Is this the norm?

jtkpenguin

Heard this from a neighbor yest. & just wondering on other ppl's thoughts on it... is it the norm? or the exception? what do most tech guys/gals do when faced with a pc like this...?

My friend, we'll call her Ann, is an Aussie & bought a laptop with her when she arrived here 2yrs ago. It was running Windows XP Home, fully up2date with patches & AV.

It was working ok up to last Tuesday when she was at home, using a dial-up connection, trying to write and send an email the system just hung & didn't give any errors or anything.... she had to turn it off & back on where upon it wouldn't come into Windows, she didn't know what to do except keep trying to turn it on...

In desperation she called several co's from the G. pages & made an appointment with XXXX company (who's techy's all use motorbikes) for someone to call on Wednesday @ 2.00pm.

At 3.30pm a guy duly turned up saying he was from XXXX company, Ann let him in & by the time she'd shut the front door & gone into the lounge he was already putting a cd in the laptop.

He asked her where she was from. He didn’t ask what exactly was wrong with the laptop but instead asked if she had the windows & driver cd's - she didn't know what a driver cd was & he ignored her when she asked - he asked if anyone else in the family would have a windows cd, or if she could ask a neighbour... She knew her next-door neighbour had a computer so she went & asked him to borrow the windows cd.

The guy used the neighbour’s cd, during which time Ann asked him what was wrong with the laptop - he said he wasn't sure but was doing some diagnostics & would then be able to tell her.

After approx. 2.5hrs, & several cups of tea later, he said the job was finished the laptop was fixed & she could take the cd back to her neighbour. Again, she asked what the problem was & he replied ‘It’s complicated but I’ve written it on the bill’

Whilst the pc was booting up, she was given a bill for €150.00 which she paid in cash. The guy almost snatched it out of her hands, mumbled that he finished at 6.00pm & didn't want to be working over-time & bolted out of the door & on his bike into the sunset....

Ann didn't look at her laptop until Thursday, when she realised that she had :
- no emails (no account setup, no contacts or previous messages)
- no internet connections (Dev. Mgr shows an asterisk under Modems)
- no sounds (Dev. Mgr shows an asterisk on sounds, etc)
- no pictures (having travelled extensively she had literally thousands!)
- no documents (my docs folder completely empty)

The computer had in fact been completely wiped of all her personal data, programs, files etc... & set back to an almost standard windows installation.... except that she then had to find out how to get email set up, internet access etc.

But the biggest let down is that she's lost ALL her personal photos of family members & friends who're now deceased.

Yes, she did contact the company concerned who said that they're tech 'should' have explained what he was doing - he didn't. When pressed, they agreed to give her back her money. Also said they would get the tech concerned to go out to her & apologise - she's still waiting.

So my question is: is it the normal thing to do to re-format a pc rather than try to establish the real cause of the problem?

Jtk

Ruu_Old

Yes there are a lot of 'techies' who would rather just format and reinstall than find the root of the problem. Sometimes it is the only way, however in this case it looks like he just stuck in a CD to format it. Conclusion, he should have backed up the programs/files and email settings for a start. You live and learn, sorry about the experience. You might be still able to recover the files but make sure the gobshiet that formatted and/or his company is held responsible.

Capt'n Midnight

:mad:

defo report them to the company for all the good it would do, one muppet like that can cost a company a lot of good will

since drivers etc. were not setup may have a claim under the sale of goods and services act. even if they lie about claiming they warned her about data loss - only name and shame after giving up on the legal route.

Don't do anything with the laptop until you've had a chance to recover the pictures. Wasn't there a utility on http://www.s-t-d.org/ ?? that loked for JPG's by checking the data every 512 bytes - so it would work even if you lost the file allocation table and repartitioned (as long as you didn't do a long format)

jtkpenguin

So, just to make sure I've got this right so I can tell her what should have happened - most techy's wld have backed up:
- her programs, files, photos & email details? or just her files & email settings?
- re-installed the drivers & made sure it was working ok?
- restored her files/photos etc?

I'm not technical enough to be able to try recovering her files, I did suggest she go back to the co. concerned & ask them to do it for free but she's a bit wary of them doing anything more.

She's just accepted that she's lost everything that she's accumulated over several years, much of which was very personal/sensitive/important on her laptop - lesson to all, I think!

If anyone else has any comments I'd be interested, just can't believe that out of all the co's in the GP she just picked a bad one....

Jtk

Tobias Greeshman

There's plenty of image recovery programs out there, it's simply a matter of installing them and letting them run. They will show you all the images it has found on the harddrive. You don't need to have a masters degree to operate them. If she's lucky and the drive wasn't fully formatted, then you should stand a chance of getting some of the images back.

Report that company, though for all the use it'll probably do.

jtkpenguin

If it's as easy as that I may give it a go for her, it won't do any more harm will it???

Who would she report them to?

Tobias Greeshman

No it won't harm the computer in anyway.

Other than reporting the guy to the actual company I don't really know. You might get better answers on the legal forum, but I'd assume that without actual evidence and it's simply your friends word, so I doubt there's much you could do legally.

WizZard

You'll have to remove the drive from the laptop to recover the data. it is possible that the vast majority of data can be recovered.

Don't install anything on the drive if you want to recover data. In fact, don't even turn on the laptop at all if you want to recover data.

PM me for more info regarding recovery if you'd like.

jtkpenguin

Thanks everyone, I appreciate the responses,

WizZard, I'm not sure if I'm up to taking out a hard disk from an ordinary pc much less a laptop :0 but I've just rung her to see what she's done with it (if anything) & she's installed several progs - AV; Word (Works?) & a couple of other things she couldn't remember what... She's resigned to the fact that she's lost it all. Thx any way for the offer of info.

