Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. It’s illegal but they’ll keep doing it as long as people don’t take them to court.
HP is falling behind the state of the art, though. I hear Samsung would have just stolen the thing.
That would save on shipping.
Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop
31–40 of 70 posts
Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop
#32Other lessons one can take from this:
* Never buy an HP.
* For personal use, one should also treat computers as cattle, not pets. Always automatically backup to at least 2 different locations.
Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop
#33Other lessons one can take from this: * Never buy an HP. * For personal use, one should also treat computers as cattle, not pets. Always automatically backup to at least 2 different locations.
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Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop
#34I'm continually amazed by the (lack of) quality of their laptops and the scenario described really reinforced my opinion of HP. At work, I've used a ProBook, a ZBook, and two EliteBooks, all of which had major issues. Sleep mode never worked on any of them (immediately turning back on again with powercfg /lastwake showing no reason), and my current EliteBook frequently shuts off without warning and then won't turn on…
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Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop
#35> Under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act it is illegal for HP to renege on their warranty unless the reason for warranty work is demonstrably due to the consumer's changes. Aside from what would be morally right to do I doubt HP is legally compelled to repair it. I'm guessing that since this was handled under "extended warranty" the rules of your "minimum legal warranty" don't apply since those have already expired. So…
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Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop
#36> Under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act it is illegal for HP to renege on their warranty unless the reason for warranty work is demonstrably due to the consumer's changes. Aside from what would be morally right to do I doubt HP is legally compelled to repair it. I'm guessing that since this was handled under "extended warranty" the rules of your "minimum legal warranty" don't apply since those have already expired. So…
A major vendor did something similar to us about a decade ago. Brand new notebooks bricked after the vendor's tech support directed us to install a "required" system update. Vendor claimed that they we're not liable for the damage and pointed to their End User Agreement and Warranty policy. Turns out they had clauses that stated that the vendor was not responsible for damage to devices caused by firmware or BIOS updates. We would later learn that the required system update included a BIOS update responsible for the damage. Its been over a decade since we've even considered a purchase from them again.
Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop
#37I think the main lesson is that if you are going to send something for warranty, better to send it as original as possible, otherwise they are going to claim that your modification was the cause of the issue.
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Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop
#38[deleted]
Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop
#39Long time ago, I had a similar - but worse - experience with Sony, with a Vaio laptop.
Ultra-high end laptop, and I had also paid for and fitted an Intel X25-E, the very first and single-cell ultra high performance SSD. Laptop was 2k euro, drive was another 700 euro.
After a year or two, the fan begins to run loud - that's fine, normal event.
Laptop is sent back under warranty for fan replacement.
Laptop returns with a new motherboard (and as such, the SIM I left in the motherboard was missing).
Windows does NOT like having the motherboard changed underneath it, and was royally confused on boot, and no longer worked correctly.
I explain this to Support, and that it takes a month for a fresh install of Windows to be fully up to speed.
Laptop is sent back again.
Support then sends me an invoice : their solution to having fucked up Windows is to remove my 700 euro X25-E drive and charge me 400 euro to install a new standard Sony spinning-platter drive with a fresh install of Windows on it.
I gave up with Sony, got my laptop back, reinstalled Windows, and never had anything to do with them again.
Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop
#40That's very surprising that the image from the firmware update alone is sufficient to boot the machine. On the overwhelming majority of laptops, the update capsules don't contain the NVRAM sections (so no set or default values for any settings) and typically this is enough to prevent the firmware from booting the machine.
It's also interesting/impressive how much work the author went through to reinvent the wheel with his own custom microcontroller setup for reading and flashing the EEPROM when there are so many cheap off the shelf solutions available (that can read and program hundreds of times faster than it sounds like his did).