Okay, fine, I'll be the dumbass.

[apocalypsos]

So I got a call back from the HP rep.

The good news -- My laptop does not have a cracked LCD. My laptop has a temp sending out email updates for it who accidentally sent me an update telling me that I had a cracked LCD when what I really have is spill damage.

The bad news -- SPILL DAMAGE? ARGH. *headdesk* (On the other hand, I can't remember ever spilling anything on it or near it. I've nearly spilled stuff on it, but somehow I don't think a few drops really count. *hands in air*)

So they're sending it back without repairing it because it costs about seven hundred bucks just like a cracked monitor would, and I'll just work around it until I can afford to buy a new computer, which should be the day after NEVER EVER EVER at this rate.

Le sigh.

Comments

[gretazreta.livejournal.com]

Can you get a second opinion? Because I think that sounds kind of dodgy to me. Especially if you never spilled anything once.

I had a cell phone die of that once - but then I spilled a whole big bottle of diet coke in my bag. I think you'd notice if you had spilled enough on that... especially if you didn'tnotice the lcd thinger before you sent it.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's a tech guy at work who I think I might be able to get to take a look at it if I ask. Plus, my mom has a friend whose husband can check it out.

It just sounds odd from the way she described it, too, because she said it would cost seven hundred and fifty bucks to fix the spill damage (like, seriously?), but if I spent something like two hundred bucks on another two years worth of warranty or something they could fix it for free. So, wait, it's not covered by warranty now but it is when I give you two hundred bucks? Yeah, whatever.

Screw it. I'll take it back and get a second opinion.

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

$750 sounds like either a motherboard or a screen replacement, depending on where they say the liquid damge has gone. I think I missed this somewhere, but what were the symptoms that caused you to send it in?

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

The USB ports weren't working. One wasn't registering anything hooked up to it at all, and hooking anything up to the other one made it freeze it up.

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

Huh. Distinctly odd behaviour.But that's definitely a motherboard issue, and the only thing "service" people these days can do is swap out bad components, so that explains why the putative repair is supposed to be so expensive.

On the plus side, at least it doesn't make the thing completely unusable, on the minus side it's very *usable* either, like that.

One thing you could try is downloading a knoppix CD image (linux that boots off CD), and see if the problem persists -- that way you quickly eliminate software as being the possible source of the problem.