Hey Everybody in Portand Computer Repair land,

This post is both short, and critically important. If you own a Dell, Gateway, HP, or any other brand of laptop, make sure you note what I’m going to say here today. You must, must, MUST back up all of your data before you send them your computer for a repair. It does not matter what they are repairing, when you send in your laptop they will often times wipe your hard drive and reinstall windows for no real reason. This does not happen every time, but it has happened often enough that you can’t take the risk.

To give the story a more human face, let me tell you about the customer that generates this thread today. Our customer does graphic design for a living and she had the touchpad (mouse) on her laptop break. Her computer was under warrenty, so she sent it in to HP to replace the touchpad. HP replaced the touchpad, and also reinstalled her operating system, even though it had nothing to do with the problem. This client lost almost 10 months of her graphics work, and is currently trying to piece it all back together from things she sent out in e-mails and other formats. Unfortunately, data recovery in these cases can be much more expensive (over $1000 sometimes) than a customer can afford, and this was just such a case.

So! Please remember, if you’re sending your laptop for repair, save your data first! You don’t know what they will do to your hard drive while they have it,
Thanks,

-Zac