Retek 9500 borked and just out of warranty

Lo

Not a happy bunny. Bought a 9500 from Retek ebay site but didn't have chance to test it as I was in France for three weeks just after purchasing it and when I returned my little brother had managed to blow my PSU somehow using the machine, taking out motherboard meaning RMAing both parts and surviving using my laptop/uni machines. Well, they've been returned and work fine with my old GF2MX and friend's ti4200. Tried putting in the 9500.... weird primary colour pattern on screen, huge blocks, nothing like bootup/bios screen at all when turning machine on. Tried resetting mobo bios, monitor wouldn't even turn on. So, the card's borked. I'm also three days outside the 30 day warranty period. Man, am I not happy. Any ideas what to do? Any idea if Retek are very strict on this warranty?

Contact Retek in the first instance and explain nicely. They may be feeling nice - you never know. If you have a PCI card you can try booting with that - with the 9500 still in place (set the BIOS to use the PCI VGA card first) and try re-flashing the BIOS on the card. But it's probably dead.

If all else fails you could give your brother a good kicking ;)

Grr, now there's some driver error meaning that it won't boot into Windows with the MX back in there, even though safe-mode works and I've tried system restore... plus just how long does Scandisk take on a 160gb volume? :(

To add insult to injury, my laptop's decided to 'lose' half its RAM. I tried opening it up to check the seating and had a nightmare putting the thing back together whilst completely failing to find the ram, let alone check it. I lost all sound and the mouse pad/stick! After about four hours of playing, pushing, prodding I think I've finally sorted it all out and all the connectors are properly seated and I've got sound/mouse back, but I sure was gentle screwing the screws back in once everything had come back. The RAM's back too.... if it keeps on happening I'll see how good Dell warranties are.

Right, off to reinstall Windows on my main rig and phone Retek tomorrow/Monday :( Sometimes computers are far far more trouble than they're worth.

i had the same problem on my 9500 card from them so i sent it back to get it replaced and the sent my the wrong card as a replacement so this time i have asked for a refund just hope they give me one.


they seem to have very good customer support though so send them an e-mail saying you have just got back from france and installed the card but it doesn't work so can you exchange it.

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Originally Posted by mt50

i had the same problem on my 9500 card from them so i sent it back to get it replaced and the sent my the wrong card as a replacement so this time i have asked for a refund just hope they give me one.


they seem to have very good customer support though so send them an e-mail saying you have just got back from france and installed the card but it doesn't work so can you exchange it.

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I had to send him back an ATI 9700 Pro 128mb(USA). It was bad from day one.
He sent me another.
The guys sells so many, and has such excellent feedback. I really wonder if
he has time to do more than fire up the card for a minute to verify they are good
(if that even).

I kinda think it's not worth it for him to be too hard nosed about it. Explain in full how you verified that it was faulty and not just something on your side.

I'm almost sure if you are nice about it...he will send you another (make it a good sob story).

Caslon

I've had to change a couple of things with them and they've been fine. I always speak to carol first before emailing. I don't know if it makes a difference but always feel that it's harder to say no to a 'real' person than it is to fob off an email.

Sounds like the memory on the card has had it, in which case there's no chance of you being able to fix it - needs replacing.