Laptop troubles - DPChallenge Forums

05/29/2006 03:12:35 PM · #1

My laptop crashed yesterday as I had mentioned in another thread. Today I took the laptop back to American Furniture where I had purchased it and also purchased the extended warranty at. Being that it is only about 6 months old, it is covered by both right now. Having never had to deal with the customer service there before I had no idea if I was in for a pleasant or not so pleasant experience.
I went it and asked the girl first of all if it was serviced there or sent out. Being that it is a Sony Vaio she said it would have to be sent out as Sony insists on repairing their own products. I then inquired as to how long it would be before I got it back. The date she gave me was horrid - July 10th!!! I asked her if they had a loaner I could use until then as I was involved with Pug rescue work, and photography. They didnt have a loaner she said - but they would be willing to just exchange the laptop for a new one! Now how is that for great service! They didn't have my model in stock, bu another store does so it'll be here Friday. Until then, I can still keep hold of the crash-meister here and at least have a way to get online. The CD/DVD drive is not functioning right, and the hard drive makes funny noises - and only 1 out of three USB ports is working....but hey, I can at least get online after the ten minutes wait to boot up. lol
Since most everything I needed off the hard drive is already backed up, with the exception of pics I took over the past 4 days, I am very pleased with the solution of just giving me a new system. The pics I took that were not backed up may still be retrievable off the CF card using my recovery software. I'm going to wait until I get the new laptop to check it out - and just not use that CF card until then.
The customer service experience was so pleasant. I wish more places were like this.

fotomann_forever

05/29/2006 03:18:58 PM · #2

Cool beans. That is awesome customer service... glad your week is getting back into good status ;-)

Fujifilm XC 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS

05/29/2006 04:11:51 PM · #3

Originally posted by fotomann_forever:

Cool beans. That is awesome customer service... glad your week is getting back into good status ;-)

Yup - I dont need two bad weeks in a row. I really was expecting to be without a computer for at least a month....these guys rock!

fotomann_forever

05/29/2006 06:32:48 PM · #4

...

Edit: LOL at buzz. Sent you a PM Puggers.

Message edited by author 2006-05-29 18:36:15.

buzzrock

Fujifilm X-M1

05/29/2006 06:34:21 PM · #5

Originally posted by fotomann_forever:

...

That said it all!?!?

lol

Dr.Confuser

Nikon D800

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

05/29/2006 06:49:54 PM · #6

When you return the old laptop, be careful to erase/wipe/reformat the hard disk or else all your data will go with it. If you don't know how, call Sony tech support and they can walk you through it. If you have financial/credit card/personal identity data on it, consider doing it a couple of times. Remember to make and test a good data backup first!

Don't just erase the files, but write over every byte on every sector (i.e. extended reformat). Simply erasing the files just removes the directory pointer to the files. the files remain and are readable.

I am probably paranoid ... but I used to be the CIO for a Fortune 100 company and I know it's easy to get at the data. We did it frequently when we did a forensic analysis of the hard drives of terminated employees or investigated accusations of pornography/harrrasment/industrial espionage and such. Our corporate forensic tools could recover data reformatted up to 7 times. NSA and CIA can go deeper, reportedly 11 or 12 times. Once or twice is probably sufficient for a returned laptop under your circumstances.

Message edited by author 2006-05-29 18:51:00.

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0L USM

05/29/2006 06:57:14 PM · #7

Originally posted by Digital Quixote:

Thanks for the info Charles. This crash-meister took 8 attempt at a total reformat and recovery to get it to become useable again as the recovery software that caem with it was corrupt (way to go Sony). I'll make sure I do another complete erase and reformat before sending it in.

KiwiChris

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

05/29/2006 08:45:24 PM · #8

Originally posted by ShutterPug:

I'm going to wait until I get the new laptop to check it out - and just not use that CF card until then.
The customer service experience was so pleasant. I wish more places were like this.

Why not use the camera / USB port that work to write the photos back to the CF card from the laptop? That way you don't have to pray that the recovery software works..

Better yet if you've got a card reader, use that to put the images onto a card.

Or buy a $20 USB stick from radioshack (or somewhere else cheap) and use that.

Morry32

Canon EOS-300D Rebel

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II

05/29/2006 09:02:02 PM · #9

for anyone else who this happens too, erasing and reformatting is one option but its a long and user guided option. Another option that is very time consuming yet less user interaction. Find a low level disk wiping program, i use "disk wipe" personally but its really easy to find one online.