Random Renegade Bits » Problems

Now I remember why I hate HP’s website

epb — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:36:56 +0000

Not entering a valid part number is not a crime.

So I go off to search for a part (specifically a replacement battery for a laptop) but I don’t have the thing with me since it’s not mine, I’ve just been tasked with finding a replacement. (So, no stickers for me!) As a last ditch effort before contacting the owner, I go googling and grab a random part number and decide to try to plug it into the part search and hope that it happens to match with HP’s all-knowing database, knowing full well it would probably say something like “Invalid Part Number” or something. Plug in: SFB-HPDV7_56157 and I’m met with a much more condescending message:

A potentially dangerous input was detected from the client browser. This incident is reported to Support team. Please click ‘Home’ link to continue.

Really? It’s always such a pain to use HP’s website to find… umm… anything, but this is a first I have to admit. I wasn’t aware that dashes and underscores could be dangerous. Couldn’t be polite and just say “that part number isn’t valid.”

That out of the way, why do manufacturers go through such lengths to avoid parting us from our money? If I cannot, with ease, find a replacement part from you, I will not be able to buy it from you. For those who don’t know, with HP, to find anything you need both the product number and serial number to even begin your search. (Alternatively run their HP support assistant program on the laptop itself.)

Convert Outlook .msg files to .eml files with Perl

epb — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 16:35:50 +0000

Ran across a problem where I had a bunch of emails in Outlook’s msg format that could not be read (due to lack of Outlook) on someone’s computer. Did some digging and found msgconvert.pl. Did the job handily with only a few quirks.

Snag it at http://www.matijs.net/software/msgconv/

Bad sectors on your hard drive? Don’t throw it out yet.

epb — Sat, 22 May 2010 03:57:07 +0000

This week I was working on a computer that was having problems with it’s hard drive. I could get it to start once, and then it would fail to start up again. As you can imagine, the drive had some bad sectors, but the people I was fixing this for could not afford another $60 expense to replace the drive. So I had to try to find a way to fix the computer without replacing the drive.

And that’s when I learned this: Before you throw out a drive with bad sectors, try to run the manufacturers test and repair utilities on the hard drive. Western Digital has its Digital Lifeguard software and I’m sure Seagate has a similar tool. If you can attempt a repair with it, try the repair option. If the repair fails, then you will likely need to get a new hard drive unfortunately. Hopefully this will help you wring another couple of months out of your drive. (Who knows, it may work for years after you do so.)