Anyone notice a pattern here?
I’m not exactly sure what it is about me, but my HP notebook computers like to die on me. First the Omnibook fries its motherboard during my rainy freshman year, then the Presario’s hard drive turns into a drunken maraca within a week of arrival, and now my Pavilion’s graphics card is D-E-D.
The ‘puters get resurrected by HP tech support on a regular basis, always within a year of purchase, and then they’re golden for the rest of their lifespans. In fact, the other two are still functioning in their respective new homes as far as I know.
This time my money’s on the graphics card going SPLAT. Yes, it’s a Pavilion notebook running Vista Home Premium, and yes, I spent the money on the max available memory, graphics, and CPU so theoretically it shouldn’t have had problems. Theoretically. >.<
Anyway, the computer had a few self-resolved graphics card driver crashes while playing Guild Wars that seemed to have been triggered by overheating, so I got a cooling fan to sit underneath the thing. The fan appeared to solve the problem so I figured we were good. Also Greg and I managed to install updated drivers that reduced the crashes even before the fan purchase. Whee.
Two nights ago I get home from Atlanta (just assume that Murphy's law applied last week and that I was fractured to begin with) and I'm lap-surfing Firefox to catch up on everything I'd missed over the week. I close the lid (which suspends animation and triggers a Windows login screen when it opens again) and reopen it after a few minutes… nothing. Screen is black.
I've walked through the HP self-support steps (cold-boot, no-battery-boot, reseat-memory-boot, etc.) and I've called my geeks of war, and it looks like I get to ship computer off to HP for service.
Here's the fun part: the designated shipping box won't arrive for another 2-3 days, or so they claim. I leave for Chevy Chase on Thursday evening. I will not have a computer upon my arrival in DC Friday morning. I get to slam my head against a desk while explaining to HP exactly which address they need to send the computer to … and I also get to figure out just what that address is supposed to be. Whee.
Also, I will be on the East Coast for Thanksgiving. I don't know yet what I'm doing instead of spending ~24 hours travelling but I am open to suggestion.
Care packages/emails/phone calls will be greatly appreciated over the next few weeks. I think I may go crazy.
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