HP Support Rant, NTLDR Compressed.

Well it wasn't such a good weekend, my puter decided to catch some type of virus or other not good pest and went on strike. Spent a few hours doing the virus checks with 3 different anti-virus programs, did a bunch of spyware, malware and other assorted cleanup deals. They didn't find anything, so I figure it's either a real new virus or some type malware that got in. Whatever it was it wouldn't let me get online to do some research and it just started running slower and slower. Tried a system restore, NG. So I decided to do a system recovery, but when I tried saving info on cd's it wouldn't let me. Finally I got a few files with info on some programs so I could redown load later but not have to rebuy them. Anyway did the system recovery deal and it would only show a error about a NTLDR file being compressed.

So I said ok time to call HP support, well they wanted $35.00 PLUS tax to talk to me. So I figured if it gets me back running again I'll go for it. Well after an hour of talking to support people I couldn't understand they said I needed to get recovery disks from HP to get rid of the problem. In other words they didn't know what the problem was. So for another $30 they would send my a set of recovery disks and for only $17.00 more they would be nice enough to send them by Fed Ex and I would have them in about 2 days. So after giving them a bit of static, I said ok, do it.

This isn't the season to have a non working computer. So far now I'm just aggravated etc.

So the next day I go to someone elses house and use their computer to check if I have any orders etc. While there I go to google to see what I can find out about this "NTLDR Compressed" error message, guess what right there on HP's support page is the solution on getting past this problem. Ok, now it's good that HP support is not in this area.

So home I go with this printout, spend about 15 minitues playing with this code etc. and poof the computer starts up. Okay now it's usable but there is still a problem with whatever the original problem was but at least I can get online and do a little of this and that, check mail, check PayPal, get a few addresses so I can pack a few orders. Computer was still slow but at least working until these disks finally get here. Yesterday the Fed Ex truck arrives, I format the hard drive, clean it of totally and reload everything like the computer was when I came out of the box a few years ago. Of course all my programs etc needed to be reloaded etc. Luckily I had some backups online where I host my shop. So I didn't need to repurchase any programs etc, all my pictures and shop stuff is online anyhow so that was safe. Now it's time to email HP and ask them why their support people can't read their own support pages and tell them I think I should be credited for their supports peoples incompitence.

Ok I'm finished now.

See ya, Country Joe