- Dec 31, 2007
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I was just helping a friend out this weekend when I ran into the most disgusting thing I've seen in a long time from a major OEM. The CD burner in their less than 1 year old HP box suddenly stopped working. No biggie, right? Such things happen. It's especially annoying for a musician who burns his own demo CDs, but such is the life of a PC owner.
Well, I thought I'd see if a driver update could revive it because it was an OEM box and I didn't want to have to crack it open unless I had no choice. So I search, and search, and search for a driver update. Guess what? It turns out that drivers don't exist for it. It's a Philips burner, yet neither Philips nor HP have drivers for it! And the PC is almost a year old, so it hardly could just be an oversight on a new product or discontinuation of a very old product.
Okay, that's frustrating. So I do further searching. It turns out that not only do they not have drivers, neither even aknowledges the existence of that particular model of CD burner. On top of that, according to posters on numerous message boards, HP has plenty of customer complaints about that particular drive failing and/or having bad firmware. Each time, HP refuses to do anything about it for <i>any</i> of the customers with this drive.
I wish I could remember the exact model of the drive, but that's not really the point. The point is that HP (and undoubtedly Philips since they also refuse to aknowledge existence of this model of theirs) <i>know</i> that the firmware and/or hardware is faulty and HP won't do the required repairs even though the box is still under waranty.
So just a warning: Even OEMs that I would have once trusted are going bad these days, so don't trust <i>ANY</i> OEM unless you really have to.
As a side note, the only immediate solution was to replace the CD burner, which a new one is in the mail. I also suggested that my friend contact a lawyer and all of the message board posters I found who had the exact same problems and they get together to file a class action lawsuit. If it's under waranty, then HP <b>has</b> to replace it. The problem is that everyone is just bending over and taking it up the kazoo because they can't afford the time or money to 'fight the system'. It's a shame.
PC Repair-Vol 1:Getting To Know Your PC.
PC Repair-Vol 2:Troubleshooting Your PC.
PC Repair-Vol 3:Having Trouble Troubleshooting Your PC?
PC Repair-Vol 4:Having Trouble Shooting Your PC?
Well, I thought I'd see if a driver update could revive it because it was an OEM box and I didn't want to have to crack it open unless I had no choice. So I search, and search, and search for a driver update. Guess what? It turns out that drivers don't exist for it. It's a Philips burner, yet neither Philips nor HP have drivers for it! And the PC is almost a year old, so it hardly could just be an oversight on a new product or discontinuation of a very old product.
Okay, that's frustrating. So I do further searching. It turns out that not only do they not have drivers, neither even aknowledges the existence of that particular model of CD burner. On top of that, according to posters on numerous message boards, HP has plenty of customer complaints about that particular drive failing and/or having bad firmware. Each time, HP refuses to do anything about it for <i>any</i> of the customers with this drive.
I wish I could remember the exact model of the drive, but that's not really the point. The point is that HP (and undoubtedly Philips since they also refuse to aknowledge existence of this model of theirs) <i>know</i> that the firmware and/or hardware is faulty and HP won't do the required repairs even though the box is still under waranty.
So just a warning: Even OEMs that I would have once trusted are going bad these days, so don't trust <i>ANY</i> OEM unless you really have to.
As a side note, the only immediate solution was to replace the CD burner, which a new one is in the mail. I also suggested that my friend contact a lawyer and all of the message board posters I found who had the exact same problems and they get together to file a class action lawsuit. If it's under waranty, then HP <b>has</b> to replace it. The problem is that everyone is just bending over and taking it up the kazoo because they can't afford the time or money to 'fight the system'. It's a shame.
PC Repair-Vol 1:Getting To Know Your PC.
PC Repair-Vol 2:Troubleshooting Your PC.
PC Repair-Vol 3:Having Trouble Troubleshooting Your PC?
PC Repair-Vol 4:Having Trouble Shooting Your PC?
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