About Me

Nottingham, United Kingdom
Currently studying in the University of Nottingham, England.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Stupid Dell, Stupid Nvidia

Heys I have some stupidly bad news.

Got back from Scotland on the 20th of December. The next day, as I was playing Sid Meier's Pirates! my GPU overheated and died...Now my pc is stuck with no graphics what-so-ever... Turns out this is a design flaw with the GeForceM 8400GS, and the inspiron 1420 (my model) has the tendancy to burn out the gpu-> meaning i need to change my mobo.

This is possibly the worst time for this to happen...Christmas just round the corner, my stupid bussniess nonsense report, BBC and U-21 applications due in january, my EXAMS!! no i dont really study on the comp but still...

Anyway, Dell support is USELESS. After hours on the phone, they finaly agree to send someone over with a new mobo the next day. I was like finaly thank god... BUT a few hours later they call me up and tell me tht becuz its a Asia-Pacific model which they dunt sell in the UK they cant fix my pc...WTF!!

Im thinking of DHLing my lappie home for a "measely" 75 quid and having my dad get dell in malaysia to fix it. Yes my warranty is still valid because i thought it would be a good idea to get 3 years extended warranty. All in all it would probably take 3 to 4 weeks before i get my compy back if i do that.

The other option is to just buy a used mobo of the 1420 from ebay (about 150 quid) and do it my self, voiding the warranty, but at least i will get my comp back up in maybe 5 days (except that im going to london on the 30th and wont be back till the 4th so what happens if i dunt get my mobo before the 30th?) But also id have to spend more time on my pc at a time when i need to be revising for my exams.

The final but completely out of the question option is to wait for 3-4 weeks while Dell transfers my details from malaysia to UK since i bought the pc in msia and did not transfer it before this problem happened). THEN they will take my notebook and send it for repair (US or asia i presume since this is not a UK model)..all in all thats what 5,6,7 weeks?

Im seriously thinking of just getting a new notebook (still from dell since i can customise it the most). I figured out a way to back up all my data (quite literally in the dark) but it will involve a little trial n error. hopefully i have enuf space on my external HDD

sigh...n i was hoping to reinstall vista and maybe install dual boot with OSX this xmas break.....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

if u planning on getting a new lappie, mite be good idea to get a cheap deskie instead, then repair ur lappie. that way at least u have portability AND power. tho if im not mistaken u move out of ur hall every break or something, and i guess that could be a problem.
Anyhow, get a notebook cooler. might save u further pain next time. it's really nvidia's fault. forgot to warn u abt this issue.

Anonymous said...

hahaha... poor thonddy. appa was saying i should go there and bring your laptop back here to repair. finally appa said no need.