I can't believe they did that!

United States
September 4, 2010 4:03pm CST
I own a Gateway netbook, purchased last December 09 with a two year warranty. It came with everything I was comfortable with, except it did not come with a recovery disk specifically for Windows 7 Starter edition. I had absolutely no problems with the netbook until a few weeks ago when the backspace key broke off one day, and then the stop errors (once every five to seven days) began to show up. I took it to Best Buy Geek Squad and told them what was going on. They had me fill out a paper specifying what was wrong with it, but never once did they ask me: Do you have a recovery CD for this netbook? Not once. And well, you can about guess it.. They wiped my hard drive, replaced it with a new one, and told me to purchase a recovery CD for Windows 7 Starter Edition from Gateway. I called Gateway twice, and was told the price of the CD was over $20.00. To me, that seems far too expensive. I also believe that Geek Squad should have asked me beforehand if I owned a recovery CD to that type of operating system. I think Geek Squad should have had available recovery disks available to repair the hard drive they had wiped, particularly since my netbook is covered under the Best Buy Warranty. But now I'm wondering if something similar to this has happened to anyone here at Mylot. If it has, what happened exactly? What was the outcome? Was it a positive experience or a negative experience? Is it wrong to say that I miss my netbook?
1 person likes this
2 responses
Miner49r
@Miner49r (568)
• United States
4 Sep 10
Oh man, .. I would be livid. They should have asked before they wiped your drive. Have you pursued customer service at geek squad for any kind of resolution? 20.00 bucks is not really allot for a recovery CD, but I have always computers to come with them, not once have I gotten on that did not have the backup software. This is the first time I have heard of that happening. But then again that leads to my point here. I don't know how fond of Windows 7 you are, but have you considered trying a Linux system on your netbook? Ubuntu 10.04 is a much lighter system, uses less memory, and best of is totally free. I have been using it on my older laptop for about a year now and just love it. I tried to put the link to the Ubuntu site but it won't let me..get in touch with me if you would like to know more about it or have questions.
Miner49r
@Miner49r (568)
• United States
4 Sep 10
I forgot to add this... you can download a burn a test CD and run it on your machine and try Ubuntu without installing it on the harddrive It will run totally from the cdrom and in memory. As far a viruses Linux is nearly impervious to windows viruses and IMHO is safer than windows.
Author-Lissa
@Firestorm0122 (730)
• United States
5 Sep 10
My netbook doesn't have a CDRom drive, and I've never tried Linux. I would prefer to first see a simulation of Linux in use on another computer before I attempted to try it out on my own. I may look up the site for curiosity's sake though. So far Windows 7 Starter Edition has been a new experience for me. Some things I like, some I haven't. But I find it simple to use. However, I have a friend who has the full version of Windows 7 Premium, and he is going to install it on my netbook by using an extra CDRom drive to hook up to the netbook. So hopefully in a week, my netbook will be up and running, and knowing my friend's knowledge in computers and software, it'll be a lot better than it was. :D
Naruto555
@Naruto555 (173)
• United States
4 Sep 10
Yeah that is why I prefer a mac less virus and problems even though I have a computer of microsoft it works so good like at times it is slow but have not gone a virus in a year sad that they had to wipe out your hard drive R.I.P.
Author-Lissa
@Firestorm0122 (730)
• United States
5 Sep 10
Yes, I heard Macs have less viruses and less problems. As far as I'm aware my netbook contained no viruses, but it is possible I did not install something correctly, which may have impacted the errors I received.