The Nvidia Defect Forum

Hi,

My daughter's HP 6735s, that I bought as a Christmas present in December 2008 from eBuyer, this morning refused to work and has all the symptoms of the Nvidia defect.

It was losing wireless connection in the last few weeks, getting very hot and finally this morning the blank screen with the 5 blinks of the caps lock and then nothing but the fan working.

I have sent an enote through to eBuyer after finding this forum on Google and following the guide on what to do here.

My only worry is that before I stumbled on this forum I read a few places that said to check the memory was seated ok and on opening up said memory slot I noticed the retaining clips holding the memory of the second slot were crumbling ( probably due to the laptop getting so hot lately) and I have bent a paper clip to hold the memory chip in place, could eBuyer use that against me?

Edited to add: I believe the graphics card is actually a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200 though so how does that effect my claim, also worrying as my laptop which I am using now is also a 6735s with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200 purchased about 6 months after the first from eBuyer.

Hello Denise and welcome to our forum.

Sorry to hear that your laptop has failed.

The defect that exists in your laptop is related to the BGA grid underneath the ATI GPU and the problem is caused by the type of solder used to bond the GPU to the mainboard.

The broken memory clips could have been caused by the heat that the GPU was producing and I have seen a number of broken memory slots that have cause this. I would recommend that you remove the paper clip though as that can cause other problems including shorting the mainboard.

I would now contact Ebuyer and would tell them that your laptop has failed due to an inherent defect with the BGA grid underneath the ATI GPU.

They may tell you that your laptop is out of warranty and that there is nothing that they can do. You should tell them that the warranty status is irrelevant as you have six years from the date of purchase in which to bring an action against a retailer when the goods in question are inherently defective.

They may then tell you to contact HP. You should tell them that you purchased from Ebuyer and not from HP so it is entirely Ebuyer's responsibility to resolve the situation.

There is a step by step guide on this forum that will help you reach a positive resolution and that is here:- post13.html#p13

Whilst the guide makes reference to the Nvidia defect you should substitute this for ATI BGA defect.

If you follow my advice in that guide then you will be successful.

I hope the above helps.

If you have any questions or if you need any advice then please let me know.

Good luck and best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

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If you like what you see on this forum and would like to help then please post links to this forum in other forums or blogs. The more people we can help the better.


Please note that I am not legally qualified and I only offer my own personal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice for formal clarification of advice I give.

Hello Paul and thanks for the welcome,


I have contacted ebuyer as per the steps advised and after getting past the "out of warranty" and "contact manufacturer" stuff, which you predicted, my last enote was advising me that my case has been passed to a colleague who will be contacting me within 48 hours advising how to arrange a return.

I have removed the paper clip from the memory slot as I only put it in there today after the laptop failed as I at first believed it to be a memory problem until I stumbled upon this great forum and the laptop was already defunct by then.

I will keep you updated as to what happens next.

Thanks very much for your help, I would have probably written the laptop off if it wasn't for this forum.

I am guessing that my own 6735s is going to go the same way as my daughter's soon, is there anyway to prevent it happening?

Also, do ebuyer recover the data etc as my daughter is upset about her photos and I am annoyed that only last week I installed a new copy of Office 2010 that was only licensed to one user/laptop?

Hello Denise,

It is highly probable that your laptop will go the same way as your daughters. If you take a look at the serial number it will start CNU8??????. As an example I will use CNU84711NL.

The first three characters, CNU, relate to the country of manufacture (China) and also the manufacturing plant. The fourth character, 8, relates to the year of manufacture, 2008. The next two characters, 47, relate to the week of manufacture, in this case week 47. Finally the last four characters give the laptop a unique identification.

If your serial number is virtually sequential to your daughters then that would indicate that it came off the same production line and so it is highly likely that it will fail in the same way.

I have inspected a huge number of this model of laptop and it would appear there is now becoming an epidemic of failure.


Don't worry about the data on the hard drive as that is still recoverable. I would purchase a USB caddy for around £10-£15 and would copy off all the data on another PC/Laptop prior to sending your laptop to Ebuyer.

If they state that they want to inspect the laptop themselves then I would ask them if you can retain the hard drive as it contains photo's and information which you have not yet backed up.

If they refuse then you should ask them to give you a few days whilst you purchase a caddy.

Once the data has been backed up you will be okay to send the laptop to them.

You should ensure that you delete any private information including your pictures and data prior to sending your laptop to Ebuyer as you will not be receiving it back and it will probably be sent to the laptop graveyard in the sky so you need to ensure that the data will not fall into the wrong hands.

I would check with regard to the Office 2010 because whilst it is only one user/laptop that is all it will be installed on. Furthermore, what happens in the event that you need to format and reload your system? They cannot charge a second time for the same program.

Likewise, if the hard drive on which you had installed the program failed then you shouldn't have to re-purchase the software as you would still be using it within the terms of the license, which is one installation per user/laptop.

I hope the above helps.

Any questions please let me know.

