Solved PC Repair Shop Horror

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@PeterOz - So there's no way of really knowing if your RAM is going to work unless you try, even if it's the same form factor? Well... I've never met a smart device that isn't stupid.

@Bruce - I did weigh up buying a new laptop VS upgrading my old one because of its age. Given my current predicament and the financial impact it's had, I decided on the 'cheaper' option to hold me over a few more years until my life is more stable. I needed a PC/Lappie to hold me over in my motherland country in the immediate present. I was going to eventually buy a new desktop rig when I was finally settled in the States, with my old one sitting happy there after being shipped via freight, and unable to turn on because of what I assume to be voltage differences.

Or it's **** itself. Who knows. My circumstances are complex to say the least.

Anyway, I guess I'm paying for it now on a more emotional and inconvenience level. Lesson learnt for sure.
 
Sadly mine isn't one of them but thanks for the head's up, PeterOz.

I haven't Georgeks. My lappie is a GS63 7RD Stealth as opposed to 8RE as shown here, but I'm confident the internals/architecture will be similar. And it still doesn't explain why my RAM didn't work if the Crucial brand I bought listed here - apart from random chance/trial and error according to PeterOz.
 
So, I left a review of the place. Would be interested to see a response, but other than that, not much more to be said on the mess. I got drawn in by all the 5 Star reviews and honestly did my research before leaving my laptop with them. Combing through them now though, they're mostly repair jobs or what seem to be minor software issues. Mostly folk who have more minimal PC knowledge.

Anyway, if you're in the Chicago area, steer clear.

'Check out this review of Cary Grove Computers on Google Maps
 
goo.gl

Google review of Cary Grove Computers by Jaybird

★☆☆☆☆ "I'd like to say I wanted to leave a glowing review, but I simply can't do that in good conscience. For repairs they seem great but do not upgrade your computer here. I brought in my laptop for an upgrade with all the necessary parts provided: NVME SSD, HDD, and RAM. I was due to fly back...
goo.gl goo.gl

My bad, left an apostrophe in there.
 
So, the owner got back to me. Here's the full response:

'I am truly sorry you feel you feel you had a bad experience. I personally try my very best to make sure that a customer is 100% satisfied with the service we provide. Your situation was quite unique as when we do upgrades for customers we always recommend that we provide the parts so we make sure that all the parts are 100% compatible. We never want to turn away customers that bring in their own parts but from time to time the parts aren’t the right parts so we have to work in good faith.

Cloning one computer to another isn’t always a smooth process, there are a lot of different issues that can happen, Knowing your timeline we tried to do the very best for you in the short time we had. When your unit failed to clone we only had the option of reloading the computer and copying your data over. I will admit that we did make the mistake of loading windows 11 and not 10 that is definitely on us and I apologies for that, if we had more time with the unit I would have been more than happy to correct that error.

In regards to the memory. The first set of memory was DOA, the second set of memory wasn’t compatible at this point you were flying out that day and we really wanted to do the best we could for you so Kyle looked though the machines we had refurbished in our store remembering that we had just upgraded one unit with compatible memory swapping your memory for the other memory made both machines work as yours wouldn’t accept the memory you bought. Some machines will take multiple versions of memory some won’t. Unfortunately yours only accepted the one type. With upgrades you just never know what will work or not unless you try, we went the extra mile to make sure that you had a working computer before you left the country.

You mention that you gave us 3200Mhz Memory and we gave you 2400MHz memory. The reason for that is your machine wouldn’t run with the 3200MHz memory as stated in your laptops user manual. See Page 2-18. Here is a link to the manual to prove what I am saying: https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GS63-7RD-Stealth/support#manualSo what we were doing to help was what we felt the right thing.

I personally stand behind everything we do to make sure everyone is 100% satisfied. This isn’t just my job it is truly my life! I really believe that if you wen’t leaving the country that day we could have made everything work for you. I wish you would reconsider your negative review as we didn’t even charge you for all the extra labor to reinstall the memory proving we were doing everything we could for you. I do see it from your point of view and understand where you are coming from, so please accept my apologies.'
Click to expand...

So I checked the manual he linked, and it does indeed state the laptop only takes up to 2666MTs/s (PC4-21300) 2400MT/s (PC4-19200). So that's on me for not fully checking. I mainly followed this official spec page and didn't consider a RAM speed cap: https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GS63-7RD-Stealth/Specification

Still, this was only explained to me just now in a review response. Not at the store.

