Another story on technicians with a ridiculous problem that most people arent going to check in the first 5 minutes at check in. What they should have done is check it in for a diagnotic and determine the problem. BIOSs dont randomly disable the hard drive. These people are just out to try and make people look bad

In other news: your car's johnson rod probably didn't need lubed for $500.

Opps they did it again hah hah

@Gorky: Bull, this is a problem that if you know what your doing you would see simply watching the boot.

And your right the hard drive is not randomly disabled, but if you have ever worked in IT you would know a time honored acronym of PEBKAC

And PEBKAC accounts for part or all of 95% of all computer issues out there.

Who would think to check the bios if the customer didnt say otherwise. Problems are always easy to fix if you know how they broke. Cheaper too.

When will consumers finally realize that Worst Buy is THE WORST BUY on the planet. They are nothing but crooks who will stomp all over a customer to make sure they made money off of you that ONE TIME. I sincerely hope BB goes the way of CompScrewSA and soon.

@Falconfire: LOL @ PEBKAC. I deal with that routinely.

It sounds like they took HD off of the boot order. ALWAYS check the easy stuff first - like BIOS settings.

FireDog + GeekSquad = Useless as tits on a bull.

Management is mostly to blame. They hire techs and throw them to the dogs. No supervision, mentoring, or anything else for that matter.

On the other hand, an A+ certification does not a PC Technician make.

@Frostberg: Who would think to check the bios if the customer didnt say otherwise.

Um, anyone who knew what they were doing. That's one of the first things to check when trying to diagnose computer problems. Anyone who doesn't know that shouldn't be repairing computers.

@Gorky: Hey buddy, why don't you read the article before you start making comments you pulled out of your @$$!

The pc was left at firedog for over a week...

The diagnosis done at Best Buy for 60 dollars was 10 minutes long, but this was because the technician was 'certain' he knew the problem. After it was within GeekSquad for 2 days, they contacted 10TV about the issues they were experiencing.

Best practice:

1. Reset BIOS to defaults (covers issues like these) and verify settings

2. Boot machine normally

This whole thing should have taken the guy at the counter 3 seconds to fix, and he should have done it for free so that they could gain a customer. It is truly shocking how stupid "service" departments have become in the past 10 years...

@Slick36: Way, WAY too true...I actually got my A+ certification when it meant something...haven't even thought about it in 8 years...

@Gorky: Any tech worth his salt would see on the bootup what the problem was.

However, now a days they do have those stupid logo screens that hide the boot sequence, but once again, most tech's should remove that anyway to see what's going on.

makes me feel very lucky that i have two smart brothers who can fix this kind of stuff. i used to tell my little brother he should join the geek squad but in the past couple of years, i've realize he's too qualified.

@Slick36:

You do also realize that they probably have 20,000 Geek Squad and Firedog people nationwide. Id say there is a good chance that it is impossible to make sure that NONE of them will make mistakes. I bet if you took this same computer to 100 different Best Buys and 100 Circuit Cities, at least 80% of them wouldve figured out the problem. The reason people like this slip thorugh is because at most stores the people who do the hiring arent technicians themselves so they can only ask the questions on the interview form and compare them with the answers instead of asking questions that truly talented technicians would know

@SchecterShredder: I think you should specify that Best Buy's Geek Squad are the ripoff artists. I have personally never had anything but good experiences, and good deals with the store itself. And yes I am a longtime Consumerist reader, I just get agitated when people buy into the anti-big-box mania.

I'm no tech guy, but I understand what is goin on here. With reasearch, I'd like to think if I had a PC with this problem i could figure it out.

Anyway, my point is that I agree BB and CC are the wrong places to go to becasue the types of problems they deal with are things like striaght up faulty hardware (dead HDDs) and people forgetting to plug things in.

Simple problems, often caused by simple customers, fixed by simple people, becuase it isn't a computer store.

@Falconfire: explains my neighbor and his utter glee as he installs every piece of bloatware, crapware and spyware his little fingers can find.

Guy has 7 no name search toolbars installed in IE6 on XP with no service pack installed...Can you come over and fix it? No sorry not today.

