Preparing a Microsoft Surface RT for RMA Return: Destroy That Data!

Whatever was failing in our one Microsoft Surface RT would not let us run a Refresh or a Restore to Factory routine. The unit would fail out after about five to ten minutes when it came time to reboot.

So, we were a bit hamstrung when it came to the “How” to wipe it before dropping it into the shipping box.

When initially playing with the units after setting up the Microsoft ID on them there was a point where it would force a BitLocker Unlock after a reboot on too many password tries.

We ended up having to try something like 20 or 30 times before the defective unit finally insisted that it would reboot and require the BitLocker Unlock Key.

Post reboot it had the BitLocker Unlock Key request screen.

It also offered to reset the unit to defaults with a partial or full wipe of the unit’s storage. Since the full restore process would fail from within the OS we tried it here and it worked.

The full wipe process took a _long_ time. However, once it was done we were presented with the “Choose a theme” screen one sees the first time a Microsoft Surface is fired up.

We are now confident that there is nothing left in the way of personal data on that unit.

Off it goes.

When we first picked these units up there was a good amount of excitement around them and the prospect of picking up a Surface Pro when it became available.

After our experiences with the flaky nature, as expected with a v1 product, of the Surface RT we will be hard pressed to be first in line for a Surface Pro.

We are of the mind that we will look to established Tier 1 product vendors such as Toshiba for anything ultraportable going forward.

For now, we have a Toshiba Satellite U920t slated as replacement for the Surface RT and Acer TravelMate TM6593G used at home.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

Windows Live Writer

Microsoft Surface RT RMA Woes Continue

Wow ... all I can say is wow.

When it came to getting an RMA situation resolved Asus was at the top of the list for being the most painful to deal with.

Trying to get Monique’s Surface RT replaced has now supplanted that feat that has been held by Asus for five years now.

After a huge number of times trying to get things started on the myservice.surface.com site a tweet from @Surface said to go here:

See that little red box?

I can’t for the life of me figure out why my phone number, now running at least a half dozen to a dozen permutations, is not being accepted. Note the distinct lack of “you need to do this” or “Error because ...”

At this point the words that come to mind are not of polite company. :P

One should _NOT_ have to go through such grief to get a replacement unit for a defective product.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

Windows Live Writer

Intel Server System SR1695GPRX Server Board R&R Process

The process of doing a Remove & Replace for warranty purposes on an Intel SR1695GPRX is well documented in the Service Guide . . . well almost.

We put together a new SR1695GPRX for a specific purpose and found that one of the memory banks was bad on the board.

We have the replacement board in hand from Intel today and when we went to R&R the board we found a bit of a puzzle not found in the Intel Service Guide:

On the back of the server board that came with the Intel Server System was the silver plate that the 1U heat sink would mount to. After a few trial presses the plate looked to be in there quite solidly.

So, we experimented to see just what was keeping that plate stuck to the board.

It turned out that there was a thin gasket like material between the board and the plate. With a blunt object we used a bit of leverage at one edge of the board to push down on the heat sink mount peg from the top of the board.

It took a bit of effort but we were rewarded with a snapping sound and sure enough there was a thin layer of some sort of glue holding the two together.

Same pressure to the other plate peg and we were half way there. We were good to go with a bit of gentle prying using our fingers to get the other two pegs to break free.

Please note that the amount of leverage/pressure to be used may depend on the amount of time the whole setup was in production. This particular one was pretty much right out of the box so we were rewarded after just a bit of effort.

• Intel Server System SR1695GPRX Service Guide

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Product Review: Update – 120GB OCZ Nocti Died :(

Go figure, our first OCZ mSATA product, the 120GB Nocti that went into our new Toshiba Portege Z830 Ultrabook died sometime during the night.

We had set up Windows 7 Enterprise, all of our apps, and domain configurations a few days prior.

The Ultrabook was staying at a client site since we were going to be back early the following morning.

The last thing to be done on that Ultrabook prior to leaving was to initiate a BitLocker encryption of the entire drive.

Sometime during that process the drive outright died.

The RMA process on OCZ’s Web Site requires us to create a ticket before making any efforts to get in touch.

NOTE: If advanced swap is going to be a part of the RMA process make sure to put that in the ticket’s notes _first_ or things just do not go too well.

Intel, Kingston, and Crucial have one up on OCZ: Real people on this continent (almost for Intel) that answer the phone.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Seagate Updates Their Bare Drive Product Warranty Periods

We received notification that Seagate is reducing the warranty periods on most of their hard drive product lines.

