Cost to Fix a Computer?

[The Reckoning]

I'm in real shit right now. I accidently tripped over the power cord for my girlfriend's laptop, and the laptop fell off my desk. The battery port on the laptop (? place where the power cord plugs in) has pretty much snapped off, but the laptop itself is fine.

Can anyone give me a good price on how much it would cost to fix it, and does anyone know a good place in Austin to do so? It's a Toshiba Satellite L505D-S5965. BTW, the warranty expired in July...

Thanks

[TinTin]

Are you saying the port where you plug the power cord into the laptop has broken off or something has damaged the power cord?

Never imaged anything could damage that port by tripping o__o

[The Reckoning]

the port where you plug the power cord into. what happened was the laptop landed on top of the cord and broke the little metallic piece inside that holds the cord in.

it was kind of a freak landing, something that would only happen to me. :lol

[TinTin]

No worries, my cat chewed my entire power cord once.

I really have no idea about the plugpoint of a laptop. Someone else will have the answer.

I was thinking if the part is purchasable then you could unscrew the part needed and fix it yourself

[The Reckoning]

i would try to fix it myself, but its not my laptop. i dont want to screw it up anymore.

[phyzik]

The power port on most laptops is directly connected to the motherboard if I remember correctly. Im not totally sure. There is no way to fix it short of soldering it back on which would be a waste of money.

You could buy a new motherboard for probably the same price.

Post the make and model of your laptop and I can find out for sure.

[The Reckoning]

its in the original post

Toshiba Satellite L505D-S5965

[phyzik]

its in the original post

Toshiba Satellite L505D-S5965

Yeah, just saw that :lol

Anyway you can take a picture of the damage and post it so I know exaclty what needs to be replaced? Just a picture of the charge port is fine, you dont need to take it apart or anything. Not too close of a picture, let me be able to see the casing around it as well.

[The Reckoning]

one sec. looking for a camera

[The Reckoning]

http://i55.tinypic.com/jt6jab.jpg

sorry its not too clear, i had to use the webcam. the upper left of the casing by the port is cracked a little and the middle metallic holder is dislodged, so the power cord falls out when you try to place it in there.

http://i51.tinypic.com/2rfr47p.jpg

[phyzik]

http://i55.tinypic.com/jt6jab.jpg

sorry its not too clear, i had to use the webcam. the upper left of the casing by the port is cracked a little and the middle metallic holder is dislodged, so the power cord falls out when you try to place it in there.

http://i51.tinypic.com/2rfr47p.jpg

If you hold the power cord in by hand, does it charge at all?

[The Reckoning]

it would charge if i held it and positioned it just right, but once i started fiddling with the center piece, it would charge less often.

[The Reckoning]

now it wont charge at all. the casing being broken doesnt help very much either because the plug sinks in and wont stabilize.

also, a small fragment of the plastic tip of the plug itself is chipped, so that could be a problem as well. not to mention the plug is bent 15 degrees or so downward.

[phyzik]

it would charge if i held it and positioned it just right, but once i started fiddling with the center piece, it would charge less often.

Im gonna tell you straight up, it sounds like a soldered piece broke from the way you described holding the charger plug inside the port.... since its out of warranty, you might want to try taking it apart and seeing if you can solder it back together yourself....

Im not familiar with that model, but first take out all the screws on the bottom of the laptop... next, fold back the screen as far back as it will go... you should notice 2 plastic covers that are apart from the case... they pop right off with a flathead, should be 2 screws on each side... after that.... the part thats located just beneath the screen that shows you all the light displays and such, you should be able to pop it off with a flathead screw driver... there is usually an indentation on the right side that allows you to do this.... That comes up and you will see the screws holding the keyboard down.... Take those out and go from there.

I'd have to see it in person to do it myself, but I live in S.A.

Good luck.

[The Reckoning]

crap i dont have my own soldering kit, but i could take a look at it in the morning. i do have an 8 am class :lol.

thanks for the help phyzik. i might actually end up in SA this weekend, so i might give you a holler if i do. i really appreciate it.

[PM5K]

Just search Craigslist for DC jack repair. Should run you between 75.00 and 125.00.

