How many "Bad" parts can they send us?

[technical.angel]

Case of HP being sucky.

We had a big storm, lost power.., and a PC.

I call up HP, tell them I need a new power supply. They want me to trouble shoot. I'm like, "dude, it's not doing anything, the power supply is toast. What can I troubleshoot???"

So I go through the motions of unplugging stuff, plugging stuff back in until they tell me my power supply's bad, and send me a new one.

I get it the next day. I put it in. It flashes a red light at me and beeps. Great, the mobo must have taken a hit too. I get a new one.

I get it the next day. I put it in. It flashes a red light at me and beeps. Double great. "Oh," they said, "we must have sent you a bad mobo. Here's a new one."

I get it the next day. I put it in. One guess what it does. "Oh, we must have sent you a bad power supply." as the power supply fan wasn't turning. "We'll send you a new one."

I get it the next day. My minion puts it in. Same guess on what it does. Now they're saying it's the processor. This time, we're having someone come out and deal with it. I'm tired of it.

[crashhelmet]

I had a problem similar to that twice. Once with a Compaq Server and the other time with an Apple PowerMac.

The Compaq server was giving RAM errors and crashing constantly. Replace DIMMs. Still fails. Contact Compaq support and go through the red tape and rings of fire, they decide to replace RAM again. New ones continue to fail. Compaq then decides to replace the daughterboard the DIMMs sat in. Still fails. Motherboard next. Still fails. They send out 2 of their engineers, and replacements of all said parts. Still fails.

Resolution? Reinstall of Windows NT

The Mac issue wouldn't power up and after going through multiple power supplies and mobos, found that there was a slight warp in the metal lining of the case that was shorting out the board.

Sometimes it's the most minor or off the wall things that does it.

CH

[Difdi]

Heh, I built a PC for my Mother a few years ago. Assembled it, went to load the OS...dead. Took me a while to figure out that Every. Single. Part. was both new in the sealed box, and totally nonfunctional. Hard Drive, DVD-ROM, CD-R, motherboard, all four memory modules, CPU, video card, sound card, power supply, floppy drive, two out of four case fans, monitor, keyboard, mouse. EVERYTHING. Dead as a doornail.

The weirdest part? The parts had been bought by two different people, on three different days, at four different stores. None had been dropped or in any way mistreated (by us, anyway). SOP is to test until you find the dead part, but what do you do when everything is dead?

[Rapscallion]

SOP is to test until you find the dead part, but what do you do when everything is dead?

Mass funeral to save money and time?

Rapscallion

[lordlundar]

Mass funeral to save money and time?

Rapscallion

Funny because it's true.

And I always use examples like this to advocate the use of a UPS (uninterruptable power supply) unit. A fair bit more expensive than a power bar, but a heck lot more effective.