Update to Seagate Bare Drive Product Warranty Periods

Dear Philip,

At Seagate, we are standardizing warranty terms to be more consistent with those commonly applied throughout the consumer electronics and technology industries. By aligning to current industry standards, Seagate can continue to focus its investments on technology innovation and unique product features that drive value for our customers rather than holding long-term reserves for warranty returns.

Therefore, effective December 31, 2011, Seagate will be changing its warranty policy from 5 years to 3 years for nearline drives, 2 years to 1 year for certain desktop and notebook bare drives (5 years to 3 years on Barracuda® XT and Momentus® XT), and from as much as 5 years to 2 years on Consumer Electronics (see table below.)

The new warranty periods will apply to all shipments of applicable products, as of December 31, 2011. Former warranty periods will be honored for all existing channel inventory shipped to you before the effective date. To check the warranty status of a single or multiple drives, you may visit http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/warranty_&_returns_assistance.

Seagate will update its Global Limited Warranty Overview Policy as of December 31, 2011 specifically documenting these changes. The limited warranty included in your agreement with Seagate will continue to apply to these products under the new warranty periods.
Please share the warranty change information with your end customers as you sell your inventory. If you mention warranties online or in printed material, don't forget to update that as well.

As always, we believe in strong communication with our channel partners and appreciate your support and loyalty. Please do not hesitate to contact us via reseller.partner@seagate.com if you have any questions, comments, or need any other type of assistance or information regarding the Seagate Partner Program.

Seagate Technology LLC 10200 South DeAnza Boulevard, Cuptertino, CA 95014 USA
If you would no longer like to receive emails from Seagate, visit here.
© 2011 Seagate Technology LLC. All rights reserved. Seagate, Seagate Technology, the Wave logo are registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC in the United States and/or other countries. Barracuda, Constellation, Momentus, Pipline HD and SV35 Series are trademarks or registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC or one of its affiliated companies in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Seagate reserves the right to change, without notice, product offerings or specifications..

As is indicated in the above e-mail from Seagate most drive warranties will be 3 years for the enterprise class SATA and high end SATA lines. Seagate SAS looks to be holding in at the current level of five years.

• Seagate Cheetah 15K.7 Product Data Sheet (PDF)

From that Data Sheet we see the following:

Since we have stopped deploying servers with SATA based drives, with only near-line exceptions made for archive type purposes, we are not too concerned with the warranty period changes.

System Builders

System Builders that provide their own warranties for systems going out the door may need to take notice of these changes as the cost of adding a second and/or third year warranty to desktop systems may need to be changed accordingly.

This is especially true in that the failure rate for RMA replacement green label drives that come back from Seagate are substantially higher than new drives in our experience. So, keeping a number of new drives around for warranty replacement needs is something we factor into our extended warranty costs.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

One Slipped By – AOpen S145A Mini-ITX Chassis Fail

A while back we posted about our experience with A-Open’s S145A Mini-ITX chassis that we picked up with a bunch of Intel Mini-ITX boards.

• MPECS Inc. Blog: AOpen S145A Mini-ITX Chassis – Total Fail

Well, one slipped by as we received a call from a client in the middle of last week that one of their systems had seemingly died on them.

It turned out to be one of the systems we deployed with the AOpen S145A Mini-ITX case. The power supply fans are quite weak on them with the PSU actually burning out.

When we contacted AOpen for a replacement power supply, fan, or even case they referred us to our Canadian distribution points for RMA purposes. We surmise that distribution dropped them as quick as they did due to this particular problem coming back to them.

With distribution dropping the S145A AOpen would not give us _any_ warranty support at all. So, we ended up replacing _all_ of the S145A cases with Antec Minuet 350 cases that we have had a lot of success with.

The whole mess ended up costing us a lot in terms of money and time lost replacing all of those cases.

With system building being a part of our business model we have always been quite particular about the system configurations we send out the door.

• Intel processors and boards.
• Kingston or Crucial RAM
• Antec cases
• Seagate hard drives
• Intel SSD drives
• Lite-On optical
• ATI/AMD video

The above recipe has served us quite well with the exception of the Seagate firmware bug we were hit with a year or two ago. We ended up swapping out quite a few AS and NS drives. However, Western Digital was not without their problems for the high end systems built on the Raptor and VelociRaptor drives either.

So, in the end, we have learned a very expensive lesson: Stick with what we know and run with it never looking back!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

SATA Drives in Dell And HP Servers Only Have 1 Year Warranty

As of March 24, 2009, Dell changed their warranty policies for entry level servers. Essentially, no matter what the length of the warranty is with that new Dell PowerEdge server that has SATA drives, those drives are only covered for one year from the date of purchase.

