Cant help, computer thicko here, but this will bump it for you

I've just e-mailed my ex-PC world son/Technician - now programmer for a World Wide company for you.

Will let you know!

I'll bump it too. I've seen fluffy thing about. She might be able to help.

The 179Gb is probably because your HD has been partioned by the maker. When I started working at PC World they started providing the software to restore your computer to it's factory settings on a partition on the hard disk which I was very very unhappy with as a policy.

If it's blank then I would say almost certainly the technician has restored the HDD back to original settings because they believed there was a software fault. It is taught to PC World technicians to do as standard, I suspect because it is quicker than actually trying to fix any software faults.

Was it just the laptop battery or the battery on the MoBo?

Btw I worked at PC World as a technician. Many of the other technicians I worked with were talented and capable individuals but the system they have to work with is somewhat harsh. Most of us were trying to look after people as best we can under the rules we worked under.

Thankyou foxy. The actual laptop battery was replaced. But I don't quite know why as I only sent my laptop in for the ethernet port to be fixed, and I get it back with a blank hard drive.
I don't know what a MoBo is, but the paper I got back with it just said battery.

And thankyou GMA.

Sorry if I sound a little strange, but I don't really trust PC world. I would have liked to have known what they were up to, rather than just being told they had to order in parts.

quote:

Originally posted by PuppyDooDoo:
And thankyou GMA.

Sorry if I sound a little strange, but I don't really trust PC world. I would have liked to have known what they were up to, rather than just being told they had to order in parts.

Just had this reply from 'son and heir'

Right…



· PC world wouldn’t have supplied the HDD back as blank, unless there’s some utter incompetence. Depends if it is actually blank (i.e. no windows, nothing) or back to factory configuration.

· The hard drive IS 200GB. For marketing purposes, one conversion factor is used to define a gigabyte (i.e. thus a larger value) and in the real world it is a different value. Don’t know why, it’s just like this, storage amount is the same.

· None of them would cause a blank HDD, who cares if you had more parts than necessary replaced, you have new computer internals, so long as they are the same or better in capability J



End of the day, it’s PC World, be lucky they had it for just a month…


END OF SON'S REPLY...

...I think he's sceptical - but he's 'honest as far as PC World is concerned - sorry for delay, he's working (not for PC W any more - he travels the world instead) hope you're wiser (I'm not, I just summons him to my computer)!

Good Luck, hope any info was of help - I just don't 'get it' myself.
I think he's saying they're 'incompetent' and h knows them well!

Thankyou GMA, and thank your son for me too. When I said blank I meant all the files and programmes on it were gone, and all my settings were back to the way they were before I got it, aka factory restored.

I don't get it either, but considering out of 4 people I know who have had to send their laptops in for repair (including me) I am the only one who hasn't had their hard drive replaced with a smaller one, or a cheaper processor put in. I am just going to count myself lucky. And get my friend to fix it for me next time.

Now I need to reinstall everything I had on it before, copy the files I had backed up onto it and figure out how to change the settings back.

quote:

Originally posted by PuppyDooDoo:
Thankyou foxy. The actual laptop battery was replaced. But I don't quite know why as I only sent my laptop in for the ethernet port to be fixed, and I get it back with a blank hard drive.
I don't know what a MoBo is, but the paper I got back with it just said battery.

Sorry, MoBo is just shorthand for Motherboard - it's a long word to type lol.

If the battery was over £5 then it's likely to be the laptop battery if it was under then it's likely to be the internal battery.

Like I said, it's just that they have taken it back to it's factory settings. It suggests to me that they thought that the problem with your ethernet port was a drivers problem and tried to fix it that way before physically replacing the motherboard it was on.

quote:

Originally posted by PuppyDooDoo:
Thankyou GMA, and thank your son for me too. When I said blank I meant all the files and programmes on it were gone, and all my settings were back to the way they were before I got it, aka factory restored.

I don't get it either, but considering out of 4 people I know who have had to send their laptops in for repair (including me) I am the only one who hasn't had their hard drive replaced with a smaller one, or a cheaper processor put in. I am just going to count myself lucky. And get my friend to fix it for me next time.

Now I need to reinstall everything I had on it before, copy the files I had backed up onto it and figure out how to change the settings back.

I put a thread out for you honey, I'm lost with all this jargon, so ignore thread I put out - if we can help further 'alert me' !Good luck, I thank god for kids (now and then!).

quote:

Originally posted by littleleicesterfox:

quote:

Originally posted by PuppyDooDoo:
Thankyou foxy. The actual laptop battery was replaced. But I don't quite know why as I only sent my laptop in for the ethernet port to be fixed, and I get it back with a blank hard drive.
I don't know what a MoBo is, but the paper I got back with it just said battery.

Sorry, MoBo is just shorthand for Motherboard - it's a long word to type lol.

If the battery was over £5 then it's likely to be the laptop battery if it was under then it's likely to be the internal battery.

Like I said, it's just that they have taken it back to it's factory settings. It suggests to me that they thought that the problem with your ethernet port was a drivers problem and tried to fix it that way before physically replacing the motherboard it was on.

