Laptop woes

[amalthia]

On April 14, 2010 I got myself a Toshiba Satellite A505-S6025 Windows 7 Professional 64 bit operating system laptop with a dedicated Nvidia video card that has 512MB of memory. This is on top of the 4gigs of memory that already comes with the computer. So this was supposed to be the computer i use for the next 4-6 years and to replace my 2006 Dell laptop that has a broken monitor (which is okay because I have an external monitor I use instead) and well my Dell had been through a lot in the years I've had it, cats sitting on it, two power adapters (cats again), five moves (one to Alaska), multiple conventions, and a few falls. This sucker was sturdy, except for the monitor casing with the ever widening crack.

I'm not sure why I considered a Toshiba but this one had Windows 7 professional, more video card memory and it was for about the same price as a similar Dell laptop I was looking at. So all should be well and happy except this has been the worst experience with a new computer. :(

I should have taken it back within the 14 days but I didn't realize the little error message saying, "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered...Display driver NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 197.16 stopped responding and has successfully recovered." Would be that big of a deal. That is until the BSODs started to happen for no good reason.

At first I thought it was just a glitch because I was installing many programs at the time but since then I've been getting this error message along with the Blue Screen of Death about every other day. I've spent way too many hours searching through google for a solution once I realized I was past the 14 days to return the item and I've finally broken down and just called Toshiba to pass the computer back to them to fix. I think when Vista introduced that error message it was a big mistake. A BSOD is a VERY CLEAR sign that something is wrong. a little dialogue box says nothing about the nature of the problem and during my research I found it could just about anything. It's not limited to just the NIVIDA graphic cards either. ATI graphic cards have the same error message.

So this kind of sucks because I was really looking forward to having a new laptop and now I have to send it back for repairs and it's not even 20 days in my possession. I also ended up having to pay 25 dollars for a recovery disk because I accidentally deleted the built in recovery partition...Dell is more awesome in that they give you a recovery disk as well as providing the built in recovery partition.

My prediction is that Toshibia will return my laptop and it will intermittently pop up the same error display message. I'll probably have to send it back about 3 times before they send me a new one and I'm willing to bet that one will have the same issues. My last Toshiba is still working according to my brother. I kind of had high hopes on the brand but based on the sheer amount of people that have the same problem all across the board...I'm not optimistic.

Comments

[delibby]

Many years ago, I don't remember how many, when I was laptop shopping and got Tori, I looked at Consumer Reports and their data on brands with problems. Toshiba and something else were usually trading 2 and 3 for reliability, Apple was almost always 1 except for that one time that it was 2 and the other one I forget was 1. I've never had a problem with Tori, she's a Toshiba Satellite something.

On the other hand, 6 months can make a HUGE difference in the quality of product that a company puts out.

[amalthia]

I should have looked at consumer reports but honestly the selection up here isn't that vast...and I think you're right about the 6 months. I'm so tempted to switch to Mac except it doesn't support all the programs I use. I hear that just downgrading to XP sometimes fixes the problem?

[tassosss]

When will you get it back, do you know? If it comes back glitchy I would get on the phone with them and be That Customer until you get a replacement. You've had it for so short a time that you should definitely have something that works.

Computer problems suck, especially on new ones.

[amalthia]

I'm waiting for the box to arrive to ship it off to them with, they said it could take up to two weeks to repair (their solution for everything btw is to do a complete system wipe and reinstall everything) which is alarming because if what I got was from the factory and it started glitching then something is wrong with their default settings. But they never listen to the customer..

I figured if it doesn't come back good as new with no glitches then I'm going to get on the phone and be that customer. This isn't a 5 year old computer here.

But they always want to "repair" it first. I already made a system image...but I hope they leave my operating system alone and start with checking the hardware.

[garryowen]

Poor you. :(

I hate when things go wrong w/ my 3rd arm.

[amalthia]

me too! Hugs and thanks for the sympathy.

[blnchflr]

Ack, I hope you get it sorted :o/

[amalthia]

me too!

the funny thing is I've been using my computer rather heavily the last two days and nothing. I think when I switched my them to Windows 7 Basic and then back again it may have fixed something? It's very odd...