I have a laptop that's just gone out of warranty - very sad. I have an extra two years warranty I bought with the machine - hooray. I rang them and have almost decided it's not worth it. They'' look at the machine - but if not faulty it's my charge. And it will take two weeks. As this is the system I work on I simply don't have the luxury of letting it go that long. So I thought I'd see if anyone here has any wisdom on what to do next.
My laptop was less than 100% - and eventually died. I decided it had done two years - so I'd do a full reinstall. All went well until I needed to print. I'd forotten to install the printer - and no matter what I did, it wouldn't install. Eventually did a second re-instal - which for some reason just didn't seem to work at all well. I should say at the point the reinstall's are from a backup of the system done when I first got it. Third install and everything's fine - mainly. Once - and only once - it died again. This time I left it doing a slow boot-up - usually there's 10 or so crosses of the progress bar before it presents the login sceen. When it was "dead", it would hang on this. Often there would be a very slow progress - as in minutes per cross of the screen. Sometimes it would go on - sometimes it would die. Usually I just rebooted.
Having this sole incident wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the recent history - I'm afraid to go any further. Any further includes installing a few programs I seldom use (I need one now) - and most importantly, it means reinstalling MS fixes. I have installed FP3 - and IE8 - and a couple of other things required for use. But I've ignored (this time) the many MS fixes. I could go ahead and install them - but apart from the one incident (which I got through fine with a little patience) I'm reluctant to jeopardise the relative reliability.
Every time my system starts up I find myself holding my breath. It's been fine for well over a week. So I figure it's time to move on - but my recent experience has made me gun shy. Any suggestions greatfully received.