Seagate Drives Stop Cold with Defective firmware!

Seagate has admitted that a hand full of it’s customer have experienced hard drive deaths after applying a new piece of firmware.

Says the company:

“Seagate has isolated a potential firmware issue in limited number of Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives and related SATA drives based on this product platform, manufactured through December 2008. In some unique circumstances, the data on the hard drives may become inaccessible to the user when the host system is powered on.”

After ignoring the outcries for weeks Seagate has finally created a help site here for the affected users and will even offer free data recovery for those with extreme cases. It’s great to see a company (especially in the current economic climate) showing some honesty and taking responsibility.

Good for you Seagate!

 

Behind on the Questions/Answers

Hello guys,

I’m a little behind on answering the questions that you are submitting through the gadget on the side. This is a mix of the excessive spam going through the gadget and school work in my life.

I’ve create threads for all of the question that I digged out of the piles of spam on the forums. You can find them here.

If your question is missing please resubmit it through the gadget or create a thread on the forums yourself. I’ll be answering all of the question over the next few days.

Cheers,

theFakeGeek

 

Free iLife ’09 upgrade for new Mac owners!

Apple has announced iLife ’09 and has given current Mac owners the opportunity to upgrade to the new version.

From the site:

“iLife ’09, a significant upgrade to Apple’s digital lifestyle applications, features updates to iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, and iWeb. If you’ve purchased a qualifying computer on or after January 6, 2009, that does not include iLife ’09, you can upgrade to iLife ’09 for US$9.95 plus tax.”

For those you working at a retail store that sells Apple Computers please let your customers know about this offer as the Macs that you are selling will most likely still have the ’08 version of iLife.

The link to the upgrade forms: http://www.apple.com/ca/ilife/uptodate/

 

Microsoft OneCare Phone Number and Contact Information

This is one that a lot of people have asked for. It looks like Microsoft is very cautious about giving out the OneCare tech support number, rather opting to make you jump through a variety of “online help” tutorials.

You can contact OneCare support here:

Website: www.onecare.com

Help Site: help.live.com

Renew/Cancel: billing.microsoft.com

Phone: 1-866-ONECARE (1–866-663-2273)

If anyone has any email addresses send them to me and I’ll add them to this page.

 

Retail Shenanigans: Geek Squad’s “Calibration” Service

Another article from the Consumerist today. A reader by the name of Robert sent in this tidbit after taking a look at a television display over at Best Buy,

“Thinking that something was not right, I took a further look at the demo and realized that the inferior tv on the left was turned to plain old ESPN, and the superior tv on the right was tuned to ESPN HD. What’s even worse is they had a box for their Black Tie TV Protection Plan strategically placed so that when looking at the display from most angles, it covered up the ESPN logo on the left tv as to disguise the fact that it was not an HD channel.”

When Robert went to ask some of the employees about this they tried to brush him off, at first saying that they could not find the remote to change both sets to the same channel and then trying to feed him some BS about how their calibration service cuts down on power consumption by 30%…so it’s okay that the display is completely deceptive. Obviously Robert was not impressed.

What do you guys think? It seems pretty slimy to pull this kind of practice off. Having worked for a large retail chain I understand that these practices are not condoned by the company but by individuals working at that particular store. However I do believe that this is the kind of atmosphere that Best Buy creates and maintains. They tell their employees to meet the weekly/monthly numbers and then try to brainwash them into believing that their BS services like “calibration” and computer “setups” are actually worth what they charge for them.

This issue was about televisions but it’s still important to the computer repair sector. How many managers across these stores train their inexperienced “techs” to sell and promote services that are not beneficial to the customer? How many use deceptive practices? The people who do these things have no pride in their work or what they are doing in life and that is sad.

For an independent look at calibration visit Crave’s post on the subject here.

 

Breaking: Circuit City to close over 100 stores

Consumerist reports on some bad news today. It seems that Circuit City, the giant electronics retailer, is planning to close 155 of its stores. The news comes as no shock to those following Circuit City’s recent tumbles in the stock market. Consumerist says,

“According to anonymous insider tips, Circuit City is closing 155 stores and withdrawing from 12 markets. This will be officially announced tomorrow at 8am, says our source. A scan we received of a letter distributed to CC employees helps corroborate the story.”