Sorry, ALL OF BEST BUY SUCKS. Ask any "educated" consumer. PERIOD.

@darkjedi26:

I happen to BE a technician and I wouldve caught that problem but it would NOT be the absolute first thing I wouldve checked. I wouldve begun by booting to a hard drive diagnostic CD and when it couldnt find the hard drive since it was disabled in the BIOS then I wouldve checked the BIOS. All these sttories with ridiculous problems that you rarely see makes ALL computer repair places look bad. I work in a Mom and Pop place and even here people mention these types of stories. If they truly wanted to see if a technician was qualified they would do something like put a defective part in the computer or corrupt the operating system but instead most times they do something ridiculous like tape the connectors on a memory module, or remove a pin from the power supply ro something ridiculous like that

CLEARLY, it's the consumers' fault.

If they would have had a terabyte of porn on their hard drive, the tech staffers would have been on it.

@AlteredBeast: The problem is they shouldnt be the wrong places to go. They advertise they will fix your pc but clearly they have no damn clue what they are doing despite them telling people that they do.

What happens when you pay that $300 and your pc is still dead, then what will they con you into fixing?

They have killed most of the little guys cause people who dont know any better trust them because they saw them on TV. OMG GEEKS!

@Gorky:

"I bet if you took this same computer to 100 different Best Buys and 100 Circuit Cities, at least 80% of them wouldve figured out the problem."

Well my station (which is no where near Ohio) literally just did the EXACT same story.

Quick bios change rendered computer non-booting. Producer took it to CC, BB, and Staples. Only staples correctly diagnosed and fixed it.

Makes me skeptical of the claim that 80% of the CCs and BBs out there would have done things right. What I have evidence of is widespread failure. What I'm yet to see is an example of the techs at either of these chains EVER actually providing a correct diagnosis.

This was the reason why when I got my first PC in middle school I began reading up on everything there was about them. I was the guy that would destroy his system on a weekly basis. Ohhh Registry edits sounds like fun! I learned a lot about computers from constantly destroying and rebuilding them. Nearly 20 years later and I work in I.T.

We recently had to hire some new I.T. staff and I had to sit in on some of the interviews. Just a note to everyone, being able to use MS Office doesn't make you I.T. staff material. Although if we need someone to send out a huge mailer using word's mail merge function we'll return the call.

@lostalaska: I got one better, my boss is a DATA MANAGER. The minute you get away from simplifying things and start explaining the problem in depth the guy just zones out. How he ended up becoming our IT manager I will never know, but boy does it make me bang my head in sometimes.

@Gorky: We have seen it twice in the last year, so no its not ridiculous to think that you will never see it in the field. Like I said just watching the boot would have clued you in immediately to check the BIOS before you do anything. Any technician worth his salt would know that.

Makes me wonder if the tech get commission on selling "repairs" new hardware.

what is a harddrive? just kidding hah hah

Watch out for that "Screen of Blue Death!"

@Frostberg: Actually, I would say that this would be one of the first things checked. No HD, then try the following, in any order. Use a bootdisk, do you see a HD, No, check the cables, are they secure, yes, check bios do you see the HD in the Bios. No, check the settings, ahh there you are... Always always remember the adage, K.I.S.S I have been burned several times thinking it was some major issue when in fact it was something small.

I will say, that Best Buy, at least when I was there, had no test for techs. I came from the floor selling computers and started on the tech bench with pretty weak tech skills (I replaced my CD-rom). While I did learn, I was pretty unknowledgeable (is that a word) back then. But it was a start and I eventually went on to bigger and jobs in IT.

@Falconfire:

Like someone else mentioned most consumer PCs have the boot screen covered up by a company logo. Most techs dont disable that on the first boot

While this is not one of the things one would be use to seeing with a computer it is something they should have been able to fix.

The news team should have let them try to fix it. Would have been interesting to see how many quoted a motherboard when it didn't pickup the drive again.

@Crymson_77: Sure go ahead and reset that bios, unless of course they have a raid setup and and the hard drives won't work in default. True you won't cause any damage to the hard drive but still might cause you to scratch your head for a while.

