Another Day, Another Laptop . . .
Today started off dim and quiet. Dim because the shades and front curtains were closed when I got up, and quiet because Jan woke up with a migraine and I was trying to keep it down.
Once she had her coffee, she took a Sumatriptan and laid back down for a while. As for me, I quietly got back to work on another laptop hard drive replacement.
This one was a Dell XPS 15 that I picked up from a long time client the last time we were down in the League City area. But as it turned out this one was a bit strange.
Dell is really good about support, so you use the Service Tag number on the bottom to go online and find out exactly what your laptop had in it when it shipped. And this tag# told me the laptop had a 1 TB Western Digital HDD inside, so that’s what I ordered as a replacement. And the replacement came to Brandi’s this past Sunday while we were there for Chris’ birthday party. Love Amazon’s Free Sunday Delivery.
So my first step was to remove the laptop bottom panel so I could get to the hard drive.
Removing six screws loosens the back. Then you can open the small silver panel, and remove the two screws underneath. And that where the first strangeness showed up.
One of the two screws was missing. And the only way that would be is if someone had taken the back off. Removing the one remaining screw gave me access to the hard drive. That’s it on the right.
Removing four more screws and I could pull out the HDD frame.
After removing the four frame screws and the data connector, I had the old HDD in my hand. And now the second strangeness.
These two drives should be identical, but they’re not. The one on the left, the one I removed from the machine, is a Seagate 750 GB, not the 1 TB WD it should be. At this point I put in a call to the owner and left a voicemail, before preceding with the swap out.
Ten minutes later, I had the new drive in and the case back together. Then I plugged in my Win7 USB Installer and booted it up.
Twenty minutes later Windows 7 was up and running, and I was downloading the necessary drivers from the Dell site.
Unlike the HP laptop a couple of weeks ago, Dell tells you exactly what drivers you need and lets you download them all at once.
About this time the client called back, and I confirmed that she had bought the laptop new, and that no one had worked on it until this problem. But, before she called me, not knowing if we were in town, she took it into Best Buy to have them look at it.
They kept it a few days, and then said it wasn’t fixable. So then she called me.
At this point the only thing that makes sense is that Best Buy found the original bad HDD and replaced it with another one. But I think it was one they just had lying around, and a used one at that. The date code on the HDD is two years older than the date code on the computer itself.
But I guess they didn’t know that the used drive was also dead. At this point they figured there must be something else wrong that they couldn’ fix, and sent it back. But with the new correct HDD installed, it’s working now.
Next up tomorrow, Windows 10.
By 4:30 Jan was feeling a lot better, and was hungry because all she’d had was some potato chips. So we headed into Columbus to have dinner at Los Cucos Mexican Restaurant, one of our favorites.
I got the Beef Fajitas Poblanas, with mushrooms, poblano strips, and red onions, in a delicious heavy cream sauce. Really good.
Jan had her favorite Beef Fajita Stuffed Avocado. She says it’s the best she’s ever had.
And even better we had plenty left over for tomorrow.
Thought for the Day:
“It was a woman who drove me to drink, and I’ve been searching thirty years to find her and thank her.” – W. C. Fields
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