The story goes on to say that Firedog positions at those stores will most likely be the first to go. 

This is sad news. No matter what you might think about Circuit City and its policies and quality, it’s always disheartening to see so many people lose their jobs. It looks as if the service departments will be the first to get their pink slips and that means that a lot of our fellow technicians will soon be out of a job.

This is likely to be a lesson to other big retailers. They’ll want to avoid the mistakes of Circuit City. Here’s what NOT to do:

  1. Don’t fire all of your best employees and hire lower paid unskilled and less knowledgable people.
  2. Don’t rip your consumers off with prices that are so much higher then your competitors.
  3. Don’t position your stores so close to your (bigger) competition. (<cough> Best Buy.)
What do you guys think?

 

 

HP Limited Service Advisory/ Recall Repair

I’m sure most of you guys out there doing warranty repairs know about this one already but for those who do not here’s a primer.

A few months ago HP released a large scale service advisory for many laptops that were sold over the past two years or so. The symptoms usually involve loss of WiFi or a black screen on start-up. HP recommends that, if you’re able, to first try a BIOS update and if that doesn’t work then to send the laptop in for a free repair, even if your warranty is expired.

You can read more about it here.

Laptops affected:

HP Pavilion notebook PC series Compaq Presario notebook PC series
dv20xx v30xx
dv21xx v31xx
dv22xx v32xx
dv23xx v33xx
dv24xx v34xx
dv60xx v60xx
dv61xx v61xx
dv62xx v62xx
dv63xx v63xx
dv64xx v64xx
dv90xx
dv92xx
dv93xx
dv94xx

(The above table was copy pasted from the HP website.)

Take a look at the above table and if you have a laptop with a matching model number click the link to find out if you’re eligible.

Here are the symptoms from the HP site:

“The following symptoms apply to Pavilion dv2000 and Presario v3000 notebooks:

  • The notebook does not detect wireless networks and the wireless adapter is not detected in the Device Manager.
  • There is no video on the computer LCD panel or external monitor.
The following symptoms apply to the dv6000, dv9000 and v6000 series notebooks:
  • The notebook does not detect wireless networks and the wireless adapter is not detected in the Device Manager.
  • There is no video on the computer LCD panel or external monitor.
  • The notebook has no power and no active LEDs.
  • The notebook does not start.
  • The battery charge indicator light does not turn on when the battery is installed and the AC adapter is connected.
  • The notebook issues a single beep during boot indicating no power.
  • The external monitor functions but there is no image on the notebook LCD panel.”
My tech shop has seen a large amount of these laptops come in. We are an HP authorized repair center so that figures but I’m willing to bet that even you independent technicians have come across these laptops. There is really not much you can do yourselves to repair this. HP usually ends up replacing the motherboards on laptops that are sent in, they also wipe the units.
Notice how these are all AMD based laptops? Guess which company I’m staying away from…
 

Batteries for Dell, Toshiba, and HP laptops recalled

Consumerist has a story about a set of laptop batteries from Dell, Toshiba, and HP being recalled. The recall states:

“Hazard: These lithium-ion batteries can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to consumers.

Incidents/Injuries: There have been 19 reports of the batteries overheating, including 17 reports of flames/fire (10 resulting in minor property damage). Two consumers experienced minor burns.

Description: The recalled batteries were included with, and sold separately for use in, the following notebook computer models:”

Computer Manufacturer Units Notebook Model Battery Model
Hewlett-Packard About 32,000 HP Pavilion: dv1000, dv8000 and zd8000
Compaq Presario: v2000 and v2400
HP Compaq: nc6110, nc6120, nc6140, nc6220, nc6230,
nx4800, nx4820, nx6110, nx6120, nx9600		 Recalled batteries will have a bar code
label starting with A0, L0, L1 or GC
Toshiba About 3,000 Satellite: A70/A75, P30/P5, M30X/M35X, M50/M55
Tecra: A3, A5, S2		 n/a
Dell About 150 Latitude: 110L
Inspiron: 1100, 1150, 5100, 5150, 5160		 OU091

The above information and table are from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commision.

For those who have these units, your urged to contact the manufacturer for a free replacement. Fellow techs: please check for the following laptops, this is a chance to protect your customers and create some goodwill.