Ship notebook for service w/o hard drive?

My relatively new 7330GZ has a memory problem. It won't boot and when I run memtest86, it gives me tons of memory errors (always with the same error bits). When I called tech support, he suggested I run a system restore (surprise, surprise), after I carefully explained that I had determined it was a hardware problem that didn't involve the hard drive. I even tried to boot Knoppix, but it gave me a "kernel panic". He told me that the first thing they would do when I sent it in for service was reformat the hard drive.

Anyway, now to my question: if I ship it back without the hard drive and include a note explaining what's wrong, will they try to fix it, or will they just ship it back to me? I just know if I ship it with the hard drive, they will reformat it and re-install all that trial version software crap. It would take me days to configure it to the way I need it, and I would lose a lot of important data. Any ideas?

 

I would Ghost your drive and ship it. If you take it out they're probably gonna send it back w\out touching it. Who is doing the service, is it Gateway?

 

Yes, Gateway is doing the service. OK, here's what I did. I got an adapter that lets you use a laptop hard drive with standard desktop IDE and power connectors, and I put the hard drive in my desktop (or rather, I put it on top of my desktop tower, in standard ghetto fashion.) I copied all of my important data to my desktop hard drive, so now I'm going ship my laptop back tomorrow with the hard drive in it along with a note explaining why they don't need to "restore" it. If they reformat it anyway, or just send me a refurbished computer with a different drive, I will be seriously pissed. I'll try to remember to post an update when I get it back.

BTW, those adapters are surprisingly hard to find. I called half a dozen computer shops and went to Staples, Radioshack, and Walmart before I finally found a computer repair shop that was nice enough to sell me theirs. I would have lost a couple weeks work if I hadn't done this. Hooray!

 

Unless you are so sure the problem is not the hard drive, you can remove it and ship your notebook without its hard drive. You can tell the Tech that you have a lot important data. You want to keep it. The service ceter should have a spare hard drive to test your system. If I was you, I keep the hard drive.