Yet another PC issue

riverfever

riverfever

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Woodland Park, Colorado
Friday night, in the middle of a paper for school, my now 13 month old HP Pavillion decided to take a dump. After trouble-shooting it over the phone with a tech...HP wants 500 to install a new motherboard. It's about 30 days out of warranty. When I asked if this was what I could expect from HP products they said, "That's pretty much the expected life of a motherboard". This makes 2 PC's that have died after a year for me. I could maybe see it if I was a sales rep and took it on the road every day but this thing sits at the desk al the time. Anyone else find this to be BS?
 
goodburbon said:
who says you have to send it back to them to fix?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3559704&Sku=MBM-A13G-5400

You've got a good :case, power supply, HDD, memory, why dump another grand on a new box? Just pick up a new mobo and processor and fan, make sure it uses the same ram and you're golden for less than 200 bux. Or get new ram too and be good for under 320 bucks.

It's a 15 minute install that a 10 year old could do.
Click to expand...


X2

I worked for HP and got chitty service on those crapvilians.
in one year they swapped out my pc 3 times with MB issues and memory issues up the ARSE with that thing.

It's sad to say but I was with them when they took over comcrap and yet that was the best desk top unit I had the whole time was there. The HP laptops I liked alot but the desk tops suck.
 
Im runnin a 4 year old DELL and never have had a problem with it................My last comp was a compac that was 8 years old and the only thing I had to replace was the video card and it happens to be next door at my inlaws house still pluggin along.....Hope you have better luck River....
 
goodburbon said:
who says you have to send it back to them to fix?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3559704&Sku=MBM-A13G-5400

You've got a good :case, power supply, HDD, memory, why dump another grand on a new box? Just pick up a new mobo and processor and fan, make sure it uses the same ram and you're golden for less than 200 bux. Or get new ram too and be good for under 320 bucks.

It's a 15 minute install that a 10 year old could do.
Click to expand...

X3
 
X4, do another mobo. If you can work on a Jeep, you can change out a motherboard. It's already out of warranty, whats it going to hurt.
 
riverfever said:
Friday night, in the middle of a paper for school, my now 13 month old HP Pavillion decided to take a dump. After trouble-shooting it over the phone with a tech...HP wants 500 to install a new motherboard. It's about 30 days out of warranty. When I asked if this was what I could expect from HP products they said, "That's pretty much the expected life of a motherboard". This makes 2 PC's that have died after a year for me. I could maybe see it if I was a sales rep and took it on the road every day but this thing sits at the desk al the time. Anyone else find this to be BS?
Click to expand...

Absolutely BS.
Motherboards will have different issues depending on the failure. Most notable are the ports because they are attached to something outside the box. They seldom fail entirely. 2PCs in a year leads me to question your environment or what you're feeding it.

I have been running the same Emachines piece for 2 years now. The webserver is a resurected HP Pavilion 540n that had a bad hard drive. It's been running constantly for 3 years, and the mail server is an old no-name Pentium II 400 that's been running constantly for 2 years after I found it in the junk. I use a Dell notebook for work. Never had a hardware issue with it and it goes in and out of the backpack, to dusty work sites, thrown in the truck, bla, bla.. You get the jist.

You can either do the Motherboard swap (GOD I hate it when folks try to sound fancy and actually call them a "mobo" in real life, sounds retarded ), or just go down to Wally world and buy a cheap eMachines for $299, and swap in your hard drive as a second drive. Oh, and buy a UPS, it sounds like you may have power issues.
 
I can agree with some of what you are saying about the motherboard (yes, mobo), MB, I/O board, whatever someone may call it. Everything that is "outside the box" be a printer, monitor, scanner, etc. does not draw power from the motherboard, it gets signal from. Usb and firewire powers and signals, 5 volts. Same with mouse/keyboard powered by computers power, inputs signal.
From the original post it sounds like his HP Pavilion laptop took a crap. Usually heat becomes an issue with most laptops (notebooks, or lappys, ha). After 15 years of building computers, desktops and laptops, heat is the most common failure issue that I see. Personally I have a HP Pavillion laptop, no issues, used constantly. My 64bit rig fried a motherboard because of a bad diode. The other three computers, all AMD's run fine (Duron 700, Athlon 1.6, XP2000). Just depends on luck of the draw. RMA's aren't out of the ordinary for a laptop at 1.5 years. 2 computers fried, 1 year, yeah, WOW.
I would question the power source, good ground? Good neutral? Static electricity? Moisture?
Pass on the eMachines. Extra parts bin computers, thats why they are sooo cheap.
If ONE single thing on a motherboard (mobo) fries, chipset, diodes, bios chip, whatever, it will render the computer useless.
I'll bet without model and serial number, the problem is probably a melted heatsink or fried 18v +/- component.
 
