Cheap corporations. Bah. I bought a new Compaq desktop PC back in March. When I got it home and unpacked the box, I found that it did not come with a set of recovery disks. You know, those CDs (well, these days it’s DVDs) you can use to boot up the PC and restore your operating system if All Hell Breaks Loose somewhere in the innards of the beast.
Every PC – desktop or notebook – I’ve ever bought came with restore disks. Even the Powerspecs, which are not expensive machines, did.
That was then. This is now. My new Famous Brand Name PC just came with software that allowed me to burn ONE SET of recovery DVDs. Though irritated by HP/Compaq’s not spending the three bucks it would take for them to do it at the factory, I made those DVDs, and put them in a carefully labeled jewel case.
I am glad I did. Because for the last five days the PC has been as unstable as a drunk walking on ice: freezing up a lot and occasionally crashing. I tried everything I knew how to do, including the Windows system restore points, etc. Then last night I found that among the bloatware that came on the PC there was a useful hardware diagnostic program. I ran it three times – and the hard disk failed a significant test. Every time. The PC’s now back at the store (thank goodness, it’s Micro Center, I love those folks) for repair, under warranty. Probably to emerge with a new hard drive in about a week. And then I can use those system restore DVDs.
I’m happy to have this Toshiba notebook so that I’m not offline right now. And relieved that I habitually copy files onto a 200G external hard drive from the desktop, and was able to get files copied off the PC as it coughed and sputtered, so to speak, this morning.
Maybe I should have bought another Powerspec instead of the Compaq. The Powerspecs aren’t as glam and sometimes I think they use cheap CD/DVD drives, but at least they aren’t loaded with all kinds of crappy proprietary “helpful” “consumer” software bloatware like the Compaq is. And they come with restore disks.
And don’t get me started about Windows Vista. Just don’t.
Suz:
Sorry to hear of your technical difficulties–I HATE that stuff, it’s SO frustrating. You sound much better prepared than me. My troubleshooting strategy is to cry.
Hope your up and running as usual again soon!
s.