• Dell Limited Warranties

Check out the last bullet under the “How long does this limited hardware warranty last?” section.

SATA hard drives in PowerEdge^TM , PowerEdge SC^TM  and PowerVault^TM  systems launched on or after March 24, 2009 (e.g. PowerEdge T110, PowerEdge T310, PowerEdge T410, PowerEdge T610, PowerEdge T710, PowerEdge R210, PowerEdge R410, PowerEdge R510, PowerEdge R610, PowerEdge R710, PowerEdge M610, PowerEdge M710 and PowerVault NX300) carry the lesser of either a 1-year limited hardware warranty or the length of the limited hardware warranty for the Dell system with which the SATA hard drive is shipped. Service offerings may be available to extend the SATA hard drive warranty period on these systems for an additional fee.

Note the last line. An extended warranty for those drives can be obtained for a fee.

Apparently HP has also been doing this too.

• HP Q&A: What is the warranty period for a SATA drive?

A1. SATA hard drives have a one year warranty regardless of the warranty period for the system in which they are installed. Please see the below information for additional services.

Be prepared to not be surprised by this situation and make the client aware that this is the case so they are not surprised if a drive fails and they need to pay for it.

The other possibility is to look into the manufacturer’s extended warranty and support options before purchasing.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Lenovo x61 Tablet and other problems ...

This has been a pretty tough week already. And, Lenovo is definitely not contributing to the happiness factor right now. :(

Our one client is continuing to have nothing but grief with their Lenovo X61 tablet (previous blog post). After a number of on-site visits by the warranty contractor that included a number of motherboard and hard drive changes, Lenovo will not stand by their product and supply our client with a new unit.

They have lost untold hours of productivity across over a month now. Relatively, those costs have translated into the ability to have purchased a new unit several times over by now.

So, ultimately, what value have they received for the purchase of the extra on-site warranty and time extension? -$$$$.$$

We have another client where one of the managing partners has picked up a Trojan on their Lenovo laptop. The unit is around a year old now.

The security setup in the Lenovo software does not allow us to provide Remote Assistance, or even connect to the laptop via RDP. Now, there may be a setting in the security software setup to allow for these services, but it has not been found yet.

The partner has moved to an identical laptop where that machine's user is now on vacation.

Caveat: Once the Lenovo user has initiated and secured the laptop to their fingerprint, no one else can sign into that laptop. Again, this may be a software setting in the Lenovo security software, but we have not found it yet.

So, we need to change the vacationing user's password so that the partner can gain access to the network, then connect to their Outlook profile via OWA as a temporary measure. This means that we will be getting a phone call from the vacationing user as soon as they try and RWW or OWA into the system.

Tie these experiences into our recovery struggles on the Lenovo laptops here, and here, and we are definitely none too pleased with Lenovo's products and their (lack of) product support.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

SBS and Intel SE7520JR2 Warranty Replacement Experience

One of the worst warranty replacement experiences for us ever was when we needed to replace a defective Intel SE7505VB2 on a production SBS 2000 server.

Needless to say, things did not go very well. We made sure to have the replacement board's BIOS level and settings identical to the outgoing board.

Once we had things back together and the OS was booting, we hit a BSOD ... and hit a BSOD ... and hit a BSOD.

Nothing we did brought the server back. We even put the defective board back into the system (on board RAID controller was flaky) and tried to get the server back up.

We ended up spending a huge chunk of time in recovery mode to bring back that SBS 2K server.

This time around, there was a little of that "once bitten" fear for this particular project.

We are working on a 2U, SR2400 series chassis with the SE7520JR2 board in it. The board's USB ports are done for. Nothing USB would be recognized in the OS.

Once we swapped the board out, we booted the system up and were greeted with a BIOS beep code of 3. This error indicates a problem with memory.

We reseated the 4 x 1GB Kingston sticks of RAM and tried again. Still, we received the 3 beep code.

We ended up pulling 2GB out of the server to see if that worked and it did.

For whatever reason, Intel shipped this board to us with the factory original BIOS installed once we were into it.

So, we booted to a USB flash drive with the current BIOS on it and flashed away.

After booting back into the new BIOS, we changed the settings as appropriate and rebooted again. We shut the server down as soon as we saw the POST screen.

In went the extra sticks of RAM. After firing up the server and the diagnostic LEDs started dancing we knew we were in.

This time around, we now have a happy SBS 2K3 Premium SP1 server back online. *phew*

And, our USB ports are now working.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.