An open letter to Hewlett Packard's Mark Hurd

Dear Mr Hurd,
While I realize you probably get hundreds, if not thousands of emails each day, I feel the need to point out what I consider to be a critical issue with the laptop repair facility. In order for you to understand how grave of an issue this is, I must give you some detailed background on my professional work experience with HP, some basic repair information I have learned from that experience and the history of the issue I have had with my laptop.
Before the last round of store closings (about six months before being sold to liquidators) I worked as a HP/Compaq certified technician for nearly nine years at CompUSA. I refurbished Compaq and HP computers in-store as per our agreements with each company. I torn down and repaired and restored HP and Compaq laptops and desktops countless times
At some point, as part of the repair process, when a motherboard (or hard drive in some instances) was replaced, a program called a tattoo began being used after such a replacement. The purpose of this was to brand the motherboard (or hard drive) with the model information so when a recovery was performed, the correct software was installed and unlicensed software could not be installed.
Herein lies the problem. My laptop, which was already replaced last year once, went in for repair four times. The first, nothing (and I can back this up) was actually done, although the notes say a restore was done. The second time, they fixed the main issue from the first time by replacing the motherboard, however a tattoo was not done. They also did run a recovery, but since it is not done the same as when a consumer does it, I ran a recovery from my HP provided recovery disks.
When I ran the recovery, HP's DVDPlay software was installed instead of HP's QuickPlay software. This is important because the built-in webcam is accessed using QuickPlay. The feature is not available with DVDPlay. I verified in the BIOS that the unit was not tattooed as the model was listed as a generic x123x#ABA instead of my model number.
I called tech support, and, since they have no idea what a tattoo is, had to explain this to them, and asked for a case manager to try to make sure what needed to be done was done.
The unit went in, I received it back with a restore. There was no note of a tattoo, but I doubt that is an option on the repair forms. I ran my own recovery to verify whether or not the unit was repaired. Since I was busy at work while running a recovery (which takes several hours), I don't recall if I shut the unit down, or it shut down on its own. I brought it home and, due to work being done on my apartment, was unable to use it for almost a week. When I tried to use it, it would not power up.
Third time in for repair and the motherboard was replaced again. I received it back, checked the BIOS, and found the model number was dv2570es - a Spanish model. This means my motherboard was likely repaired from a Spanish unit. I verified this by going to HP's web site and doing a product detect. Sure enough, it detected my laptop as the same Spanish model number. I have no problem with a refurbished motherboard, but when the people who repaired the motherboard failed to tattoo that board AND the people who placed it in my laptop ALSO failed to tattoo it, for at least the third time, that is scary.
What, however, is scarier, is that there may be hundreds of people out there that are in the same situation as myself and not even realize why. I have easily found a half-dozen or so people on your forums and on notebookforums.com.
The other problem is that since these people aren't aware of it, and your phone tech support people aren't aware of what a tattoo is, the issue goes undiagnosed. The user is told to run a recovery, or even worse sent to another website (http://quickplay.sourceforge.net/) that has a program called QuickPlay that has nothing to do with HP's QuickPlay.
I have been blogging about my experience and sharing that blog with as many people as I can so they know what the issue is, but until both HP's phone support people AND repair people get (re)trained on this issue, it is a disaster, and possibly even a lawsuit, waiting to happen.
While I eagerly await your response, I will admit that I have been checking out my legal options as well.
One more thing. Very often when I called and the case was "escalated," I was promised a call back within about 24 hours. Only about half the time, I received a call back. The most recent time, I have been dealing with Michelle Burrell who has gone above and beyond in terms of helping me, but she is limited by HP's policy. As an example, it is my understanding that Case Managers can't talk to the repair department AT ALL. While special cases should be few and far between, I think special cases would allow this. That type of policy may very well have prevented this email in the first place.

Please, take a few minutes and read this email. It really points out landmine that is just waiting to go off.

Thank you,
Sean A. Flesch

Business support forums - HP QuickPlay not working

So, since Hewlett Packard can not be trusted to properly fix their own laptops, I have decided to provide the "fix" for the QuickPlay DVDPlay issue that plagues many people. This issue may also affect other people in other ways. WARNING! DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Update: See my blog for 10/16/2008 as to why these links have been removed.
If you use eMule or eDonkey - sorry file removed. See above.

If someone gets a torrent link, I will add it here.

As a last resort, - sorry file removed. See above.

The HPDMI.img file is a floppy disk image file. You can use a program like WinImage to make it into a floppy disk. You can also do a Google search for "HP Drive Key Boot Utility" (instead of WinImage) and make a USB bootable thumb drive by pointing it to the IMG file.