Two things: 1) We're assuming it was a hard drive BIOS setting...it could have been anything. Shadow RAM turned off? Incorrect clock speeds either killing the computer with heat (unlikely as the IT guy wanted the laptop fixed) or ridiculously underclocked. I wouldn't focus too much on the hard drive bit, nor that there was a BIOS error. That said, I ALWAYS check the BIOS as a tech.

2) Best buy said "Best Buy told Consumer 10 that "we should have detected this problem. This is our error, and our service guarantee would ensure resolution of the problem to the customer's satisfaction."

Um...good luck with that. Say that Best Buy had replaced the hard drive for $300. Then the problem wasn't fixed. Good luck with the "service guarantee". You'll be told you needed a new hard drive anyway AND there's something else wrong. If you complain they'll tell you to call their 800 number. Hello Bangladore!

It's a wonderful line to spout about "service guarantees" but good luck making them work.

@Crymson_77: Good point! But then the tech will see an unpartitioned hard drive if the RAID is in IDE mode, and he'll likely try to partition it. Hope it's RAID 1 cuz RAID 0 and...bye bye all data.

@guevera:

You say youve never seen one where they go it right? try this one [video.knbc.com]

There are two simple rules for living in the age of technology:
1. Always back up your work.
2. Know how to do repairs or know someone trustworthy.

Anything else is taking a gamble. Sad.

@Frostberg:Who would think to check the bios if the customer didnt say otherwise.

The guys at MicroCenter did.

And I agree, the service guarantee is worthless if they charge you for hardware and service that the computer didn't need. When they finally diagnose the problem, did they plan on refunding the extra charge and putting the original hard drive back in, with data?

All of the people saying these undercover tests are arbitrary or unusual etc are just making excuses for people who are bad at correctly diagnosing problems. These tests are valid because people can and will do stupid or simple-but-arcane things to screw up their computers.
Why is it somehow less relevant just because the problem is rare? The computer technicians and retail repair shops are not being paid to diagnose and repair X subset of problems, they are being paid to diagnose and repair the system. And also diagnosing a problem is twofold. You don't come up with a hypothesis and repair the system based on that, you TEST for the problem. So if a tech tells you the HDD was dead there ought to be supporting evidence for that (as in more than 'it makes clicking noises').
For the record I develop and debug military robotic systems. I REALLY understand that some computer problems can be odd or elusive, but once you identify the alleged problematic part you need to verify it's broken, not just guess-and-check until you get it right.

Buy a mac.

In reality you wouldn't check the bios 1st thing unless they mentioned a problem that could be something wrong in the bios. It's easy to say yeah I would have checked the bios very 1st thing (now that you know what the problem was). But after 2 or 3 boots to see what is really happening (hard drive not being recognized maybe) anybody who knows anything about computers would check the bios, after disabling the useless logo screen. It also depends on what they told the techs was wrong.

@Gorky: Most techs maybe, but most GOOD techs would. I even disable it on Apples when I have issues booting a OS X mac.

Ok, this may sound bad, but wouldnt you find an internet computer and google "Operating system not found" ? (Even for most consumers...but techs might also try it)
The first link is Microsoft and it tells you as the first method for repair to check the BIOS.
[support.microsoft.com]

@jackelmatador: "Sure go ahead and reset that bios, unless of course they have a raid setup"

I take it as an article of faith that anyone smart enough to be running RAID drives is smart enough to not have to use Geek Squad. Or at least I hope so.

to the people who say "get a mac"-

They are great computers. However, the chances of a drive failing are just as likely as in a windows computer (same hardware). Today alone I had to replace 3 macbook hard drives because they failed mounting tests and had unrepairable bad blocks (all seagate momentus 120gb coincidentally).

If you don't backup your stuff, you deserve whatever comes your way. I hate people who blame the technicians for not being able to recover their stuff, and then blame them for "breaking" their computer. I guess it's just part of the job

Whenever someone tells me about their computer troubles I always give them tips and even offer them help before they even goto GeekSquad.

