OT: Any laptop wizards here?

[Tiger]

Fantastic! That's some great law that you guys at UK has...

[whiskychaser]

Fantastic! That's some great law that you guys at UK has...

Its the only one I've ever heard of that contains the phrase 'reasonable person'. Its hard to quantify though. Who is a reasonable person? I could have asked my mates but I thought it might be more convincing if I asked the manufacturer. I wont think its resolved until I get the laptop fixed or a new one on my doorstep. First job I did between school and college was working down the nick. Maybe that made me naturally suspicious

[Tiger]

Mmm... must be a UK lingo... what is 'nick'?

[whiskychaser]

Mmm... must be a UK lingo... what is 'nick'?

Apologies. Nick is police station. Between leaving school and going to uni I worked in one. Long time ago. Probably not allowed now. But the training came in handy. To this day I time and date phone calls. Like at 1100hrs 9.3.09 my insurance company offered chocolate. No it doesnt say that, it says item obsolete... Time for another eye test

[Tiger]

Lol

[genphreak]

Cool!

Westminster law is full of the term reasonable when it comes to exercising judgment- it is how the onus is placed on the parties to avoid playing dumb or being painful and instead make an effort to solve their own problems without getting a judge to do it for them at (our expense). In many cases of consumer law, a judgement mainly involves establishing what a reasonable person could expect in the plaintiff's situation.

Just goes to show (hopefully) that it is beneficial to know our laws- after all, ignorance is no excuse...

[rickm]

I've had several laptops cook themselves. If they get super hot then the fan for the CPU (usually on the side of the case) has gone. If it's running and you flip it over you should see it through the grating. Blowing compressed air through it can help but sometimes they just go. I've replaced a few, in a couple of instances we've yanked the motherboard and replaced it and the fan if the machine won't boot.

Regardless of what you do remove the hard drive. You can drop it in an external drive case to get the data off...don't toss/sell/give it away as is - remove the drive.

[whiskychaser]

This is turning into a book. I got all the data off the hard drive and the insurance company collected the laptop. They rang me today to say their repair people had put in some new memory and it booted up to Windows!!! They reckon the old memory was damaged by a power surge. I asked how they knew it was down to a power surge and if it was, what would stop it happening again but the guy didnt know. They say that as this is a new problem I should refer to my current insurers.
(I checked the manual and there is no mention of using surge protection-it just says plug it into a socket on the wall.)
So to sum up:
I replaced the memory and it didnt work for me.
Toshiba repair centre said it needs a new mobo and processor.
Insurance say its the memory.
Just thought you guys might find this amusing on a dull day

[Tiger]

You might have gotten wrong memory. At least the insurance concurred with me.

The surge is not because of the power supply but more likely static charge... yet, I have to say, I have run into alot more memory going bad than mobo going bad.

See if you can get your money back on the memory you bought... say it didn't work.

[whiskychaser]

Epilogue:
Insurance returned laptop. Installed my new memory again only to find it didnt work again. After wtf moment I installed it in the second slot and bingo! Up and running. Its been in daily use for about six weeks and hasnt missed a beat. Wrote to Toshiba's repair centre with a printout from the onboard diagnostics showing all OK. They rang me today asking for my card details so they can give me my money back. (Note to self: write down what I've done - must have forgotten to try the second slot first time round) Full time score: Tiger 1 Toshiba 0