Last edited:
I agree to some of this but do not think an Emachine at $300 is a good buy over a motherboard and case.

I agree needing a UPS it's mandatory equipment.

If buying a Prebuilt machine I say stick with DelL for desktops or Toshiba for laptops else build your own. Or buy an Apple...(Never ever thought I would say that)


Zuki-Ron said:
Absolutely BS.
Motherboards will have different issues depending on the failure. Most notable are the ports because they are attached to something outside the box. They seldom fail entirely. 2PCs in a year leads me to question your environment or what you're feeding it.

I have been running the same Emachines piece for 2 years now. The webserver is a resurected HP Pavilion 540n that had a bad hard drive. It's been running constantly for 3 years, and the mail server is an old no-name Pentium II 400 that's been running constantly for 2 years after I found it in the junk. I use a Dell notebook for work. Never had a hardware issue with it and it goes in and out of the backpack, to dusty work sites, thrown in the truck, bla, bla.. You get the jist.

You can either do the Motherboard swap (GOD I hate it when folks try to sound fancy and actually call them a "mobo" in real life, sounds retarded ), or just go down to Wally world and buy a cheap eMachines for $299, and swap in your hard drive as a second drive. Oh, and buy a UPS, it sounds like you may have power issues.
Click to expand...
 
Ron...the Gateway was another issue entirely. The hinges continually cracked and I finally got so fed up with CS (after sending it in for repairs that I was charged for but they did no work) when it began to run like sh!t I just threw it away out of frustration. Actually I rewarded a kid at school that was working hard and let him tear it apart. We're going to write a letter to Gateway and send it back to them.

I bought this dv6000 and have really liked it until Friday. It is a MB issue. My concern is that I'm extremely busy with grad school right now. I generally work late into the evening so time is critical. I already lost some work that was due from Friday nights issue. If I screw up a repair on my Jeep it doesn't jeopardize my grades in school ya know? I really can't take the chance that maybe I got the install done correctly but maybe I didn't and it causes me to lose a 20 page paper when I'm halfway through. Furthermore...I found out yesterday that HP recalled a lot of dv6000's with my symptoms. However, they're saying they wont cover mine b/c the P/N doesn't match.

I'm going to assume that UPS is different than having the man in brown stand over me as I'm working?

I was told that I was going to get a call from corporate office today after I bitched yesterday. Honestly, I don't think I'm asking for too much. I'd be happy if they offered to do the repair for half of what they're telling me. We'll see.
 
OK, but it's a 15 minute install that a 10 year old could do :)

The computer industry has built this aura of mystery around their junk. Almost anyone can build a computer (with the exception being my mom). Your stuff and Operating system is still on that hard drive. It's as simple as plugging the processor into the motherboard, Screw the motherboard down in the case, HD to the motherboard, Disk drive to the mother board plugging the motherboard into the power supply

Plug it in, turn it on, install any utilities that came with. Virtually no risk of data loss, and all of the plugs only fit something that they will work with (with the exception of the power switch, you generally have to read the board and plug it in to the 2 prongs that say "pwr")
 
Yeah...I'm actually considering trying it just cuz the thing is so new. Thanks man.
 
riverfever said:
I bought this dv6000...
Click to expand...
Everyone seems to be jumping on the "replace the motherboard yourself" band-wagon, and while it's a good idea I've seen a lot of pre-built systems that use proprietary hardware and your only option is to get another motherboard from the manufacturer. Maybe things have changed for the better in the past few years and my experience is a little out-dated.

With that said, I did a quick Google search to see what your computer looked like. Is it a laptop?? If that's the case, I'm pretty sure you're out of luck without an HP motherboard.

If Google failed me and it's really a desktop, you still have to be a little cautious that a generic motherboard can be dropped into your case. The worse case scenario is that you pick up a new case and power supply as well, and re-use as many of the peripherals as you can, and you should still be able to keep it under $300.
 
You can get the motherboard from HP I still don't think its a giant problem. I pull my Toshiba tablet apart frequently to clean it.

I have also rebuilt 2 cellphones..all the same stuff just different packaging and a bit smaller.

With the right parts and a few itty bitty torx drivers your good to go.
 
Aw man...you guys are killin' me. It is a laptop.

Still might be calling you Sting.
 
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