The program that worked for me was the in the HP_Notebook_Tattoo.zip file. It is named MANVS3A.exe and is included with the other files in the HP folder of the IMG file. It is pretty self explanatory and gives you examples of what to enter in the various fields.

All the exe files that are not password protected are in the IMG file in a folder called HP. If you get a password for the zipped file, I will add it or unzip it. See the PDF files for instructions on tattooing. I am making these files available because after four service calls, HP still did not properly tattoo my system and I had to go digging for them. One time it came back with a blank model string and DVDPlay installed instead of QuickPlay, another time it came back with a Spanish model number and was detected as such with HP's product detection on their website.

I am very concerned that HP has a break down in procedures and is not properly repairing customer's computers. When you call technical support, they have no idea what a tattoo is and tell the customer things like run a restore, or do a search for QuickPlay and download it from www.sourceforge.net (which is not the same QuickPlay) and the customer gets screwed in the end.

If Hewlett Packard contacts me in regards to this issue, I will remove the file once I know a procedure is in place to better train their phone support people to recognize this issue, and their repair center(s) have been properly trained in the tattoo of EVERY PC that comes into their center, to make sure that the tattoo is properly in the system to begin with. Finally, even out of warranty machines that display these problems should be fixed under warranty.

Hewlett Packard does it again - major breakdown in repair procedures

So I received my laptop back from HP yesterday. They replaced the motherboard. Again. So I took a quick look in the BIOS and it looked better, but still not quite right. I promptly ran the restore (again) and "YEAH!!!" it installed QuickPlay instead of DVDPlay.

So, you are thinking, they fixed it, right? Well, yes and no. Apparently I now have a Spanish laptop which is all fine and dandy, but what are the consequences down the road? Will I get Spanish updates from HP? I mean, this is how HP's website sees it when I do the auto detect on the laptop. Will they ever figure out that they have a major problem? It went in three times...or is it four and it was never tattooed right.

Now what makes this worse is that I have seen cases on HP's discussion boards where people probably have this same problem, but don't realize it. If you used to have QuickPlay, but now DVDPlay installs instead, then this may be your problem. Check your BIOS and make sure your model number matches what is under your computer, because a large number of people are not doing the tattoo on motherboard replacements. If it happened to me three times, that's bad.

Fix for multiple instances of anti-virus in Windows Security Center

A friend of mine called me the other day because she was getting a message from Windows Security Center saying that there were two anti virus programs installed on her computer. I was sick and couldn't help her out much, but I didn't think she was in dire jeopardy. She's like me in some ways. She generally has a good idea of what she knows and she knows when she should stop because she is getting into grey areas.

She said one of the programs seemed to be Avira AntiVir, which she doesn't remember installing and she couldn't find any significant traces of it either. I had her do some basic stuff and I may have (I was so out of it) even given her a link I found. Nothing seemed to do the trick, but she kept researching, as I have taught her and she found the solution:
Re: Fix for multiple instances of anti-virus in Windows Security Center

Sure enough, it worked for her, so I wanted to pass it on to the rest of the world, since she had a heck of a time finding it. The only think I could figure is it was on the system when it came from Dell, or it was bundled with something else...

Farmer's Market

Just want folks in the area of Henrietta (Rochester) New York know that there is a new Farmer's Market at The Pieters Family Life Center. The Life Center is part of Heritage Christian Services. You can get to the Life Center from Castle Road off of East Henrietta Rd, or through Frontier Commons off of Jefferson Rd...


"Starting July 9th! From 6p-8p: Farmer’s Market off the patio at the Pieters Family Life Center!
Pick up some fresh grown produce, eat dinner (grass-fed cattle burgers, a choice of 2 different salads, a HCS cookie and beverage for one price!) and hear live music for free from “Squirrels in Traffic”!!
The Farmer’s Market will continue every Wednesday after July 9th through the fall, and anyone and everyone is welcome to swing by and grab some fresh grown Freshwise products and enjoy the festivities!
Look forward to seeing you!"

Google Street View vehicle

I think Google's Street View is pretty kewl, and now I feel I can add to the excitement. I think I found a picture of one of the vehicles used to take pictures on Google's Street View. It is located at 10 Castle Road, Rochester, New York 14623 and click street view and pan down you can see the front and back of the vehicle.

YouTube - Dance Off with the Star Wars Stars 2008

Just to show that I'm not just bitching all the time...


YouTube - Dance Off with the Star Wars Stars 2008