Pc Has Died - Big Time!

[Booldawg]

Think the Hard drive has failed. Turned it on yesterday and it said there were HDD errors and it would attempt to fix them. It said it 'may take over an hour' 3 hours later I turned it off, was under the impression it was in an endless loop.

when I turned it back on it gave me various option to reset itself, with or without completing my files. I tried all options, ending up in what was basically a complete new o/s install - all options failed. I'm guessing the HDD is at a level whereby it can't be repaired.

As it was new from PC world in August 2015, I'm hoping its under some kind of warranty. The receipt says 'If there's any problem within 21 days, contact PC world'

Does that mean that only the manufacturer will honour the warranty after this period of time? I know the answer is to contact PC world, but cant do that until later as I don't have any of the details with me.

[hc4361]

Your contract is with PC World and that is who you should deal with. Don't be fobbed off.

[CrapAtCryptics]

All new items such as this have a standard manufacturers warranty of at least 1 year. Take it back to them and explain the problem including anything different you may have noticed before it actually failed.

[Buenchico]

^^^ The Sale of Goods Act has, along with the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations and the Supply of Goods and Services Act, been replaced by the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

PC World are responsible for repairing or replacing your computer if the problem has arisen due to an 'inherent fault'. (i.e. something which was actually wrong with it at the time of purchase, such as the use of poor quality components or poor workmanship in its construction). If the problem had occurred within 6 months from purchase there would have been an automatic legal assumption that the problem was an 'inherent' one (unless PC World could have shown otherwise). Now that more than 6 months has passed though, it's up to you to sow that the fault was 'inherent'.

Theoretically you might need an independent report to provide such proof but simply challenging the retailer to offer an alternative view might suffice. (i.e. if you say to PC World, "The hard drive must have been of poor quality because there's no other reason why it should fail so quickly", they might be hard-pressed to challenge that view).

http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-rights-act

Take it back to PC World but be prepared to hassle them a bit!

[VHG]

>>>was under the impression it was in an endless loop.

It can take many hours to scan a disk and fix any errors. Maybe up to 10 hours depending on size of disk.

Turning it off was not a great idea in the middle of that as you may have made it worse.

Try again, but this time run it overnight.

[Booldawg]

Hi VHG. Yes, I did deliberate a bit re: turning it off.

I don't seem to be given the option to run the fix disk thing again. Is there a DOS prompt I can use as I think there was an option to go to command line? Maybe I will run it again overnight like you say.

[Buenchico]

http://www.computerhope.com/chkdskh.htm

[Booldawg]

thanks Chris. Looks like if I use it with the /f switch it will attempt to fix any errors too.