I don't know if others were in my shoes but I don't think I'd reconsider my negative viewpoint. Especially as I'm still having strange battery issues off the back of this that I didn't even mention in the review due to space limitations. (It sometimes drains off down to 40% then suddenly gives me a low battery warning and crashes the whole laptop before I can even reach for the charger. Its behaviour literally changes day to day.) And they weren't honest about the refurbished RAM either. Or the OS replacement. And DoA RAM aside, they want me to pay additional labor for a job they should have done to begin with?

Outside of them cracking open my laptop's mess of guts to install the parts, I feel like I paid $150 for them to wipe my system clean which I could have done myself. And I did, actually, to get rid of the ridiculous root directory name 'Valued Customer'.

I do appreciate them responding, though. The main owner, Chad, did genuinely appear kind and reasonable. Shame it didn't show in his work this time.

Now I'm torn between taking my laptop to my usual tech haunt in my home country to look at the battery, or just dealing with it until I get a bit of money to one side again to buy a whole new laptop as advised by users here. I'd probably just sell this one on somewhere.

#FML.
 
If you need the laptop to be away from mains power, you may have to live with the battery issue and just make sure you have access to a power point.
If you do get a new battery, don't just look for 'never used' or 'still in original wrapping' sort of advertising statements.

The important thing with lithium-ion batteries is their manufacturing date.
The lithium starts to oxidise as soon as they are minted and their charge capacity starts to noticeably reduce after two years or so. (I feel yours may well be in this category and is maybe just bad timing along with your other issues)

So you can either get the current battery re-packed with new cells, or get a non-genuine unit from a 3rd party supplier. I doubt you'll be able to get a genuine one from MSI as they would have gone through many iterations of that model by now. Just look at the manufactured date. (y)
 
Thank you for that. I'm really thinking about getting a new laptop at this rate though per your advice. Just hate thinking I wasted the money I poured into upgrading this thing, only to have so many problems off the bat.

New problem. I don't know what causes this, but when it happens the same thing occurs.

My keyboard goes crazy, ctrl alt del suddenly brings up new desktops. Multiple. I can't click on anything to type, hitting anything on my keyboard brings up absolutely bizarre things like Windows Helpdesk, and even at times straight up logs me out. I also can't click on my Word program for example or alt tab - the commands don't work and the programs just flash without anything happening. I can't access task manager. I'm forced to restart my whole system.

Windows 11 is up to date.

Only started to happen today. I thought it was some driver issue with the mouse I use since it was when I turned on its Bluetooth as opposed to having it plugged in that this started to happen. But after a restart and a 30 mins to an hour, the issue suddenly started up again with my mouse plugged in. No Bluetooth. The mouse does have its own USB stick so it can work on 2.4G instead, which I wonder if that caused this issue, but it's the only thing different I've done that I can think of.

That or maybe I somehow broke the keyboard. I'm typing on it now, so it clearly works okay, but once this issue hits it's like my system has a virus. But it doesn't - ran a thorough Malware scan. Anyone had this happen before? Google does not help for this one. It's bizarre.
 
Bloody hell - that thing is possessed!
Have you tried an external USB keyboard, and disconnect the mouse and use the touchpad?

At this stage you'd have to be putting the good money on the shop doing 'something' - too many things going south to be simply a coincidence.

Probably wouldn't hurt to have the laptop looked over by our resident malware expert.
This can be moved to the Malware Removal forum if you want?
 
Think I sussed it. Think it's my mouse. If I disconnect it from Bluetooth or try changing its connection method the laptop starts to behave once again. That being said, either this is an OS/driver issue, or there truly is something weird(er) going on with my system because this is a new one on me since I've had my laptop. It's a right pain when I'm in the middle of my writing.

I'm banking on either Windows 11 being to blame, the drivers just being a bit out of whack, or as you said, the store performing some sort of demonic ritual on my system that caused all this rubbish. Definitely agree, it's all too coincidental.

Once I get some spare cash I'm going to take it for a battery replacement at my local store and get them to do a bit of digging/do a health checkup.

I've ran Malwarebytes and I keep Avast running smooth. I'm pretty good at spotting and avoiding suspicious files, sites, etc. I haven't picked up anything malicious in the system so I'm happy to keep my thread here, but I'll mention the possibility once I take it to a store I trust. I don't think I'll get it to one soon - maybe a month or two tops - but I'll keep you all posted. Thank you again for all the help.
 
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