readings: for 12V and 5V it's a few seconds works to hook up a multimeter to a molex.

Of course if the PSU is very poor, the HDD might have gone bad due to too many brownouts - but that wouldn't explain 25,000 hrs of course!

(Incidentally, does anyone know where SMART data is kept on a drive? I would assume in flash and not the platter but I don't know.)

 

[Simmy]

Very good point to mention. We did use a power supply tester which confirmed the readings of the BIOS though

 

[NYJimbo]

A 2 month old machine with a drive from 2007 ? I don't believe a drive in there should be older than 2011.

If that SMART data is correct it sounds like the drive came off some office desktop or server and was "refurbished" (taken out of one machine and put into another).

 

[PBComputer]

I've got a lot of customers who have zoo storms, must admit I've never had a problem. Some have being running around three year's.

 

[JustInspired]

I've got a lot of customers who have zoo storms, must admit I've never had a problem. Some have being running around three year's.

Same here. All the ones we have ordered ourselves have been from ebuyer.com - no problems at all.
Yeah they are cheap and cheerful but the only things that are dubious quality are the power supplies. Cases are pretty flimsy too but that's nothing strange for a budget machine.

 

[mike_tech]

We tend to avoid Zoostorm PC's as well.

On a lot of the PC's at my work they just drop of the network for no reason. The only way to get them back on is to power down and remove the power and restart.

We managed to trace it to a faulty NIC driver that was shipped with the PC's.

 

[Martyn]

I have two zoostorms and they have been ok other than one had a motherboard failure. I got onto their support and they decided to send someone out to replace it.

 

[Simmy]

A 2 month old machine with a drive from 2007 ? I don't believe a drive in there should be older than 2011.

If that SMART data is correct it sounds like the drive came off some office desktop or server and was "refurbished" (taken out of one machine and put into another).

That's what we concluded too. The power cycle count was only ~600 so the drive was switched on for a long time between powering down.

 

[Simmy]

I have two zoostorms and they have been ok other than one had a motherboard failure. I got onto their support and they decided to send someone out to replace it.

Get checking the smart data Martyn and see how old the hard drives really are

I really hope this is just a one off or some kind of mistake, otherwise it's a very shady way to run a company

 

[seedubya]

Three words

Small Claims Court

 

[joydivision]

Might be a mistake, I ordered a brand new hard drive last year from CCL, had 46,000 hours on the clock and a 2006 manufacturer date. CCL gave me a refund, were apologetic and said their supplier had conned them and that the supplier has been dropped.

So it maybe that Zoostorm bought a load of new drives on the black market and got conned, no excuse though. If they are knowingly putting in second hand drives then its fraud. The problem is proving that Zoostorm but the drive in.

I had one on the bench on Friday, was a quad core Core 2 and was running at 88c! Not sure if I can blame the manufacturer for that though, it was full of dust, a new HSF and it was running at 32c.

It is a dying business though, they assemble desktops in their Liverpool factory and I assume important rebrand laptops. The problem is the desktop market is now niche, their sales must be falling and so they may be tempted to cut corners.

 

[acs]

I brought a couple a few years ago as they were cheap from ebuyer but they all seemed to need a new NIC within a month. I just swallowed the cost and the customers still have the pcs working fine now. Not brought any since thought ,.. just in case.