Late last night, while on the phone yakking away with Vicky, I heard continuous cranking sounds coming from my PC. I suspected the original 10GB hard disk that came with the HP Vectra PC is gonna die on me real soon. I had earlier last month bought a 80GB hard disk to replace this old one.
However, I have yet to perform backup of the files left on the old hard disk so I quickly rushed to do it late last night. As it continued to crank after the backup was done, I decided to shut it down for the night (I always leave my PC 24/7 on).
This morning I woke up, turned on the PC and without much surprise, the BIOS could no longer detect the old hard disk. Phew! Luckily I did my backup earlier, or else I’d be sure to be kicking my own ass now…
So I went online and found out HP Support’s toll-free number. Called them up, gave them my PC’s serial number, and found out that my PC is on warranty until Jan 2004. Cool!
A lil background information, this is a Pentium 3 HP Vectra (their business line) PC that I got from a pre-auction sale of Ericsson Malaysia’s factory assets when they were closing down. I managed to get 2 units at RM 500 a piece 
Helluva worth it, comes with 15″ monitor, full sets and super clean desktop (no dust/dirt on the case and inside the case as well - coz it’s in a factory/cleanroom environment).
So I bought it cheap at RM 500, and it’s got 3 year next-day on-site warranty… wohoo! 
Spoke to the tech (with a strong Indian accent - suspect that the call got routed to the Support Centre in India - wonderful world of outsourcing!) that suggested a tech to come over my office to look it up the next day and do a replacement. I told him my situation (having bought the PC over from the original owner, Ericsson) and it will just suffice for me to send the faulty hard disk to the HP Service Centre in Petaling Jaya. After all, didn’t want the tech to travel all the way from KL to Nilai just to change a hard disk.
But he suggested that they could courier me a replacement hard disk and all I need to do is return with the delivery guy the faulty hard disk and install it myself… No problem…better still! Gave my details and he gave me a case number for the support call.
The new hard disk is gonna be shipped out on Monday and probably reach me on Tuesday or Wednesday… cool!
Stay tuned 
December 17th, 2003 at 4:00 pm
ok. that’s the reason why ppl want to buy branded PC.
You were lucky to get that kind of deal before. *envy*