Geek Squad

[madmax]

Took my desktop to Best Buy Geek Squad when the screen went black and rebooting and all that didn't work. The guy opened it up, plugged it in and said, 'Your mother board is bad'. Is that possible? Just plug it in and look at it and know the mother board is bad?

Then he went into his spiel about it being old technology - yeah, yeah. It's 6 years old, anything over 6 months old today is considered 'old technology'.

Long story short I bought a laptop. HP Pavilion g series. Hate it. Anyway I'm stuck with it because I've had it for 2 months now and still setting it up.

The reason I asked this question is that if 1. He's right, I like my desktop and would have a mother board put in and keep it. What do you guys think. I was using XP and I loved it. My old laptop had Vista which was fine for the first few years then started to crash. The Toshiba laptop was working fine except it gets hot but, still works fine. I have it on a stand for air flow

The new laptop runs Win 7 Hate all the Windows Live Essential programs, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Photo - all of it. I just want to send emails, and use the internet. No games, no movies, nothing special.

Sorry I went all over the map with this but, the basic question is can you 'see' that a mother board is bad just by looking at it??

Thank you.

[RC]

1. Does it beep? Does it do anything?

The Best Buy Geek Squad does not have a, shall we say, a sterling reputation.

If seemingly dead, the first thing would check is the power supply. It is "easily" replaceable.

[hobbit709]

2. Geek squad is a ripoff

Their sole purpose is to convince you to buy a new computer.
What kind was the old one? You can't just see if a motherboard is bad but there a few things that will convince me if I'm looking at it. After I make sure the power supply is good and memory is good, if it won't POST that narrows it down to either the board or the cpu.
The first thing you need to do is download and run PCDecrapifier on the new one and git rid of all the crapware
http://pcdecrapifier.com/
You can disable all the Windows Live garbage

[Mnpaul]

6. Power Supply!!!!!

A couple of months ago I was attempting to diagnose a HP Pavillion quad core AMD machine. It had 8gb ram(4 sticks),two optical drives and one hard drive. I would try to boot it and sometimes no video,sometimes no mouse, sometimes no keyboard. The problem? HP used a 250 watt power supply designed for a Pentium 3 vintage machine. It didn't have enough power to run everything. They were even running it with a 20 pin power plug in a 24 pin socket. One year old machine($1000) from Best Buy.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

3. To uninstall a Windows Live program in Control Panel...

Click the Start buttonStart button. In the search box, type Programs, and then, in the list of results, click Programs and Features.

Click Windows Live Essentials , and then click Uninstall/Change. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

Click Uninstall, and then click Continue.

Select the Win Live program(s) that you want to uninstall, and then click Uninstall.

[grok]

4. You have to accept you may never know.

Motherboards do fail, particularly ones with integrated video after a while. Early design AMD/Nvidia chipsets are a common example. They ran hot and eventually failed or de-soldered themselves. And no. they are NOT easy to resolder. There youtube examples of those that succeeded but it the procedure is not for the faint of heart.

Another thing to keep in mind is that GeekSquad is in the business of making money. If they can't diagnose quickly(and cost-effectively), of course it's the motherboard! Their business model prevents them from spending an inordinate amount of time even if it's something minor/cheap but hard to diagnose. Esp software.

[HopeHoops]

8. Best Buy doesn't diagnose anything. They just throw their hands up and say "buy a new one".

They didn't create the "repair" department to actually do repairs. It's there as an extension of the sales department.

[madmax]

5. You guys are the greatest

I'm always at the mercy of 'the experts' at the store or whatever. I don't trust them but, what choice to I have. All the replies are very useful. I should ask here before I buy anything. Thanks for the unintal info on Windows Live.

I got that feeling that Geek Squad wasn't interested in fixing the desktop as much as wanting to sell a new computer.

The desktop is a an HP Pavillion - I'm going to take it to a small computer shop nearby and see if he can replace the mother board. Maybe a small shop is the better way to go than the big box stores and the Geeks.

Every reply is appreciated. Thank you. <3

[HopeHoops]

7. Problem #1 - you went to Best Buy.

Their primary goal is NOT to fix computers - it's to sell you a new one. Six years is still within useful range. I'm typing on a 5 year old HP Pavilion. And no, you can't tell it's bad by "looking at it". I've got computers that are WAY older than 6 years and still work fine. Call HP. I had a similar problem and even though the computer was WAY out of warranty, they repaired it for free. I took out the hard drive and battery. They sent me a return shipping box overnight. I put it back in FedEx's hands the next day, and on Sunday morning I found an e-mail saying it was shipped. It was a few less hours than a full week first call to return and it's worked great ever since. Six months later they issued a recall for the very same problem. It was on the motherboard, but it was NOT the motherboard. Just a chip. Unusual but known problem. Best Buy won't be able to fix your problem.