Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Lap tops 5 .........Nightmare 0
Since arriving in KC 7 years ago I have had a pretty shitty run of luck with the beast we call LAPTOP.
You may remember just over a year and a half ago I had a series of mishaps with a dirty computer, a dying laptop and a new hard drive.
Yesterday that bitch gave out on me again.
However, I think I know why I have had such a horrible run of luck with this HP Pavilion. For the first year, I carried this thing with abandon, from one end of the States to the other, and it became filthy, inside and out. Which caused it to overheat and set off the auto shutdown to protect itself. I mistakenly thought this was my hard drive dying off, because hey lets face it I like to watch porn, and it is basically free on the interwebs.
I rush out and buy a new 250gb Hard drive, I clone the old one and I am off and running. 3 months later I am shitting myself because the NEW hard drive is acting all fucking crazy like it was going to die on me....I blamed Western Digital.
Yesterday after a week long series of blue screens, shut downs, and general mayhem, my OS disappeared. Well what I should say is that this pile of HP shitola, started acting like it did 2 years ago, when it went out the first time. So I remove EVERY screw I can see and get the keyboard off and the top up enough to hose out the guts with my air can and put it all back together.
and VIOLA!
It still worked great! As a 17 inch paper weight.
So pulling my hair out and cursing the Gods of Electronics everywhere, I made some calls was given some shoddy advice and decided that MAYBE, the drive I had laying around (the original replacement that I failed to destroy) would be able to snap right in and work like a fucking charm. Just call me Lucky the Leprechaun.
So I take out the hard drive again and set it aside, put the old new one in and fire it up. I try to repair it with my Windows CD and reboot, Nothing, nada, zippo, FUCK!
While waiting for this shit to boot up and facing the realization that I may be sans computer because I am unemployed, and there is no room in the budget for a new machine, I pick up my hard drive, the one that was working a short 6 hours prior and start looking at it. I see something weird stuck to the electronics face of this had drive.
Now if you know anything about replacing laptop hard drives, you know that there is an information side which when placed in the cradle faces the bottom of the hard drive compartment, and the electronics side is open so the drive can get fresh air and breathe. It was on this electronics side I see the weird anomaly.
I flick it with my finger nail it moves and I see what it is that I am working with.
It was a flattened staple.
Yes. I am not kidding, it was an actual staple, for binding pages and pages of stuff together. There was no stapler where I was working, nor any pages that would have been stapled together for any reason. So I take out the current hard drive and look at the cradle. Now every hard drive cradle I have ever seen has a protective covering on it made out of some heat shield material, or something. on the inside of this cradle, I see the imprints of the hard drive high spots....and lo and behold the outline of that fucking staple.
So I am guessing that when I had replaced the drive the first time and it died within three months and I blamed Western Digital for a crap product, I was wrong, and since the drives that I had, and the one I replaced it with, (now two completely dead paper weights)had this tiny piece of metal arcing the connections, I am guessing that this may very well be the last time I have to do that procedure.
So to refresh, three hard drives, one staple, and a total of 5 laptops in 7 years.
Where is my pencil sharpener? I'm going old school! send me your address and I'll snail mail this blog to you.
You may remember just over a year and a half ago I had a series of mishaps with a dirty computer, a dying laptop and a new hard drive.
Yesterday that bitch gave out on me again.
However, I think I know why I have had such a horrible run of luck with this HP Pavilion. For the first year, I carried this thing with abandon, from one end of the States to the other, and it became filthy, inside and out. Which caused it to overheat and set off the auto shutdown to protect itself. I mistakenly thought this was my hard drive dying off, because hey lets face it I like to watch porn, and it is basically free on the interwebs.
I rush out and buy a new 250gb Hard drive, I clone the old one and I am off and running. 3 months later I am shitting myself because the NEW hard drive is acting all fucking crazy like it was going to die on me....I blamed Western Digital.
Yesterday after a week long series of blue screens, shut downs, and general mayhem, my OS disappeared. Well what I should say is that this pile of HP shitola, started acting like it did 2 years ago, when it went out the first time. So I remove EVERY screw I can see and get the keyboard off and the top up enough to hose out the guts with my air can and put it all back together.
and VIOLA!
It still worked great! As a 17 inch paper weight.
So pulling my hair out and cursing the Gods of Electronics everywhere, I made some calls was given some shoddy advice and decided that MAYBE, the drive I had laying around (the original replacement that I failed to destroy) would be able to snap right in and work like a fucking charm. Just call me Lucky the Leprechaun.
So I take out the hard drive again and set it aside, put the old new one in and fire it up. I try to repair it with my Windows CD and reboot, Nothing, nada, zippo, FUCK!
While waiting for this shit to boot up and facing the realization that I may be sans computer because I am unemployed, and there is no room in the budget for a new machine, I pick up my hard drive, the one that was working a short 6 hours prior and start looking at it. I see something weird stuck to the electronics face of this had drive.
Now if you know anything about replacing laptop hard drives, you know that there is an information side which when placed in the cradle faces the bottom of the hard drive compartment, and the electronics side is open so the drive can get fresh air and breathe. It was on this electronics side I see the weird anomaly.
I flick it with my finger nail it moves and I see what it is that I am working with.
It was a flattened staple.
Yes. I am not kidding, it was an actual staple, for binding pages and pages of stuff together. There was no stapler where I was working, nor any pages that would have been stapled together for any reason. So I take out the current hard drive and look at the cradle. Now every hard drive cradle I have ever seen has a protective covering on it made out of some heat shield material, or something. on the inside of this cradle, I see the imprints of the hard drive high spots....and lo and behold the outline of that fucking staple.
So I am guessing that when I had replaced the drive the first time and it died within three months and I blamed Western Digital for a crap product, I was wrong, and since the drives that I had, and the one I replaced it with, (now two completely dead paper weights)had this tiny piece of metal arcing the connections, I am guessing that this may very well be the last time I have to do that procedure.
So to refresh, three hard drives, one staple, and a total of 5 laptops in 7 years.
Where is my pencil sharpener? I'm going old school! send me your address and I'll snail mail this blog to you.
