The ASUS, the Geek Squad, and I

Last evening, on starting up my notebook, it started making a horrendously loud fan-burning-through-its-bearings kind of sound.

My ASUS G71GX has always had a loud fan, but this had gone from being high-pitched to just plain noisy and vibrational. Ugh.

I opened up the bottom panel, to see if there were any obvious problems. Nope. Fan looked good, spun around to my touch. I blew it out with some canned air, though there were no visible dirt problems. Turned it on again. Yeah, still the same problem.

Ugh, as I said.

I looked around, and found my receipt. And mirabile dictu, my one year warranty expires … next week, as opposed to the usual last week. Hot dog!

Better yet, there’s an authorized ASUS dealer and warranty service place over off Yosemite between Arapahoe and Dry Creek, a hop, skip, and jump.  Sure, I could take it to Best Buy, but I’m a scosh leery of the whole Geek Squad thang.

Fast forward to this afternoon.  I call up the ASUS place.  And it turns out …

No.  Apparently Best Buy has some exclusive warranty service deal with ASUS.  If a Best Buy-purchased ASUS needs service under warranty, it has to be done by Best Buy.

Sigh.

I decided to take the ASUS back to the Best Buy where I bought it.  If nothing else, I figured, if things Go Horribly Wrong, I have the name and email of the store manager (or at least the store manager from a year ago), as well as one of their Twitter support guys (hi, @dustinbby!).

(Zoom-zoom-zoom)

Arrived at the store, beelined to the Geek Squad counter (deja vu all over again).  The Counter Guy demurred and handed me off to the Hardware Guy.

I explained the problem.

He fired up the notebook, and immediately put his ear to its side.

“It only happens when the fan kicks in, after boot-up.”

Waiting … waiting …

And there it goes.

Of course, with the ambient noise of the Best Buy, it didn’t sound as horrible as, say, in my family room.  But it was still distinctly loud.

“Let me get a stress tester,” the Hardware Guy says.

He comes back with a dongle, plugs it in …

(I will note, btw, that I made sure that my machine was fully backed up before I came down. Plus, I use LastPass for passwords, so no passwords on the machine.)

… and runs through some stress tests.  The sound of the computer is much more distinct.

“Well, it sounds like probably it’s dirty in there.”

“I did open up the bottom panel and look around.  I didn’t really see any dirt.”

“Well, we can do a cleaning on it, and we can a tune-up.”

“Um … tune-up?”

“Well, we can get you up to date — you’re a Service Pack behind.”

This is where, of course, 80% of the home computer owners would quail, lift up their hands to ward off the distress, and scream, “Yes! Of course! Do it quickly!”  Without asking about the price ($40).

I shake my head.  “No, I can take care of the SP.  In fact, I have my Win7 upgrade discs — I’ve just never gotten around to installing them.” (Note to self: do that.)

Hardware Guy shrugs.  “Well, we can do the clean-up, if that doesn’t work we can do a hardware diagnostic and see what the problem is.”

I stare at him, and scream, “IT’S THE DAMNED FAN! IT NEEDS TO BE REPLACED! YOU GUYS DO ASUS WARRANTY SERVICE — FIX THE DAMNED THING!”

Well, no, actually I don’t.  Instead, I nod.  Less stress, and, probably, no less productive.

He asks for the receipt, as I joke about it being a week before the warranty expires.  He spends a big chunk of time on the computer, finally prints something out — which I double-check the fine print on, the cost estimate, etc.  “We should be done with the diagnostic and cleaning by tomorrow — maybe even by tonight.”

“Great!”

And I signed on the dotted line, and left the computer there …

Now, I actually hope they find the invisible ball of gravel that’s inside the fan, or that the “Make a Really Loud Fan Noise” bit in Vista has flipped from 0 to 1.  I doubt it, hope springs eternal.

I hope, in fact, that their being able to handle ASUS warranty repairs means something more than “We can do basic tests like with any other machine; failing that we ship the thing back on a slow boat to Taiwan.”  Especially since what would probably happen then is that I’d get back a reformatted hard drive, which would be irksome.  It would be keen if, failing a miracle, they can simply order a new fan unit and install it themselves.

I do have, fortunately, my office laptop — which doesn’t have any games, nor the software for me to finish my Disney and KOA pictures work — so I’m not completely SOL.

We’ll see what happens when they call back.