A glorious death
My notebook computer died yesterday after a crash encountered while booting – I wanted to plug in an USB CDRW drive (an Iomega ZipCD Predator). After, it did not want to power on.
My notebook is (was) a COMPAQ 14XL355 (Presario 1400 series). Its battery was almost dead (I even planned to buy a new one on AboutBatteries.com), but it was sufficient in order to write my next book.
I called HP support for COMPAQ Presario (new phone number in France: 0892696022), and, after some tests, they said it was my motherboard (spare part description: "System Board (I/O w/64 MB SDRAM PWM SB" / part number: "221328-001" / applicable models: "340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 350, 352, 355, 356, CTO"). My warranty being over (I bought this notebook during the 2001 winter, it got 2 years very recently...), I need to go to a COMPAQ support center (the nearest for me: Maintronic Ile-de-France / Adresse: Immeuble " le Berlier " / 15, rue J.-B. Berlier / Ville: 75013 Paris / Tél: 01 44 06 99 44 / Fax: 01 44 24 05 06 / Mél: paris@maintronic.fr). This center did not want to say to me the price of a motherboard (invoking the fact that COMPAQ phone support can be wrong... I hope so). But I made a little search and find those two websites:
- hp partsurfer to find references of your notebook's parts (mine is a "Presario 14XL") – with the “express parts” system, parts are easy to change in the notebook;
- Compaq spare parts store to buy parts.
On this last website, my motherboard is $713.00!!! The price of a new notebook!!!
Other useful general support links:
- documentation, manuals, & troubleshooting guides: the official and original documentation from COMPAQ – recently (2002/08/18), they posted a new more than useful document: COMPAQ maintenance & service guide - Presario 1400 series for you (the consumer) to be able to maintain your notebook alone (product description, specification, info on battery & power management, troubleshooting guide, pin assignments, removal sequence, parts catalog...) – I used this guide to find my notebooks' parts numbers;
- software & drivers: the official and original updates, distributed as “softpaq”;
- customer communities: support forums to find a answers to your problems.
I am really disappointed cos I just finished to pay for this notebook, and I really started to use it to write my new books... moreover I paid for it almost 2000€, a very expensive price for me, because I was a student when I bought it.
So, if someone knows somebody at COMPAQ's, please let me know.
For the moment, I will buy a Lindy 2"1/2 adaptator to plug my notebook's hardrive in my standard PC and backup datas. I will for sure search tips in COMPAQ's forums too. Next I will go to the assistance center for them to watch inside the notebook.
But if the price of the repair is near $1000, I do not know what I will do :[
Posted by Jean-Philippe on June 06, 2003 at 11:31 PM 29 Comments, 4094 TrackBacks
Post your own.Hello. I'm interested in uprgrading my hardrive in my Sharp AV-18P notebook computer. I'm not sure where the hardrive is located and would like know the
sequence to remove it. This is a new computer and I would rather ask someone who works on laptops more than I do. This is the first one I had a problem with. I would appreciate any info. Thanks, Kenneth.
Posted by kenneth tommy on February 06, 2004 at 12:38 AM (Spam: 0%)
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