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Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop

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Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop

#41

Post by Tade0 »

widerporst wrote: post #23

I'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…

My manager's company-issued HP EliteBook is actually the third device he's had during the last three years, as the previous units failed without warning. Nowadays if I don't see him on the standup I assume it's this problem again.

Kind of reminds me of the darkest days of MBPs and their failing keyboards.

My work laptop is doing ok so far with only minor annoyances like needing to reconnect peripherals after waking up the device, but that's it.

Meanwhile I cooked the screen in my Asus personal machine because it assumed that sleep = 100% CPU. Thermal paste was of course cooked as well, so I had to replace it.

All in all I'm glad that Framework expanded into my country recently. It's expensive for what it offers, but half the reason I'll be ordering one is spite.

Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop

#43

Post by BoredPositron »

dishsoap wrote: post #40

That'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 wit…

The desoldering did it for me but good for him if it works in the end. It could be done by way less technical people with the proper (cheap) tools though. The article is a bit of a double edged sword because of it.

Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop

#44

Post by yelling_cat »

When I was a kid HP products were well-supported and famed for their durability. My dad still uses the HP scientific calculator his father bought in the '70s and my uncle has an old PC hooked up to a '90s LaserJet printer that works perfectly well. Retired engineers I've talked to gush about working there in the HP Way days, they were respected and got to create fantastic products that their customers loved.

Now "HP" is a curse word to anyone in tech. It's a damn shame.

Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop

#46

Post by [deleted] »

balozi wrote: post #36
jsiepkes wrote: post #13

> 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 upda…

[deleted]

Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop

#47

Post by Scoundreller »

The old school cooked BIOS method (or flash programming of anything if it was the same chip) was to boot a similar and good board to its bios updater, hot swap the bad chip and the good chip, and then execute the updater to write on the bad chip.

But life was easier when this stuff was socketed.

Re: Recovery after HP tech support bricked my father's laptop

#49

Post by pugworthy »

didip wrote: post #32

Other 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.

Careful you don't overgeneralize too much. You're probably basing this on home/small office product lines, which is not all HP does.

HP has some pretty interesting and successful products such as the Life Sciences dispensers for cells and fluids (see https://www.hp.com/us-en/specialty-printing-solutions/life-s...).

Then there are the industrial printing products (https://www.hp.com/us-en/industrial-digital-presses.html) which are rather mind bogglingly fast and capable. Imagine a printer printing to a paper roll 40" wide at hundreds of feet per second, and the printing is paper statements to be cut and sorted for mailing.

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