Dealing with constant hard drive corruption (experience most likely required).

[Whacker]

Lemur's suggestions aren't bad, BUT I would offer something else as an alternative. You've got a few options.

- Do the memtest routine. IF you can find another known good stick of ram, try that first off and see if it works. If it doesn't, then you know it's not the RAM. Your problem still sounds like a bad mobo.

- Play hardball with the repair crew. My suggestion at this point, don't get mired down in arguing details. Don't listen to lame excuses. Demand satisfaction. "Well we couldn't get it to do such and such, we think so and so, we can't reproduce etc, so it's fixed." Don't care, doesn't matter. Bottom line is that your laptop needs to be fixed. Be reasonable but absolutely firm, and don't let them get you off course on excuses, etc. If it crashes on you on a regular basis during normal use, and the GS guys claim otherwise, they are bullshitting you and/or lying. It might help if you had some tool or means for documenting crashes, if I have some time I'll look into it for you. Otherwise, someone on the forums may know of something. You want it to document each lockup or crash (if possible), or detect when the system has crashed on the next boot up. I thought Sysinternals made something like this that logs BSODs, but I might be wrong. Someone else jump in here. This is just doing them somewhat of a favor anyway, it's their job to fix it (and it's also a prelude to what I suggest at the very bottom below). As for the policy on 4 repairs before a replace, remember a policy is just a policy. It's not law, not written in stone. Business is business and when need dictates, policy can be ignored or overruled. Don't forget that and don't let them feed you some lines about "corporate requires this or that", management always, always has the ability to make cost related decisions in a business, that's WHY they are managers. Sometimes if you prove to be a persistent customer and a thorn in their side who's not going to roll over and accept the BS, businesses will often bypass policy requirements like what you mentioned to resolve the issue. It'd probably be more costly for them anyway to continue down that road, than to just shortcut and resolve the matter up front.

- If all else fails, make a (polite) scene. Demand that management address the problem. Stick to your guns, don't piddle and argue, demand resolution, nothing more and nothing less. If you can't get that, take it up the food chain, write a (polite and well worded) nastygram to the regional director, the vp, the ceo, whomever. If you still don't get anything and it's under warranty, you might seriously want to consider small claims court. If you can demonstrate to the court that your laptop is "non-functional", aka be able to show hard documentation or evidence of repeated crashing during normal use, and that you tried to resolve this with the company, you've got a full house. This is costly and extreme, and it does carry some risk, but you have a right to what you paid for.