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

_________________
=======================================================
Calculate the minimum refund that you would be entitled to.
FAQ's
Why you should not accept a repair
Links to evidence
What is the Nvidia Defect?
Step by step help to getting a refund
Do you need an engineers report?
=======================================================

If you like what you see on this forum and would like to help then please post links to this forum in other forums or blogs. The more people we can help the better.


Please note that I am not legally qualified and I only offer my own personal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice for formal clarification of advice I give.

Listen to what Paul tells you and you will be fine.

I am waiting for my refund from Ebuyer after more than 40 mails between us. Make sure you send them everything as this was a major topic of debate between us as they made up some pretty wild possibilities. Stick with it and you will get a result, i just did for exactly the same make and model

I would copy all of the information using a caddy and then format the hard drive - put in a note to say this was done to protect personal and finacial information.

Hi Paul,

I have checked with the retailer and the Office 2010 is non transferable despite it being purchased and installed less than a week ago - I guess ebuyer are going to find themselves reimbursing me for that too.

I am awaiting delivery of a USB caddy from Amazon and have bought a basic Toshiba laptop from Argos for my daughter to use for her schoolwork and to use with the USB caddy as I no longer have any confidence in my own laptop so it would be pointless copying it over to mine.

Thanks again for your help.

Denise


@Hill

Hi, glad to hear that you have had success with them for the same thing.
Thanks for the advice, I'm expecting them to be difficult, but it's ok as I can match them on that front.

Do they arrange the return at their own expense and is the refund fair?

Denise

Hello Denise,

When you get the caddy and have installed the hard drive and have connected it to another PC/Laptop you will find that you will have to navigate to where the files you have stored are located.

This is usually in the C:\users\{username}

The {username} will be the name of the person with an account on the laptop. If there is more than one user for the laptop you will see different names there.

For example, if there were two users, one called Bob and one called Sue you would see the following:-

c:\users\bob
c:\users\sue

Within each of the above two folders will be the documents, pictures and music files relating to that account.

If the account had a password then you will see a message asking if you wish to take control of the account. You should select yes to this question.

After a few moments you will see a list of directories within each users directory.

If you struggle with this part of the process then please let me know and I will help you further.

Regarding your question about carriage of your laptop to Ebuyer; they will arrange this and they will also pay for this so you have nothing to worry about there.

The refund that they will offer will be based on the unused usage. I have looked at the information in your profile and based on that I calculate that the minimum that they should offer is £154.

This is based on a purchase price of £300, 35 months usage and 37 months of none usage.

I hope the above helps.

Any questions please let me know.

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

_________________
=======================================================
Calculate the minimum refund that you would be entitled to.
FAQ's
Why you should not accept a repair
Links to evidence
What is the Nvidia Defect?
Step by step help to getting a refund
Do you need an engineers report?
=======================================================

If you like what you see on this forum and would like to help then please post links to this forum in other forums or blogs. The more people we can help the better.


Please note that I am not legally qualified and I only offer my own personal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice for formal clarification of advice I give.

Hi Paul,


Thank you for posting what to do with the caddy, it was most helpful and I have now successfully copied all photographs etc.

I also bought an external drive and have backed up everything from my own laptop in preparation for the impending doom of my own 6735.

Also, thanks for working out what I can reasonably expect as a refund, I will be pushing them for the cost of Office too which was £40 as I have had no joy from either Software4Students or even Microsoft themselves about the transfer of the license which is frustrating when it is little over a week old.

I am waiting for ebuyer to collect my daughter's laptop in the next few days and will update further when they have examined it.

Thanks

Denise

Hello Denise,

Good luck with the next stage.

Fingers crossed for you.

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

_________________
=======================================================
Calculate the minimum refund that you would be entitled to.
FAQ's
Why you should not accept a repair
Links to evidence
What is the Nvidia Defect?
Step by step help to getting a refund
Do you need an engineers report?
=======================================================

If you like what you see on this forum and would like to help then please post links to this forum in other forums or blogs. The more people we can help the better.


Please note that I am not legally qualified and I only offer my own personal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice for formal clarification of advice I give.

Hi Paul,


Well, Ebuyer picked up my laptop Monday morning and Wednesday they accepted that it is defunct and have issued a refund back to the original credit card ( which incidently I haven't had for more than 2 years)



They have refunded me £160.87 ( original price was £313.16)

That was the easy part.

I have now entered an email battle regarding my non transferable Office 2010 software which they are being very awkward and unhelpful about. If I had known of this fault ( like Ebuyer did) I would not have installed new purchased software 2 days before the laptop failed.

Ebuyer customer service is mentally draining, made worse by the fact that I'll probably have to go through it all again when my own 6735s fails.

I am very grateful for your help, I would have probably binned the laptop had Google not brought me here.
Also, thanks for the technical help, I would still be thinking a caddy was someone that follows Tiger Woods around and not something that helped me get all the photos, music etc off the hard drive for less than £7.