Do you lose warranty when you remove the original OS, ie. Windows

Alright fellow geek tip readers. Here is my first of many tough questions. Please feel free to do some research and have fun with the answers! 

A few months ago, my friend bought a desktop computer in PC World. As he had successfully been using Ubuntu on his laptop, he also asked me to install it on his desktop. We wiped the whole hard drive removing ALL windows partitions so it's not possible to restore it.

Now the computer seems to malfunction. I visited him a few days ago to look into it. The screen freezes sometimes a few times a day. I had thought that it's going to be the video driver, but I'm more inclined to think it's hardware related. I reinstalled Ubuntu (I think the screen froze once during the install). Then it had frozen once before I installed the NVidia prop. blob, and once after I'd done it. Once it freezes, no key shortcuts work. The mouse sometimes works. Each time you need to do the hard reboot to get out of there.

I guess I've got two questions:

1. Do you think PC World is going to accept it, or the warranty is void?
2. What logs would be relevant here to see what the issue is (if it's software related)? I don't have access to the machine but can call my friend to email me the relevant files.

Comments

  1. Anonymous6/21/2010 7:13 PM

    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LinuxLogFiles

    Check the Kernel logs (ones followed by .0, .1, .2 etc are the previous logs).

    Long story short, your hardware warranty should be in tact, but you may have to reinstall windows for them to take it back. The system should have come with restore CDs

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous6/22/2010 1:38 AM

    It's called the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. It's a US Federal Law (this assumes you're in the USA) - see Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty_Act. Long story short, they can't require you to use Windows for your warranty to be valid.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous6/25/2010 11:10 AM

    get a cheap video card and see if it freezes with that. then try and reseat the memory, then leave only one memory module look for errors and repeat. if it still happens after all of that, you have a major hardware problem.

    reinstalling an OS is only making changes to the platters on a HD. this is no different (in theory) than downloading a large file. if it is hardware related, and it sounds like it is, they should cover it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jason McCullough6/27/2010 6:20 PM

    @ Anonymous #1. That is a good point. Re-install Windows from the recovery disc and all warranties should be in tact. If all else fails at least the hardware warranty is still in tact.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Jason McCullough6/27/2010 6:22 PM

    @ Anonymous #2 Thank you so much for posing the link to the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. That is awesome information. That is the information all computer buyers need to know in advance.

    ReplyDelete

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