No! Not again!

It’s just been a week, since I set up my PlatiniumV2 in the working order by installing Windows 7 Release Candidate and Ubuntu 9.04 after getting my graphics card (A Palit ATi Radeon X800 GTO, 256 MB DDR) repaired. And, it seems like I am going to be in trouble again.

What actually happened before:

When I previously installed Windows 7 Beta, around at the starting of March, I noticed that in a few days a weird kind of horizontal lines started appearing on my screen. The problem was visible not only on 7 but also on Ubuntu. A few days later, my system started to reboot within a minute of loading windows or linux. And I did some diagnostics and found out that my graphics cards was the only culprit.

But, I was not too worried for it was under the warranty period and could easily have it replaced from the service center. So, I deposited it to my engineer for getting it replaced from Nehru Place. In a few days I got to know that the guys at the service center declined to replace it by saying that it wasn’t under warranty period for it had only one-year warranty not a 3-year one that I have been thinking. They said the 3-year warranty was optional and had to be acquired by paying an amount of Rs. 1000 at the time of purchase of the card. But I was certain that it had a 3-year warranty as I had packing box of the card kept with me with a label on it that said: “3-year Techcom Warranty”.

So, I sent that box too to the engineer. And to add to my troubles, my engineer’s accomplice, who had the box with him, lost it :(. All of these events were happening while I was revising for IIT JEE 2009 (which held on April 12) in March and the start of April. After the JEE, I lost my patience and bought a temporary graphics card (read the news section of this post: https://techglider.in/post/2009/04/30/surprise-and-some-news/). And I was forced to use pirated version of Windows XP without having any other way to go.

After appearing for AIEEE exam I was feeling very relaxed and so set out to have my graphics card replaced on my own as I was sure they couldn’t deny to replace it as it had a serial no. printed on it and I could let them check their records for confirming that it had a 3-year warranty period. So, after a lot of troubles in retrieving my graphics card from my engineer (I missed my train in the process), I reached Nehru Place.

On visiting the Techcom Service Center, I was informed that they could not replace the graphics card. This time the reason was different: it didn’t have a Techcom Warranty sticker on it that shows the month & year of purchase. I was dumbstruck and moved out. I tried to contact my engineer but for some reason the call couldn’t be connected. I was pretty amazed at my situation. All my efforts to replace the graphics card had gone in vain. I could contact my engineer next day and told him that the sticker was lost while the graphics card was with his accomplice. He offered to buy me a new graphics card. I have always been so grateful to this person. I know him for almost 6 years now. And much of my initial knowledge about system administration and hardware I received was because of him. And now, because he couldn’t get my graphics card replaced, he was offering to pay for a new graphics card for me.

But I was not ready on the idea of him buying me a new card as I saw it as my ingratitude for all he had done for me. And after some time, I happened to meet Dinesh, who has computer parts repair shop at Shiva Tower, for the repair of motherboard of my previous Pentium III system. An idea flashed into my mind and I asked him whether he could repair a graphics card too. And it was like a great relief when he said yes, for in Ghaziabad, there are neither many suppliers nor many interested customers for graphics cards. I gave my card to him and after 2-3 days he repaired it and yeah, it worked.

Now the sad part of the story:

It’s just 9th day since I got my graphics card back and it’s showing the same problem again although at its initial stage. I don’t know what I am going to do with this graphics card now. Perhaps, time to meet Dinesh again…

-Kartik