Interestingly, the guy from the co still hasn't shown up... & she's going to ring them again today to complain more loudly!

Jtk

zilog_jones

Yeah, tell her not to do anything with the laptop until you try and recover what was there - all she's doing is reducing her chances of recovering any old data as she writes more new data (from installing programs and whatever) to the disk.

*Sigh*, people really need to be informed about backuping up their data better. Anyone keeping valuable data (like her photos) without backups is asking for trouble. Though saying all that, the "techie" in question was a complete ass, or there was a serious lack of communication.

jor el

jtkpenguin wrote:

Interestingly, the guy from the co still hasn't shown up... & she's going to ring them again today to complain more loudly!

Jtk

Tell her to ring a solicitor, that might get the company in question to cop on a bit and maybe compensate her for their stupidity.

If she's been installing programs then the likelihood of getting back all of here old data is reduced. Tell her to stop doing anything with it now if she wants any of it back.

One other thing to look at, did the tech guy use the neighbours Windows Key, or the one for Ann's actual laptop? If he used the one from the neighbours CD then you can report him and his company for piracy.

TerrorFirmer

either way he sounds like a total cowboy, id take a really strong line against the company and would definately not back down until at the very least the guy responsible apologies, and in all honestly id threaten them with possible solicitor, even if you are not serious....just to see what they say.

Wertz

€150 for a a re-install? Boy I'm in the wrong business...

I really don't understand people who don't back up small files like digital photo albums, especially with the low price of USB keys and optical media these days, but that's besides the point...the idiot should have at least asked if it was okay to wipe the damn harddrive especially at those extortionate rates...

As for using someone elses windows disc? I'd report the company (not the "tech") to M$ themselves just for badness and see if that doesn't rattle a few cages...

SouperComputer

Wertz wrote:

As for using someone elses windows disc? I'd report the company (not the "tech") to M$ themselves just for badness and see if that doesn't rattle a few cages...

Im guessing you've never bothered to do this. M$ couldnt care less as long as the computer has a legit COA. Yes its contrary to their EULA, but they are pretty flexible once you have a COA.


jtkpenguin, thats a disgrace and is not the norm. Its one thing wiping the information, its another not telling the customer you are about to do so. Idiots like that should be hung, drawn and quartered. How did your friend come across this guy?

Wertz

You're guessing correctly...it was just a suggestion, I thought they were pretty nazi-ish about protecting themselves from piracy and would have some sort of zero tolerance policy. If not, f*ck em...

Thrill

When this is all sorted and she (hopefully) gets her photos back, get yourself an external hard disk drive and dont just back up the photos, back up everything.
When i advise people at work that they should make backups they say stuff
like "oh yea i must do that sometime" or "I heard about that alright, i must
do that when i get home." and you just know that they wont.
Most people only start to make backups after they've lost valuable data.

Capt'n Midnight

OT if only microsoft used license keys as a proof of license it would make life so much easier

Have you checked the drive for other folders , right click start button and look and explore all users

what brand was the other laptop - a few reinstall CD's do format the drive , others install over the top, many allow you to choose where to reinstall to.,

stevenmu

jor el wrote:

Tell her to ring a solicitor, that might get the company in question to cop on a bit and maybe compensate her for their stupidity.

I don't think that would be a great idea to be honest. The company would surely argue that the laptop was left in working condition and the fault with it repaired. They would also argue that any data was lost before the tech got there, he just did what he could with what he had.

It does sounds like poor customer service in that he didn't explain to her what had happened and the consequences of it were, but that's no basis for expensive legal action or a compensation claim.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Wow, this man has no pride in his work.
If this guy was professional at all he would have absolutely made sure beforehand that she understood she'd be losing data... I don't care how non-technical a user is or how much of a hurry you're in... use sock-puppets if you have to, there's no excuse for not making it clear.

tbh you could have given a tenner to some 12 year old down the road to format and reinstall.

As others have said, I'd definitely look into trying to get some data recovered from this drive... there could still be quite a lot of stuff she'd be thrilled to get back... though some things are probably lost, it's still 100% worth doing.

Anti

What wizard said is the best idea.

More importantly, ring a solicitor asap. And seek proper legal advice. Have a check on the legal forums too. The action i would be looking for is that the company that was responsible for the loss of her data, should be the company that pays for the data to be professionally recovered, Which will cost them upto 1000€.

As for the tech, He should have asked her first if it was okay to do a reinstall. And using the neighbours cd is ominous.

Free legal advice is available from a few places, ring around and find out.

Cuddlesworth

stevenmu wrote:

I don't think that would be a great idea to be honest. The company would surely argue that the laptop was left in working condition and the fault with it repaired. They would also argue that any data was lost before the tech got there, he just did what he could with what he had.

It does sounds like poor customer service in that he didn't explain to her what had happened and the consequences of it were, but that's no basis for expensive legal action or a compensation claim.

I work as a tech for a large company dealing with around 1400 laptops. If he can reinstall windows on the same drive then there is no doubt in my mind that he could have recovered the personal data in less than 30 minutes providing he had a laptop with him and a 2.5 inch Ide to Usb cable which being a tech is a must. The root of the problem was more than likely a few corrupted windows files which happens often on a laptop.

Assuming she is on dial-up there was not much hope of him getting and installing drivers on the laptop without prior knowledge, a re-visit or something like a 3g card on laptop with him. He should still have pointed this out to her and informed her of the options.

Still, that is disgraceful and shoddy work. My family and friends should hear more about this sort of stuff so I'd be more appreciated.