You have to admit, Best Buy/CC have this corner of the market nailed pretty well, whenever someone has a PC problem, it's off to the geeksquad it goes! It's all I ever hear.

@NigerianScammer:

that's part of what is great about being good, is that you're good. I get most of my consulting spread by word of mouth. when you can setup/repair something in an hour or two that took BB/CC 3-5 hours unsuccessfully, people will spread your name like nothing else. honesty is also something that people haven't experienced before, and it's the only way I work

ps-your name is ironically funny

Everyone realizes that BB, CC, and others pay these guys like $7/hour. You are not going to get an a "l33t" tech for $7/hr. Now if they paid 40-50k/yr and only hired seasoned techs (who would be tested on such things) or at least one such guy to go over what the monkeys cant fix then this stuff would get fixed.

I've watched the video and a few comments to add.

First - a clicking hard drive, regardless of bios settings, is generally a bad sign. As a tech, I would still have advised the customer to get a new drive.

Second - asking the end user what they did is quite often fruitless. Don't get me wrong, sometimes you might get a gem of info but usually you won't.

Why? Two reason - users lie and users don't know what they did. Users lie because they don't want to admit they are the ones responsible. If they do that, then they look like idiots. When someone wakes up to find out that the CD-ROM wasn't *REALLY* a coffee cup holder, they get mad. At themselves mostly, but they lash out. So, to avoid looking stupid, they will say "nope, didn't do anything."

As for users not knowing, it's not an insult to their intelligence or computing skills but people just do not think about it. I had another issue where a user was complaining certain keys weren't working in some DOS based program. I asked him when the last time he remembered it worked and what changed since then. The answer was simple, "It worked two weeks ago, but nothing has changed since then." That "nothing changed" was really the fact he installed Bonzai Buddy which for some odd reason was capturing most of the function keystrokes.

I am reminded of a story where I had a user who's keyboard mysteriously stopped working. First question, "Did you spill something in your keyboard?" "No." Follow up, "Are you sure?" "Yes, nothing was spilled." Flip the keyboard over and out comes his entire 20oz coffee. His response, "Oh, I might have spilled a little bit."

I'm not saying Geeksquad or Firedog is good. In fact, in most cases they're horrible since they are "cookie-cutter" techs taught to follow steps A-Z, and that's it. And while computers can be fixed using that pattern, it's not quite as elegant or non-destructive as true logical thinking. It's the nature of applying the assembly line to logical thinking jobs.

In conclusion, I'm glad that people are trying to show the difference between the little guy and the cookie cutter crap out there but I don't think it was necessarily a fair test.

To fix it, first include more shops. Three is nice, but I have a feeling that they might have found the same results from some of the local guys. Next, make the problem more realistic. Sure, a user can get into the bios and accidentally turn off an IDE channel, but is it really likely? Over ten years of supporting users both at home and in business and never once have I seen this. I have, however, seen tons of people delete key files, rename directories by accident, and even find out the hard way that RJ11 are not the same as RJ45.

@Gorky: Agreed.

@MaelstromRider: No. You are wrong. Why would you go fiddling around with BIOS settings if the user said they didn't change anything? If the news people are going to lie, their whole premise is blown.

It doesn't surprise me at all that Microcenter knew what was up while BB and CC totally dropped the ball. My husband built a computer this summer and while he ordered most of the parts online, he had to go to Microcenter for a few things and they were always super helpful. Could be because they get commission so they have some incentive to actually help you (for the salespeople at least).

@parad0x360: But it was all FREE! And that's being a good consumer!

I didn't watch the video (at work), but I don't think that my first train of thought would be the BIOS. I think I would have suspected the OS.
If it was the disconnected cable thing that these news teams like to do, I would have noticed that only after popping the case.

Remember, if all you have is a hammer all problems look like a nail.

When will people learn. RETAIL STORE TECHS ARE THE LOWEST RUNG ON THE IT SERVICE TOTUM POLE - even your 10 y/o nephew is more reliable/knowledgeable!

are people seriously defending a computer technician/repairman who cant detect a bios problem? really?