Laptop wouldn't boot took for repairs
This is going to be long since I have to explain some details leading up to my problem, so bear with me-I have an Acer Extensa 5630 laptop I bought new in 2009, running Vista. I have never had problems with it, and I used it daily. The powerjack became loose so a few months ago I took it to a small, local repair shop to have another one put in. I'm pretty smart with computers, and after looking it up knew how to replace it, but decided not to do the repair myself since quite a bit had to be taken apart to get to it and my hands are quite crippled with arthritis. It wouldn't cost much so I dropped it off. When I picked it up a few days later, I wasn't paying any attention to the power cord, so I didn't realize until later that day when I went to plug it in that it was the wrong cord. It said TOSHIBA across it! I took the laptop back, and showed the girl the cord, and she proceeded to try to tell me I had the wrong cord when I brought it in. I called her on it because I had bought another cord before having the powerjack replaced, thinking maybe the cord was the problem. I used the specs on the power box to order the new cord, so there's no way I had a Toshiba powercord and didn't notice it. She went in the back and returned with a cord that matched the specs on my laptop, and I went home.
The next day I try to watch a video, and discover there's no sound. After checking all the volume settings on it, I drive back to the repair place and tell the same girl again that the speakers must not have been hooked up when it was put back together. I told her I was NOT leaving it there again, I would wait while she fixed it. About 20 minutes later she brought it out from the back room, I checked to make sure the speakers were working, and I took it home.
I continued to use my laptop with no problems, until a couple of months ago. I normally keep my laptop in one place and don't move it around much, but I was walking through the house carrying it under my arm to show something to my daughter, and the dvd drive falls out of it, onto the floor!! Of course right away I knew that the idiot girl at the computer place must not have secured it in the laptop when she put it back together. I try to turn the laptop on, and an error message comes up about a hardware problem. So I carefully slide the dvd drive back in the slot and try turning it on, and after the first couple minutes of going through the boot process a blue screen comes up with a different error message, but I'm unable to read it because it flashes too fast. Then it continues to boot until it gets to the welcome screen, and it just sits there and won't go any further.
Against my better judgement I take it back to the same place, because I wanted to give the little girl who worked on it a piece of my mind. My daughter went with me and kept me calm so I agreed to leave it and have them put the dvd drive in, and see if it boots up.
We don't hear from them so this morning we call and they say the dvd drive is put back together, but they discovered there are some bad sectors on the drive and windows won't load. They were trying to do some repairs to see if it would work and would call us back this afternoon. Never heard from them so we called in the late afternoon and they were already closed.
I do not have money to spend repairing things, I'm in the process of applying for disability, live with my daughter, have to use her phone when she's around because neither of us can afford a second one. I am going back to the computer place tomorrow to find out what is going on, but I need to know some things so I'm armed with as much information as possible. The girl had said if they can't fix it doing whatever they're trying, they would have to reinstall windows, and if I want my data it would cost $120 to retrieve it and reinstall windows. I'm having a hard time believing that whatever is going on was not in some way caused by this girls negligence and poor workmanship when working on my laptop. She said this is a whole other problem, but it seems strange that I've never had problems with it until I took it to them for repairs, and had to return three times to have her do things that were overlooked, and now when the dvd drive falls out of it, it starts acting up.
1. I would like to know if it is at all possible that something could have happened due to her negligence while working on my laptop to cause 'bad sectors' and the problem of it not booting up since the dvd drive fell out?
2. Does it make sense that she said if they can't fix the bad sectors they'll have to save my data and reinstall windows? Aren't the 'bad sectors' part of my hard drive, and isn't that completely different from reinstalling the operating system??
3. I know my laptop has a c and d drive, with the d drive never being used yet-can the data be moved from the c to the d drive?
4. Is $120 to save my data and reinstall windows in the ballpark for that type of repair?
5. Should I just ask for my laptop back and run like hell to a different repair shop???
Any input would be GREATLY appreciated!!
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