[The Reckoning]

^

thanks! :tu

so thats what that thing is called? DC jack. :lol

[mrsmaalox]

Supposedly that's a common problem with Toshibas. Here's the guy who fixed mine here in SA: The CPU Doctor (Ken White) 210-838-0660 or [email protected]. $75 flat fee for that repair. But I ended up just buying a new laptop anyway.

[mrsmaalox]

double post

[Alex Haley]

Don't pay more than 50.00

http://sanantonio.craigslist.org/sys/1902899242.html

[The Reckoning]

found a place here in West Campus that would do it for $50. :tu

without having to drive or forsake school time (this weekend i have to document and draft five city blocks in downtown austin...), i'd say it's a pretty good deal. hopefully they do it right though. :lol

[PM5K]

Supposedly that's a common problem with Toshibas.

I think it's probably pretty common with any computer you drop, lol. J/K

[PM5K]

^

thanks! :tu

so thats what that thing is called? Dc jack. :lol

np

[ducks]

Don't pay more than 50.00

http://sanantonio.craigslist.org/sys/1902899242.html

you pay for what you get
people pay little the guy does not do a good job
jack does not last one year

[The Reckoning]

good news. i went to the shop, and the guy there was really upfront about it. apparently those toshiba models have a separate jack that's not connected to the mother board.

all i have to do is take the cover off and superglue the piece back in place. what happened was that everything kind of got shifted around, but nothing broke (thank God).

so i said thank you sir, tipped him, and now im off to do it myself. saved alot of money because the guy was honest. thats the best advertising you can have, so props to him :toast.

[Bender]

and your gf won't know a thing...?

[phyzik]

good news. i went to the shop, and the guy there was really upfront about it. apparently those toshiba models have a separate jack that's not connected to the mother board.

all i have to do is take the cover off and superglue the piece back in place. what happened was that everything kind of got shifted around, but nothing broke (thank God).

so i said thank you sir, tipped him, and now im off to do it myself. saved alot of money because the guy was honest. thats the best advertising you can have, so props to him :toast.

Cool.... :tu

I hardly work with Toshiba... all the laptops at work are Dell, and they are directly on the motherboard. Glad it worked out for you.

[DannyT]

I have a hard drive that crashed on me, it will not be read by windows but theres no clicking noise but I can hear it spin when its powered on . I have it docked through usb device and it just keeps showing up and going away. So I can get an recover software to read it. What are my options and if I have to use a data recovery business is there one here local that anyone can recommend? preciate it.

[phyzik]

I have a hard drive that crashed on me, it will not be read by windows but theres no clicking noise but I can hear it spin when its powered on . I have it docked through usb device and it just keeps showing up and going away. So I can get an recover software to read it. What are my options and if I have to use a data recovery business is there one here local that anyone can recommend? preciate it.

I have software available to me that I can try to use if you want... no guarantees it will work though though. Depending on the size of your HDD and the ammount of data on it, it would take roughly 4 hours to recover the data, and another 4 hours to transfer it to another HDD... I've had great success with it, but just last week I had my first HDD that would spin up and Windows could see it, but I could not recover the data from it, even in raw form (ie, no folder structure or file names). It would not format (if I was able to format it I would still be able to recover the data) and no matter if I booted into Knoppix, MiniPE, Ubuntu or any variation of Windows, it would not recognize the partition.... Everytime I tried to format, in any OS, it would fail the format.

You dont want to know the cost of data recovery companies.....

There are no "local" places that do it as far as I know of... you might find someone that can maybe transfer the plates to another chasis of the same type that has a working controller board (which is what sounds like is the problem), but I wouldnt know where to look.... I think Mouse at one point bought a kit that would let him do it, dont know if he had any success though.

As far as true data recovery companies go... the only one my company uses is Ontrack... If they cant recover the data, no one else can in my experience.

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

Now, I dont know if its any different for regular consumers, but they charge my company $500 just to LOOK at the hard drive just to see if its recoverable.... even if its not, you are out that $500. The price goes up from there if they can recover it.

In fact, the software that I have is from Ontrack, just pulled out the bootable disk. :lol

Just an FYI, my company has sent maybe 3 HDD's in total to ontrack in the last 8 years (thank God some of these engineers make backups) and we have only had 1 of those come back restored.... and it took them about a month to do it if I remember correctly.

Unless you have data on your HDD thats worth thousands, or millions, of dollars (which is the case with my company, since alot of the contracts are government funded).... its really not worth it.


