Joy oh joy! More good times with Geek Squad Ahead!

[CrossLOPER]

The HP laptop I was given as a replacement on October? Guess what? Hard drive failure. The thing simply will not respond. I can't even reinstall Windows because nothing will happen when I pop a cd or dvd in the drive.

Anyone have any suggestions before I lose just a little bit more sanity with Geek Squad?

[LeftEyeNine]

You should openly acknowledge the superiority of the Prosimian Lord and the Orange Wolf Boss first.

[CrossLOPER]

You should openly acknowledge the superiority of the Prosimian Lord and the Orange Wolf Boss first.

wat

[LeftEyeNine]

wat

Seems I've failed to disguise the fact that I got no useful thing to say.

Better be prepared next time

[Mikeus Caesar]

Ah, Geek Squad, the arch enemy of 4chan /g/

I've read alot about GS over the years, and the basic conclusion of my research is that GS was helpful up till 4 years ago. Then there was a complete overhaul and now they've mostly been replaced by salespeople, who's first job is to sell you crap and second job is to help.

tl;dr Geek Squad is useless. Even if it costs a bit more, find some independent repairman, it'll save a lot of hassle.

[CrossLOPER]

tl;dr Geek Squad is useless. Even if it costs a bit more, find some independent repairman, it'll save a lot of hassle.

That's the thing. It's free. I bought insurance, so at worse I'll get a new laptop if this one is as messed up as the last. I'll still have to buy more insurance. Geek Squad could also accuse me of sabotaging my own laptops, at which point I'll say that they do a perfectly good job of doing that themselves by having Vista-only PCs for sale.

[Husar]

I don't really see the connection between Vista and failing hardware though.

[CrossLOPER]

I don't really see the connection between Vista and failing hardware though.

Perhaps...

[TevashSzat]

What do you mean by hard drive failure? Does it not even boot windows? Or does it attempt to boot windows, but stalls? Elaborate

I would

First of all, make sure that your hard drive is not completely totalled.

Just before windows boots up, press one of the F# keys to get into setup. Once there, there is most likely a hard drive diagnostics. If you look at the result, just hope that it isn't seomthing like critical failure.

To reinstall windows, first make sure that your boot order is correct. If you boot from hard drive before CD/DVD drive, it wouldn't matter what CD/DVD you have in there. To check it, you have to poke around in your BIOS which is accessible through one of the F# keys before windows boots.

If the boot order is correct and it still doesn't work, but the diagnostics doesn't give a critical error, then I don't know...

Another possibility is that you might try to find a floppy with diagnostic software on it and boot from it to try to find out the problem. If you don't have a floppy drive, then you can create a bootable CD with the diagnostics on it. I use one called the Ultimate Diagnostic CD or something like that. It is totally free and has a ton of helpful programs on it

[CrossLOPER]

What do you mean by hard drive failure? Does it not even boot windows? Or does it attempt to boot windows, but stalls? Elaborate

The laptop does NOTHING. It turns on, and then presents a dark screen. It does not respond to f#s. It does not respond to disks. I'm pretty sure either the HD or MB is dead or damaged.

Either way I turned it in. Should be back in a week.

[TevashSzat]

The laptop does NOTHING. It turns on, and then presents a dark screen. It does not respond to f#s. It does not respond to disks. I'm pretty sure either the HD or MB is dead or damaged.

Either way I turned it in. Should be back in a week.

If the BIOS doesn't show up then it is most likely the motherboard

[Whacker]

Just out of curiosity did you get any "beep codes" when it booted? My work lappie just breathed it's last, problem turned out to be a dead LCD and it did almost the exact same thing your machine was doing. Only difference is that it didn't always make the BIOS beep error codes, sometimes it'd just boot and sit there without any activity... silently... questioning... almost challenging me.

[CrossLOPER]

No beeps. Not a sound. I think I heard the fan whirl faintly.

[Lemur]

That means your machine isn't even reaching POST. That means either the motherboard, the power supply, or both.

[CrossLOPER]

That means your machine isn't even reaching POST. That means either the motherboard, the power supply, or both.

"Unit will not post."

-Some Geek Squad SO

[Martok]

That means your machine isn't even reaching POST. That means either the motherboard, the power supply, or both.

....And/or one (or more) bad RAM sticks. That turned out to be the problem with my machine last year when I was having such difficulties. At least one of my memory sticks was faulty, which in turned caused my motherboard to go kaput (I ended up having to replace both the motherboard and the RAM). Took forever to figure it out.

[CrossLOPER]

I really do not want to endure another four months of this drive up and down the highway to Best Buy stuff. I really hope they don't just replace the HD and say "Hurrrrrrrrr u go!"