Hells Dell

debbie42

closed wrote: »

. try doing it without the battery in.

I know this may sound obvious, as I've had to do this recently (with a sony, not a dell!), but you do need the mains cable in for this. :rolleyes:

(Just for the non-tekkys out there, not trying to be patronising, honest, I just know my Dad would try it without the mains cable either plugged in or switched on!)

Nersha

debbie42 wrote: »

I had a laptop hard disk fail once, such that it wouldn't boot, but it was still possible to use the disk in an external usb "caddy" type thing to read some data from another pc.

If all else fails, you could try this, but you need to know the type of disk (ide/sata etc.) to know what type of caddy to buy.

As long as the hard-drive is not physically broken, this will work. It's unlikely your hard-drive is physically broken unless it's been dropped.

mrsbeetlebum

Thanks everyone, Dell have it now. I wont bother posting on the techie forum again as I have obviously wasted so much time on this!

Norant

Good grief Mrsbeetlebum.


You have recieved some good advice on here,not everyone has been mean.


Dell have it now...

hope it get fixed.

bazster

mrsbeetlebum wrote: »

I have a dell laptop the best I could afford, it is about 8 months old. So far I have had a very bad experience with the customer support. I have had start up problems, they told me to get my data backed up which off course I had to get a techy to do as it wouldn't even start. This cost me £100.

When you bought the computer, they offered you a "keep your hard drive in case of problems" option for a small extra charge. Obviously you declined it.

As for paying someone £100! I had a computer break down terminally a few weeks ago. I bought an external hard drive enclosure on eBay for about £10, took the drive out of the computer, and put it into the enclosure. I thus had a working hard drive in about 5 minutes that I could plug into another computer.

mrsbeetlebum wrote: »

2 weeks later I had a card from a courier saying I had missed a delivery in the afternoon I had a delivery from these same people so threw the card away. The next day the exact thing happened again (my husband has deliveries frequently from these couriers) I then find out it was my laptop (the 2 missed deliveries) and so had a 40 mile trip to collect it.

How, exactly, is any of that Dell's fault?

mrsbeetlebum wrote: »

I forgot to mention that dell sent me loads of emails with suggestions on how I might rectify my computer myself which I tried.

Now I'm confused. How did you try these things if you had returned the machine to Dell? Or was this before you returned it? If so, it sounds like they tried quite hard to help before resorting to the nuclear option of "send it back".

mrsbeetlebum wrote: »

As soon as I got it home I was eager to get going. I opened the box and saw straight away that the key pad was bumpy. I contatced them and they sent me instructions and pictures of how to take the keypad off and replace it so it sat down smoothly. I had one go at this and decided it was too risky, it would not come apart easily.

Actually it's ridiculously easy. So they instructed you in what to do, and you refused to do it.

mrsbeetlebum wrote: »

I was able to use the computer just about although the No 1 wouldn't work. Then the first time I used the optical drive it would not work. I was pretty mad by now and they agreed to send out a repair agent to look at it. He was very annoyed to see that neither the keypad nor the optical drive had been screwed back in!

Obviously it's not good that they returned it to you without putting it back together properly, but they did send someone to you to fix it. Have you any idea how much that costs? I'm not suggesting that you should be grateful to them, but you might at least acknowledge the cost and trouble they incurred to rectify their repair department's mistake.

mrsbeetlebum wrote: »

Anyway the next problem was just before Christmas. All of a sudden after some internet connection problems the computer refused to start up again. It would go for about 30 secs and stop. They advised me on several proceedures I could try and nothing. I checked the battery and the adapter cable they were fine. They then advised me it could be the hard drive and that I should send it off again. They said that my data may be lost. I said then no way.

Now you're being ridiculous. If the hard drive is trashed, how do you expect anyone to save your data? They are computer technicians, not miracle workers. If you didn't back up your important data, then tough, it's loss is your fault. After having already paid someone £100 to recover the data once, you might have learned that lesson!

mrsbeetlebum wrote: »

They then suggested I remove the hard drive and send the computer and then if it was the hard drive then would then collect this I still lose my data! Quite honestly I dont care about much of it but my photos are invaluable. And me remove the hard drive! Is this what is expected?

If the hard drive is trashed then the data's already gone. Even so, they don't have to invite you to remove the drive before sending the machine back, they could insist you send the whole thing, so once again they seem to be bending over backwards to help. I don't know what model you have, but removing the hard drive on a Dell laptop is usually very, very simple.

mrsbeetlebum wrote: »

I see you can get hard drive recovery software, surely they have it!

(i) You don't know for sure that the hard drive is faulty, and Dell cannot tell you one way or the other because you will not send the computer back to them!
(ii) Even if any data could be recovered, why should Dell do it? You have already noted that, in common with all computer manufacturers, they quite reasonably exclude liability for your data. They will fix the computer, if you let them. You should have backed up your data.

mrsbeetlebum wrote: »

Has anyone else had these types of problems and can anyone advise me please. Many thanks.

Simples. Take the hard drive out, send the computer back to Dell, and let them fix it.

mrsbeetlebum wrote: »

PS I see that they (in some circumstances) exclude loss data from theor warranty but I would be interested to know how they repaired it last time and wether the part they used was a refurbuished one, as they say that if they come out and repair it with a new hard drive they will want to take mine back with them to refurb - what happens to my data on that hard drive - will everyman and his dog be privy to it?:mad:

By the time a drive is refurbished there will be not a single solitary bit of the original data left on it.