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 First of all HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
This morning I thought I would get a few things I had been putting off out of the way. One of them being the inexplicable way that my laptop kept booting up by itself after I had shut it down, even with no AC (yes, I know how to shut down a PC...not sleep, not hibernate). To avoid the problem, I would just unplug the laptop and remove the battery. I've had the lap 3 months and should not have a problem like this.
Anyway, I called HP tech support (after working in the profession and figuring out several things myself, it's something I won't do unless I HAVE TO). My heart dropped when you know where answered. Their support person's solution? Flash the BIOS. When I heard this I knew that the call was going to be more trouble than it was worth. So I proceeded to follow his directions...go to the HP support website, download something called Insyde Flash, and run that utility. The tech support person said the machine would shut itself down. After that he told me to press the power button, that's when real trouble started.
So, when I go to turn on the laptop, the lights would come on and I could hear the fan start, but no start up beep, no HP logo. Ok, so I followed his directions - press the power button to turn off and again to turn on. The same thing - lights on, fan on, but no boot up beep or HP logo. Repeat and tap F10 immediately after pressing power. Same result. Take out the batter and disconnect the AC, hold power button down for one minute, put everything back in and finally press power. Same result. So his next suggestion....disconnect the AC and the battery...flip the machine over and reseat the hard drive and the RAM (if I never built a PC I would not have had the tools to do all this). So I reseat the hard drive and the RAM - TWICE - even switching the RAM around in their slots. After each attempt we tried to boot up the laptop - same result of the lights and fan on, but no boot beep, no HP logo. Do it again, tap F10, same. Disconnect the battery and AC, hold power button in for 1 minute, reassemble...same result.
So now the solution is to FedEx me a coffin (a page from the Xbox 360 play book) and send the shell and the hard drive back in. Their representatice tells me to "take the hard drive to the store and back my data up". I felt that HP should pay for that service since it was thier troubleshooting documentation that got me into the situation where the machine was not recognizing the BIOS in the first place. Their answer? HP was not responsible for personal data. Thank god I decided against having my data on two different machines and I backed it up over my network in the first place.
The moral of the story kids? If tech support uses the words "FLASH THE BIOS" - either hang up or be prepared to spend an hour and a half on the phone troubleshooting. And after all that, your machine will be in a worse situation than you had to begin with!
-ZQ |