As a side note.... If you want to prevent this situation from happening again... buy a HDD of similar capacity or greater, and purchase a copy of "bounceback" from CMS products....

http://www.cmsproducts.com/

It completely mirrors your HDD to another external USB drive and in the event your main HDD fails, you just pop in the Bounceback drive and boot it up like nothing happened. You HAVE to be diligent about backups though... Its not automatic and up-to-the-second as a RAID 1 array, it will give you reminders though.

Or, if you can buy 2 exactly identical drives (as far as size goes), you could set up a RAID 1 array. It works OK but I just dont like RAID personally, especially when it comes to recovering data. Example: In a RAID 1 array, if you delete a file on accident, or if a file gets corrupted, its automatically the same on the second disk... The plus side is, if a HDD fails, everything is exactly up to date at that moment of failure on the second drive... Pop in another one and it rebuilds the array automatically.

Most Motherboards have a built-in RAID controller so you dont usually have to purchase anything more than the hard drives and enable RAID in the BIOS.

[phyzik]

Just an FYI.... Best Buy has a data recovery service.... :lmao

The initial diagnostic fee at the store for hard drives is $59.99. Data recovery for hard drives starts at $259.99 but depends on the difficulty or severity of issues found.

Trust me when I say... The Geek Squad is a scam... They are not worth shit... Worst waste of money on tech support in the industry IMHO.

Just do a google search for "geek Sqaud sucks" and you will find countless testimonials and horror stories from customers and former employees alike. Some of the people in the "geek Squad" dont even have High School Diplomas or even a G.E.D. ..... Let alone true computer certifications.

I Guarantee, they use the same software that I use from Ontrack.... and I wont charge you a Diagnostic fee.... it would cost you some beer and some hang out time regardless if I can recover it or not. You get to hang, drink beer, play pool, whatever.... And unlike Best Buy, you will be there the whole time seeing exactly what is going on.

I will know within 15 minutes if I can recover it or not... If I cant, you can go on your merry way and dont owe me a thing.... 15 minutes of my time is not going to kill me.

If I can recover it though, be forewarned, Im not talking a measly 6-pack... I regularly down a 12-pack on my own on any given night... I can kill an 18-pack by myself some nights.... I know, I shouldnt be proud of that. :lol

[leemajors]

driver savers is another reputable one, but costs of those places can run over 1k

[mouse]

Dam PhyZik your in deep, you should work for the NSA!

And all this time I thought you was just another redneck with a FTP server. :lol

That kit was harder to get than I thought. They want you to get some sort of certification and I think 600.00 is to much when I still owe Alamo50 50.00 Kori 100.00 and DannyT 50.00 I think I owe Rashofan 40.00 still.

Anyway DannyT I have a bad seagate portable drive that wont show up when I use the USB adapter on my desktop but it shows up on my friends laptop. Try using another PC just for shits and giggles.

But if you want software that finds lots of deleted shit I have had success with this,

http://download.cnet.com/File-Scavenger-Data-Recovery-Utility/3000-2094_4-10028488.html

you can get the paid version from BTJunkie

I live by Rittiman and harrywurzbach

320-0795


if you want to drop off the HD and give Phyzik the beer I cant drink like i used to.

If you do go to Phyzix's house come and get me we can all hang out drink beer and talk about NASA! :toast

[mouse]

you pay for what you get
people pay little the guy does not do a good job
jack does not last one year


I have had some bad luck with Criagslist by you can't beat those cheap prices. :bang

[The Reckoning]

so i fixed the jack with some good ol' superglue but then figured out the charger itself was broken as well.

the gf needs it for architecture because it had some of her CAD work on it due tomorrow, so she made me find a solution today.


instead of waiting for a $20 charger in the mail, i had to fork up 80 bones for a universal charger.


$80!!!

:pctoss

[mouse]

I have one in the storage you can have it for 20.00 dollars or buy this one for 45.00


http://sanantonio.craigslist.org/sys/1890275622.html

[DannyT]

I'm down to try it out and see what it looks like. Just let me know when's good for you and we will see what we can work out. And then let menonow if mouse is allowed over and I will scoop him up. Preciate it.

[mouse]

let me know if mouse is allowed over and I will scoop him up. Preciate it.

I was there last night we drank beer and played pool you missed a good time. :toast

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