Support Escalation for Laptop

[andy39477]

Month old laptop (purchased early September, issue appeared late October) was having issues with booting (more detail later). So I created a case, sent the laptop in (had to call in a few times for them to actually send the box). I wasn't happy with the solution the depo proposed; and after a few calls of asking them to actually test their solution/do something else, they were stubborn about their solution so I just had them send the unit back.

# Initial problem

Laptop (with Linux, but the OS doesn't matter) stopped booting. So I tried to troubleshoot by booting from a USB, that didn't work either. So I tested the NVMe that was in the laptop and the USB in a different machine: they worked fine, so the problem was clearly not the NVMe SSD or the USB stick (but just to be safe, I tried a known good NVMe from a different machine that should boot and it didn't in the laptop in question). SMART tests on the NVMe sticks showed no issues. At this point the issue is either something in the BIOS, the memory, the mother/mainboard, or the CPU (part of the mainboard). Resetting bios didn't fix the issue; neither did updating the bios. I had a USB stick with memtest86 on it and fortunately I could get into that - let it run overnight and there are no issues with the memory. This leaves only the mainboard as the root of the problem (by process of elimination), however the mainboard/cpu tests in the BIOS reported no issues.

# Made Case with HP Support
Took a while for them to actually ship the box (had to call in again because the first person created a case, but didn't create an order for the box... not really the issue right now, but worth mentioning). Eventually the depo over in Texas got the laptop, and sent a bill for $185.85 with no explanation. After calling in and talking a bit with the call staff I found out that the depo claims to have found "water damage" on the ssd and wanted to replace it with a new one. I came to the conclusion that this was likely residue from a blue thermal pad that was on top of the ssd, but came off at some point (either during my testing or at the HP depo, the one on the underside of the ssd was still there when I got the laptop back and left a similar stain as the stain on top of the ssd). But even if it is water damage, I've got known good SSDs here and have tried this myself already. I asked the call staff to make a note to the depo about this and that I wanted to replace the mainboard. This process was repeated about 6-8 times (sometimes the HP call system would drop the call in the middle). A few times I was assured that the depo tried replacing the SSD and booted windows10 just fine - I won't call them liars, but I do doubt this highly. Eventually I decided to request my laptop back (I'm not paying for something that I've tried and won't fix the issue).

# Laptop returned
So, if the issue is the SSD, I planned on trying to remove it and just boot from a window10 iso (downloaded from the microsoft website, flashed onto a USB following their guides). Two problems:
- still doesn't boot
- screw holding the SSD was tightened way more than in should have by the depo and the screw head was stripped (had to use screw extracting pliers to get it out since even the rubber band trick didn't work)
To top this all off, I found scratch marks on the memory shield the were not there before I sent it in (though I didn't see any scratch marks on the mainboard or any electronic component).

# What I want
(the laptop to boot a USB or NVMe with Linux or Windows)
So either:
- A replacement mainboard (if it actually succeeds in booting)
- A replacement laptop (I'll ship this one, you ship me a new one [ship it without the SSD if you want to claim "water damage"] )

What annoys me the most about this situation is that the support team tried to charge me without actually testing the solution. Honestly, I'm willing to play - so long as I get my money back if the solution doesn't work.

[andy39477]

Could anyone take a look at this please?