Expat Community > Colombia

elpdiver
Joined 2019
Posts: 1454

laptop issue

4 months ago

My HP laptop recently would not turn on. Primary examination showed a badly frayed charging cable. So I took the cable, laptop, to the technology mall in Poblado. They plugged in a replacement cable and the laptop immediately fired up. Problem solved and back home. Well two days later the laptop refused to boot up again. Back to the store with both chargers and the laptop.

They put a multimeter on the charger and it indicated voltage. So we went upstairs to their other repair shop and after further investigation informed me that one of my memory chips was not compatible with my HP laptop???

I informed them that I have never had it any shop and that it has worked fine for two or three years. So, some back and forth discussion and they clearly demonstrated that the laptop would not boot up with the questionable chip installed and would boot up without the chip.

So three possibilites. The shop was scamming me, a relative replaced the chip while I was in Aruba, or the chip has been in the computer all along and just failed. It was ordered by my wife and daughter who have zero computer savvy. I am wondering if it is likely that they ordered sixteen megs instead of the standard eight and an alternative chip was installed.

I did mention to the repair shop that it would have been nice if they had opened the computer in front of me carefully informing them I was speaking with total respect.
End of the day, I paid one hundred thousand pesos for an "original" HP memory chip. Any opinions by one of our technical forum members?

elp

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