Ineffective Laptop Repair

Clockwork Owl

So my laptop started acting up recently (system and screen freezes, failure to start up). As the machine is outside of its two year warranty and was originally purchased in England anyway, I took it to a local computer repair shop and explained the problem. I said at the time that I wanted to know whether it was financially viable to repair the machine or whether I should give in and buy a replacement. The engineer told me that dust in the machine was causing the screen freezes, and I gladly paid 100E to have it cleaned out.

When I took the laptop home, it froze up again within about half an hour and continued to freeze repeatedly, even when only browsing folders. I returned the laptop to the shop the next day. The guy in the shop is now saying that it may be a CPU/GPU issue and could require expensive component replacement.

What I'd like to know is whether I'm within my rights to request even a partial refund of the 100E cleaning cost, particularly if it turns out that it's a pricey CPU/GPU issue after all.

Thanks in advance!

Galia

Problem is if what the computer shop guy said is true then your laptop has overheated due to the internal fan/cooling vent not working as intended which in turn has done damage to the main board and or processor hence cleaning the gunk out was too late.
I repair laptops for a living and if it is gone to that extent its going to get expensive and one problem may lead to another down the line all depending what the heat has done.
My best advice is for you to get a 2nd opinion to make sure it is not a ram or hard drive or virus issue just in case repair guy no 1 is wrong.
Because if it has got that bad a repair might be a waste of your money...you might change 1 part only to have 1 fail down the road.



Was your laptop over heating or was the fan making a strange noise before you brought it into the shop ?

You might want to check the ram and hard drive to see has any of these parts become loose and or faulty also.

If you decide to go ahead with the repair i would recommend you request a 24hr test to make sure repair is fully successful.
Due to the cost of fitting and the part replacement cost.
As for the 100 euro i would ask for a discount on the repair...

L1011

100 quid to blast the fan out on a laptop is utterly extortionate. It is literally a ten second job using a small amount of a few quid can of compressed air and requires no skill and no IT knowledge.

It was a valid attempt at a fix for the problem, though.

Clockwork Owl

There was apparently a really impressive amount of dust in there - layers upon layers. Oops!

I'll be checking in with the shop today to see what the update is. At the very least, I'd expect them to take the cost of any additional repairs out of the cleaning cost, but I'm worried I'll be told the machine's a lost cause - meaning that I sank that much money into a laptop that can't even be salvaged.

Thanks for the help so far!

foggy_lad

THey may offer you the cost of the repair off some 2nd hand laptop they have in stock which may or may not have legit software installed, Many of these "back street" repair shops sell laptops and pcs with illegal windows software.

198321

100 for fan, if I would charge that (I do it for free) I would live in Caribbean by now ..

anyway have you tried to reinstall windows (or different OS) just to see if it is software issue?

Most laptops I have seen when overheating turn off completely.

The_Conductor

MYOB wrote: »

100 quid to blast the fan out on a laptop is utterly extortionate. It is literally a ten second job using a small amount of a few quid can of compressed air and requires no skill and no IT knowledge.

It was a valid attempt at a fix for the problem, though.

Bring it with you in the car to your local filling station and use the air compressor there to blast air through the vents and of course the keyboard. I do it every 2-3 months, normally get a small shower of dust out of it.

A replacement fan, if you do need one- is less than a tenner on ebay and a doddle to install (depending on your laptop make/model- some are easier to access than others)

discombobulate

If your getting any more repairs done to it stay away from the guy that charged you a 100 quid for blowing off a bit of dust! Scandalous price to charge if thats all he said he done.

chopsey

i agree that that was a ridiculous price for what he did, i'm not a professional repair man but do work in IT and have seen this issue with Dell desktops in the past and it always related to bulging or burst capacitors behind the CPU, not sure if that can easily be translated to a laptop but capacitors are cheap and only a bit of soldering to replace.

TBH a defrag and a check disk to see if there are bad sectors on your disk before paying anymore money if you do have bad sectors than the disk might be about to give up the ghost