Laptop Rises from Dead: Ants Lose

[Frank James]

I am pleased to report that my Lenovo Y-470 notebook, which was effectively destroyed by the work of small black ants nesting on the motherboard, has come back to life. After being blown off with a ridiculous service quote from the official Lenovo Service Center, I took the machine to a small independent repair shop upstairs in Pantip Plaza, Chiang Mai. As promised, they cleaned it up and got it running again, with no loss of data or image quality. They also fixed a broken hinge, which seems to be a weak spot in Lenovo notebook design. One of the memory modules blew out , so I bought another one, bringing it back up to 8 gb. You can't ever have too much Random Access Memory. Total bill was 5000 baht, which I think is more than reasonable. It's probably against forum rules to give the name of the shop, but I will respond to a private message. I recommend them most highly.

The Samsung ATIV notebook I bought while I was getting the Lenovo fixed was fine until I decided to "upgrade" from the preinstalled, licensed Windows 8 to Windows 8.1. They force you to open a "Microsoft Account", by adopting a password containing numbers, caps, symbols, and lower case letters. Now every time I boot up I have to consult a piece of paper with the difficult to remember password. And before I can log onto my network if keeps running these popups about all these various MS-created applications trying to access the internet, and do they have my "permission"? RIDICULOUS! The only difference I can see about this "upgrade" is they are trying to prod you into their "app store". Sorry I did this. This machine will now be reserved for travel use, and my Lenovo with good old, soon-to-be-un-supported Windows 7, will be my workhorse.

If you see ants crawling toward your laptop, liquidate them, by any means necessary.

[Jiu-Jitsu]

Look here to get back to your local account.

[Crossy]

Result!

I've locked the original thread with a link to this one.

By all means give the shop a plug

[infinity11]

The fat/oil/greese eating ants probably like the flux used in the soldering.

congratulations

[Frank James]

The Global Moderator says it's OK to plug the repair shop, which I am happy to do:

Chiang Mai Notebook Service

Pantip Plaza 2nd Floor Room 2125

Chiang Mai 50100

Owner: Kiatchai Kaewnan

Te: 084-1511684 080-6723414

They work on all brands, including Apple. They also fix MP3 players. Good guys.

I think that having so many IT savvy young people, skilled in every area from phone to tablets to mainframes, is one of this country's greatest assets. If my computer had flamed out in America, the cost of fixing it would probably have been prohibitive. First, I would have to find a shop that would deign to even look at it, then have them tell me how backed up they are, ("Oh Dude, we're slammed!") won't get to it for a couple of weeks at least, could be anything, can't really give ya an estimate, just hafta pop the hood and see...

But here, I got an estimate, which was adhered to, quick service, and the machine is good as new. Maybe they can bring yours back to life. Chok dee.

[DogNo1]

You can setup Win 8.1 to log on to your Microsoft account by using a 4-digit PIN. Check in control panel. Incidentally, you can access control panel and a lot of other Windows functions by simultaneously pressing the Windows and X keys.

[tfc]

One of the things that I love about this country - when my laptop has a problem instead of suggesting I buy another they fix it and for a fair price.

[Pib]

Look here to get back to your local account.

Heck, I don't even have Win 8 (on Win 7) but it sure seems Microsoft could be less sneaky during the account setup process.

[Frank James]

The fix suggested above re changeing account settings works as advertised, except...if you have set it up to log onto your (unwanted) MS Live account by using your email address, it won't allow you to set up a local account using the same email address. I only have one, and don't want another, so---roadblock, for now.

However, I have made progress in eliminating those "security" popups. It seems those are originated by Symantec/Norton, which came preloaded into the machine. I have had various incarnations of what used to be called "Norton Utilities" since the '80's, when a guy named Peter Norton was the actual owner. It was a nifty, compact set of useful applications in those primitive days of yore. Since then it has become overpowering bloatware, which sets itself up as the Absolute gatekeeper of your system. This thing was firing so many of these crazy permission (same ones over and over!) requests that the hotel network I am on interpreted it as multiple users trying to log onto my single user account, and shut me out.

I went into control panel and uninstalled this dictator, and so far so good, popups gone. I want an anti-virus setup that runs quietly in the background, and doesn't try to run my show. Kaspersky does a decent job on my other machine, although it acts up at times, telling me that its own files and database are "corrupt." There's an online fix for that.

As for the Windows 8.1 "upgrade", I think it is primarily aimed at getting you to buy from their "app store", and then sometime soon to get you hooked up with their "cloud" service, which I will NEVER use, unless they quit making hard drives. Sorry this got into geek territory, and strayed from topic somewhat.

[avander]

Technology: 1 Critters: 0

Congratulations!

[Pib]

Technology: 1 Critters: 0

Congratulations!

More like Technology: 1, Critters: 1, since technology merely recaptured the motherboard earlier overrun by the critters. The critters are already planning their next attack...in fact, have you checked your computer lately for signs of critter scouts? They are masters of stealth...you usually don't notice the critters until you are being overrun or when pressing the power-on button results in little to no response.

Yeap, Technology 1 battle won; Critters 1 battle won...the war continues.