So around 3 weeks ago at the end of August I finally gave into to the constant emails, PC update messages and applied for my free upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10. A couple of days later my upgrade was ready. I’ve always trusted Windows and Microsoft and as a result I didn’t check the internet for any download horror stories I just clicked on the upgrade button. Boy they had done a good job in persuading me to make my laptop better.
My laptop was bought from PC world 4 years and 10 months ago and was running windows 7. I only really used it for personal stuff until July, photos, personal accounts, blog posts, you know nothing major just the photos of my family for the past nearly 5 years. I left my corporate job and corporate laptop in July and started running Mrs Mummypenny so my laptop was my lifeline to my online business. I thought the best thing was to download the latest update. I was wrong. The download took a good hour, when it finished and I tried to power up again I got the black screen of death.
I took my laptop to my IT consultant friend John, he could not get the hard drive to stay alive for long enough to get any of the data. I then tried PC world who sent it off to their Knowhow clinic, at a cost of £102 including the attempted data recovery and USB stick I had to supply. I got the message yesterday that the data is irrecoverable. God knows what I have lost and I am angry, really angry with this huge corporation for persuading me to download this update onto a laptop that was not suitable for the upgrade.
I must commend the guys at PC world who sorted me out with a new laptop, as I cannot run my company without it. I can’t even get away from Microsoft windows as its pre-installed on this new laptop. And to add insult to injury I get a pop up every day, yes every day, telling me to upgrade to windows 10. I also have to pay Microsoft £6.99 per month for use of Microsoft office. Grrrrrrr
So over to you Microsoft, how are you going to compensate for the £500 laptop I have just had to buy and all the photos and files I have just lost now irrecoverable on my old laptop?
Tweeting you BTW does not seem to work, as you have advised me to call the helpdesk. I tried but after being on hold for 15 minutes..I gave up. Bad form Microsoft, bad form.
MMP – AKA consumer champion
2 Responses
My IT nerd hubby says there may still be a chance for you to recover the data, so long as there is no physical damage to the hard drive the data should still be on something called the platter, it would need to be done in a clean lab and he says data recovery like this can cost £100-200 per gb. If the hard drive had been formatted you may not get everything back. He doesn’t know the names of any labs but does know its possible. x
Thanks Claire, I have tried 2 IT experts, one friend and one PC World data recovery. Both said the same thing, my hard drive has been killed. It wont power up to even try to extract the files. There is something I can do with PC world for £700 where they can do probably what you suggest. Bad times.