New
#1
Desktop "Repaired" with New Hardware. How Bad is the News?
Almost three years ago, I bought a new desktop from HP, with a "3 day, 9 X 5 Onsite Support, 3 yr" Carepack. See specs here: https://www.sevenforums.com/profile.php?do=extra Lately it began having trouble. I'd be busy, as with many tabs, two browsers, and several other programs running, when the monitor would go black. Not gray, but black as if it had no power. It would last usually around 15 seconds, occasionally till I did a cold boot. When it came back from a 15 second episode, sometimes colors were strange and or parts of the screen remained black. It acted like my ancient '98 had when out of resources. But that was rare --usually it just came back and we kept going. I contacted HP and they tried some diagnostics (as in, they controlled my cursor), with no trouble apparent. The told me I'd have to mail it to them. Knowing they usually format the hard-drive, and seeing this as a lot of trouble, I insisted they send a tech. I believed the problem was collected dust. They said the "onsite" was only for if they knew the problem. Long story short, I got an email today reporting the following "New or Like-New Parts Used in Repair":
(Original) Motherboard Foxconn (Aloe) H-RS880-uATX -->> (replaced by)
System board (motherboard) Aloe GL8E
512MB NVIDIA GeForce G210 [DVI, HDMI, VGA]
-->>Graphic Card - Nvidia Geforce GT440 3G FH PCIEx 16
(I don't know the original)-->>PCIe NVIDIA GT210 512MB standard bracket graphics card (Oribi)
I tried googling, but don't know/recall enough to make sense of the results. The Carepack runs out 2/12, and I'm really afraid of what I'm stuck with.