thomo the lost posted this in 
July 28th, 2007Sigh – WIDGET((1)) is down … not quite for the count but it is severely unwell at the moment. The PC doctor’s diagnosis was “hmm, don’t know — but reformat the hard drive, recover the system utilities, reinstall Windows XP then I’ll have a look and see what I can do about the USB ports shutting down as the PC gets hot”.
OK, this is all well and good except that:
- I haven’t got my recovery CDs with me
- I haven’t got my Windows XP install CD with me
- My last backup of my hard-drive was two weeks ago and I think there is something on the drive I want
So – what is plan B?
Simple:
- Buy another 2.5-inch drive and a copy of Windows XP (don’t ask the origin of it)
- Install that drive in the PC along with Windows XP using my genuine original key
- Put the 2.5-inch drive from the PC into a USB drive cradle and copy back the files I need.
- Give PC to PC doctor to handle the other issues
Fortunately I had recently just purchased a copy of MS Office 2007 so have the disks for that here and pretty much all the other software I run, other than games, is downloadable from the Internet anyway. The games I like to play I have with me as well.
Sigh, memo to self:
Self, next time you are travelling, bring the bloody recovery disks as well as everything you need to rebuild the PC … or … maybe … buy a Macbook!
Posts to the blog will come from stolen time on the office PC for a while – and just at the time that I had decided that I wanted to write that piece about the Franco-Thai War. No! Really! I was ready to start it yesterday. Honest! 
- the name of Thomo’s notebook and named after the economic use of widgets rather than the computing term “widgets” [↩]
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I arrived in Bangkok Thursday and telephoned Toshiba. Asked them where the service centre was. They told me to go to the 2nd floor of the Siam Paragon Center which I did. The staff there were excellent, good at customer service and helpful.
They took WIDGET away, promised to be gentle with it and to get back to me next week with a fi hopefully. I live in hope as they also had a replacement battery pack in stock for WIDGET too (although at $150 I thought that was f**, er, rather expensive).
We shall see
Today's update on WIDGET. It has a broken fan and this is causing all its problems. Repair place needs to order a replacement fan which will cost SAR 300.00 and take two weeks to get delivered. Sigh.
No PC for two weeks and I am due to travel on two days time. Time to think of a plan B 
Toshiba in Thailand rang last night and told me that the fan that cools the CPU was broken (well duh!!). They also said the could not fix it in the time I required as a new fan had to be flown in (well double duh).
So much for being able to get something repaired from a major manufacturer … makes me wonder why I bother with Toshiba – if they had the strength of character to provide a contact point on their corporate website I would write to them … but they don't so I guess I will just stop buying Toshiba and encourage all I know to not buy Toshiba either!
Still, it is better than Dell – when Jeffro had to same problem a couple of years ago with his Dell, they wanted to replace the entire motherboard.
Thought of a plan B – I'll be in Thailand later this week so I decided to contact Toshiba's Thai Service Centre. Sent an email to their preferred repairer – the email bounced – so much for the accuracy of the Toshiba website.
There is no email contact for Toshiba Thailand on their website either (actually, there is a graphic for their email address but no link underneath the graphic).
OK. Toshiba SE Asia has their office in Singapore and they have an email address so I sent them an email asking if it was possible to get this repair done in Thailand as I pass through. No answer yet – I'll post later when I hear back (or not).
WIDGET is dead – the cooling fan was replaced but still it was freezing when trying to install Windows so everything was checked and the motherboard is screwed and needs replacing. This will cost about SAR 2000 (AUD 634.00 or USD 533.00). Sigh – need to think about that replacement as it is not much less than the price of a new laptop, albeit one that does not have so much in the way of features.
In the meantime, vale WIDGET.
WIDGET is still down and I will be back in Jeddah later this week so I may give it up to the tender mercies of the Jeddah Repair Centre after all.
In the meantime, I can report that OfficeWorks is expensive in Australia and WOW is cheap!
WIDGET was left at the repair place and should be back to me in about 8 or 9 days time. I asked them if they could get a replacement battery for me as well but seems my Toshiba is an Asian/American model and Saudi Arabia is a European location and as such the batteries are not available from Germany. Argh – I could get the battery in Bangkok. The other option is to get the battery mail order – but I will wait until WIDGET is back and working before ordering it.
I am finally back in Jeddah. The plan is to take the Toshiba to the repair place tonight and leave it for the two weeks it will take to get it repaired (I know, I should have left it before I went back to Oz and the damn thing would be fixed by now).
In the interim, the temporary solution is borrowing a Sony Vaio for a couple of months – until the Toshiba is working. The Vaio is nice but I am so used to the kickass graphics of the Toshiba – sigh – I miss WIDGET.
I put a new hard drive into Widget last night and installed Debian Linux that I had on a magazine cover. Now WIDGET displays the hardware errors as it boots up. Took WIDGET back to the PC doctor today and am waiting for the prognosis – sigh – missing WIDGET