Mon Jun 28, 2004 6:34 am
My D*ell Post Warranty Repair Nightmare
My Dell, a 423 socket P4, gave up the ghost a week ago. It is 3.5 years old. The PSU failed with a small puff. Just before it failed, I got my one and only WMe BSD telling me that I had a disk write error.
I diligently found a replacement PSU and opted to get a higher wattage unit, a 410w in place of the 330w unit that blew. The 60 GB HDD wouldn't boot so I got a new HDD to replace it as well. At Taw's suggestion, I was able to slave the 60 GB HDD for just enough to time to load out the munchkin's pictures before it failed again. (
No. I had no current backup, only one that was 3 months old )
I was just getting set back to normal when my on board controller died ... died ... died. No BSD no nothing. All drives, optical, floppy, HDD, just wouldn't register at boot-up.
And so I checked first to see if I could just replace the mobo with another from Dell. It being a proprietary design, standarid industry boards won't readily mount on a Dell case. Checking up at the Dell site, I find out that IF I can get a mobo for a model as old as mine, it still would cost me north of $400 to buy it.
Having already overspent to replace the PSU with a Dell compatible one (yes, that's right, not even the PSU is configured to industry standard), and only wanting to get the current rig back up an running to tide me over until later this year, I've been forced to buy a standard socket 423 Intel mobo AND an industry
standard PC case so that I can scavenge everything out of my Dell and transplant it into the new mobo and case. All told, I've had to spend $220 for the customized PSU which only should have cost me about $100 at most, $150 for the 200 GB HDD and, now, $30 for the mobo and $60 for the new case.
Moral of story for me: I shall never buy proprietary branded PC goods again unless the brand is verifiably using ONLY industry standard parts.
I diligently found a replacement PSU and opted to get a higher wattage unit, a 410w in place of the 330w unit that blew. The 60 GB HDD wouldn't boot so I got a new HDD to replace it as well. At Taw's suggestion, I was able to slave the 60 GB HDD for just enough to time to load out the munchkin's pictures before it failed again. (
No. I had no current backup, only one that was 3 months old )
I was just getting set back to normal when my on board controller died ... died ... died. No BSD no nothing. All drives, optical, floppy, HDD, just wouldn't register at boot-up.
And so I checked first to see if I could just replace the mobo with another from Dell. It being a proprietary design, standarid industry boards won't readily mount on a Dell case. Checking up at the Dell site, I find out that IF I can get a mobo for a model as old as mine, it still would cost me north of $400 to buy it.
Having already overspent to replace the PSU with a Dell compatible one (yes, that's right, not even the PSU is configured to industry standard), and only wanting to get the current rig back up an running to tide me over until later this year, I've been forced to buy a standard socket 423 Intel mobo AND an industry
standard PC case so that I can scavenge everything out of my Dell and transplant it into the new mobo and case. All told, I've had to spend $220 for the customized PSU which only should have cost me about $100 at most, $150 for the 200 GB HDD and, now, $30 for the mobo and $60 for the new case.
Moral of story for me: I shall never buy proprietary branded PC goods again unless the brand is verifiably using ONLY industry standard parts.
