HP won't even sell you recovery discs.

I've been working in the computer field for 25 years and never had this much trouble with a company's sales or product support. If you feel you have a right to a recovery CD for a laptop then don't buy from HP.

I tried to get a set of recovery CD's for a laptop I bought 2 weeks ago and they refused even though I offered to pay for them because they wanted me to burn a copy.

I didn't want to burn a copy because burnt copy's start to degrade after 2 years at which point it's corrupted and worthless. (I know from first hand experience) Apparently when I purchased the laptop online they offered to sell the disc's but they are so far down the sales path that I skipped it accidentally. So I called them to get a set. They passed me through 3 people until I got to a support person who tried to explained to me why I was wrong about burnt discs and tried to talk me out of wanting real ones. When I told him that I wouldn't settle he asked if I had burnt a copy yet, I told him no and he said I'm sorry HP won't help you until you fail to burn a set first. So when I told him that wasn't acceptable he said, "oh I'm sorry sir you have the wrong department. Let me transfer you." So I asked to speak with his supervisor. He put me on hold hoping I would go away but he eventually picked back up and said that his supervisor wouldn't talk to me. I insisted on speaking to his supervisor. We went around and around. Eventually he admitted that I wasn't going to talk to his supervisor no matter how long I waited. So he transferred me. That person started to go through the whole process all over again. When it's all said and done I talked to 5 people.

It cost the company an hour in 800 number charges, 20 minutes of employee time. So instead of charging me $20 for the discs, they likely lost $30 on support costs. All for something I had a right to.

If that is the way HP wants to do business, fine, I won't do business with them in the future. I'll buy my laptops somewhere else.

Zarxs

 

I don’t want to lessen your victory, but it’s a well know factor to many here that the recovery disc’s from HP have a high failure rate, they might have been trying to give you the message without admitting to this. You were better off asking for an installation disc.

 

It's a good thing Indian tech support is over the phone and not in person or I would imagine people would be going to jail for murdering their tech support agents
I have gotten really angry when on the phone with tech support many times but I have never been rood or yelled at the person over the phone. I keep my cool and get my revenge in secret
I think that recovery media needs a new kind of system because pc users lose or never burn their recovery media and end up losing it so when they want to reinstall their os they have to find the drivers which can be complicating.

I feel you Zarxs

 

You do not have to call support. Better off not calling.
On HP.com in the support and drivers section for your model you will find a listing for "CD-ROM order page - Recovery Discs", follow the link and enter your serial number and you will be able to order a set of recovery discs.
Should be less than $20.

Best of all, no wasted time and no aggravation from support staff.

 

The only thing I can assume is that maybe they didn't understand you wanted to actually buy some and not get them for free. I know if you attempt to make the disc and the burn process fails they will send you the disc out for free. That may be why they asked if you had tried to burn the disc, or maybe they didn't want to waste time filling out the information to sale something they wouldn't get any commission on.

 

I bought a set of recovery disks for the dv5z for $20 a couple of months ago. Just go to their site and search for your model and recovery disk. You don't need to talk to anyone.

 

The discs you burn yourself is actually better than the ones HP supplies you with. Besides you still have the recovery partition if the disc does fail.

If you think the discs you create will degrade after 2 years then just create a image of the discs and save it on your hard drive so you can burn it later.

I do not see what the big deal here is....

 

are you sure they will do that? can i found out more information on that before i go through the aggravation of calling them?

i just got my dv5t and tried to burn recovery disks, but it gave me an error and wasted two of my dvd's.

 

https://warp2.external.hp.com/driver/dr_pricing_info.asp

and...done. That took about 30 seconds.

 

IronMountain - Connected Backup!

This company & Software has servers that the workstations'/Laptops' agent software uses to archive (on a timed basis: say every 30min - 120mins) your MyDocuments (WinXP - unsure if Vista compatible) folder. It can be set also to backup your C:\Program Files directory as well if you prefer. Restoring any files or folders is user selectable while online, and also you can "overwrite" (replace) or "retrieve" files in a new name. Lastly you have the ability to retrieve either by most recent or by ALL (to see specific times). Great software & service with a discernable System Tray icon & cpu process. I had this on my previous work machine & also used it while troubleshooting MS Office files that were worked on by users and that save overwritten or autosave by Word/Excel/PowerPoint didnt work.

I did see something like this mentioned on HP's site for the EliteBooks business class machines but unable to locate it as of yet.

 

I usually use a better quality DVD to burn a backup disc. Never had problems burning a set from an HP gear. You can order a set of disc on-line as mentioned which I've done before. Be careful when you do a re-install that the laptop is in it's original config.. memory, HD, etc. On a side note you can't copy a burned disc. But if you re-install you can make another copy from it.

 

Oh and make sure you save the "swsetup" folder which contains all the necessary drivers for your computer.