Ah I see, I think. Don't think it was necessary though as the port was actually moving around. Least they fixed it, I was told it may be blamed on me and they would just void the warranty.

quote:

Originally posted by gma:

quote:

Originally posted by PuppyDooDoo:
Thankyou GMA, and thank your son for me too. When I said blank I meant all the files and programmes on it were gone, and all my settings were back to the way they were before I got it, aka factory restored.

I don't get it either, but considering out of 4 people I know who have had to send their laptops in for repair (including me) I am the only one who hasn't had their hard drive replaced with a smaller one, or a cheaper processor put in. I am just going to count myself lucky. And get my friend to fix it for me next time.

Now I need to reinstall everything I had on it before, copy the files I had backed up onto it and figure out how to change the settings back.

I put a thread out for you honey, I'm lost with all this jargon, so ignore thread I put out - if we can help further 'alert me' !Good luck, I thank god for kids (now and then!).

Thankyou very much, I did see it. And I will remember that for future. Again please thank your son for me.

Lordy, sending a PC to PC World for repair is like asking McD's to supply a dinner party.

P.s. sorry LLF, I'm sure you were great.

quote:

Originally posted by Daniel J*:
Lordy, sending a PC to PC World for repair is like asking McD's to supply a dinner party.

P.s. sorry LLF, I'm sure you were great.

If it hadn't been under warranty, trust me I would have found someone else to fix it.

The 'missing' disk space is probably down to formatting. My hard disk is reported as 500G at the BIOS level and about 465G through Windows after Windows (NTFS) formatting.

quote:

Originally posted by Daniel J*:
The 'missing' disk space is probably down to formatting. My hard disk is reported as 500G at the BIOS level and about 465G through Windows after Windows (NTFS) formatting.

I thought that as well but the son is right the disk manufacturers basically lie about the capacity on their hard disks.

For example, hard disk drive manufacturers assume that 1 GB equals to 1 billion (10^9) bytes, while in fact 1 GB equals to 1,073,741,824 (2^30) bytes.

Let’s take a real example, Seagate/Maxtor DiamondMax 21 hard disk drive with “250 GB”. It is announced as being a 250 GB hard disk drive, having 488,397,168 sectors. With this number of sectors we can easily find out that the capacity of this hard disk drive is of 250,059,350,016 bytes, or 232.88 GB and not 250 GB. So here is why your 250 GB hard drive is only formatted with 232 GB: it IS a 232 GB hard drive!

Full article

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/482

quote:

Originally posted by PuppyDooDoo:
If it hadn't been under warranty, trust me I would have found someone else to fix it.

Sorry, it wasn't meant as a criticism. PC World just drive me mad.

Personally I wouldn't buy anything from PC World, not even blank discs, let alone a lappy or PC.

www.ebuyer.co.uk

Is a good place for deals. And they sell out quick as some things are sold at ridiculous prices. The other week they had 42" Sony LCD FULL HD tellies at £329 They sold out in two hours though

I can highly recommend this place and you will find it very hard to beat their prices.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/

quote:

Originally posted by Daniel J*:

quote:

Originally posted by PuppyDooDoo:
If it hadn't been under warranty, trust me I would have found someone else to fix it.

Sorry, it wasn't meant as a criticism. PC World just drive me mad.

I didn't take it as one, I know they have a bad track record and they were driving me mad before they got the laptop picked up.

quote:

Originally posted by CaptVimes:
For example, hard disk drive manufacturers assume that 1 GB equals to 1 billion (10^9) bytes, while in fact 1 GB equals to 1,073,741,824 (2^30) bytes.

Essentially, the manufacturers/BIOS are using SI measurements (k).

1k = 1000, 1K = 1024.

The software is using binary (K).

quote:

Originally posted by langster:
Personally I wouldn't buy anything from PC World, not even blank discs, let alone a lappy or PC.

www.ebuyer.co.uk

Is a good place for deals. And they sell out quick as some things are sold at ridiculous prices. The other week they had 42" Sony LCD FULL HD tellies at £329 They sold out in two hours though

They are good, I needed a laptop to use whilst the other one was being fixed and ended up buying it from there. Only wish I had found them before I bought the other one from PC world.

quote:

Originally posted by langster:
Personally I wouldn't buy anything from PC World, not even blank discs, let alone a lappy or PC.

www.ebuyer.co.uk

Is a good place for deals. And they sell out quick as some things are sold at ridiculous prices. The other week they had 42" Sony LCD FULL HD tellies at £329 They sold out in two hours though

I like Ebuyer. They went through a bad patch a few years ago but seem to have sorted themselves out.

quote:

Originally posted by Daniel J*:

quote:

Originally posted by CaptVimes:
For example, hard disk drive manufacturers assume that 1 GB equals to 1 billion (10^9) bytes, while in fact 1 GB equals to 1,073,741,824 (2^30) bytes.

Essentially, the manufacturers/BIOS are using SI measurements (k).

1k = 1000, 1K = 1024.

The software is using binary (K).

Yes but its fraud really. They are computer disk manufacturers they shouldnt be using SI measurements to quantify a computer component. Its derived from binary measured in binary they are using decimal to pull the wool over peoples eyes and the larger the drives get the bigger the fraud because the bigger the difference.

Its like me selling 2 litres of coke and it really being two pints. I dont know how they get away with it.

Yeah Ebuyer are good, and as the good Captain pointed out Overclockers are also very good as well. I usually check them both out as they are often running sales on certain things at different times.