"I own a Dell INSPIRON zino HD 400 which had a lockup problem - the computer shut off completely while running normally - no obvious indication of overheating (fan noise). When it happened the monitor screen would go black like there's no computer connected at all, no response from keyboard/mouse, power button stays lit but doesn't turn off or even respond (the only way to turn it off is to unplug it). I took it to the North location of Discount Electronics in Austin, TX for repair and carefully explained these symptoms.
When the repair dept. phoned me with their diagnosis, they said that the hard drive had a "malicious virus" and the best solution would be to replace it and reload the operating system (OS), for which they would charge me $179.00 (plus tax, of course). Since I already had a new OEM hard drive, I declined their offer to repair and instead paid their $27.06 diagnostic fee. Although I am no computer tech, I found it relatively easy to replace the hard drive. While I was reloading the OS, the same problem occurred AGAIN. This puzzled me since the new hard drive had not yet even finished loading the OS from the mfg. provided "recovery disk", and certainly had not yet had an opportunity to download a virus from anywhere. That made me think that the Discount Electronics diagnosis of the problem might be in error. SO, I went online and Googled my problem description, and to my surprise there was a whole section at the Dell website devoted to a discussion of this very problem.
The problem in a nutshell appears to be that the 400 model of this computer has/had an overheating problem that affected the video card which is hard wired to the motherboard. It appears that Dell became aware of the flaw early on, as they redesigned the motherboard, and with little fanfare continued selling the INSPIRON zino 410 (which to my knowledge completely solved this problem). However, the tech wizards at Discount Electronics apparently did NOT do this research since their recommendation had nothing to do with the actual problem. I replaced the motherboard with a Dell OEM and instigated a "cool running" protocol. Since doing so the computer has worked perfectly. Had I actually paid Discount Electronics to replace the hard drive, I would have been out the $179 (plus tax) AND still have had a malfunctioning computer. So, I went back to Discount and asked for a refund of my $27.06 diagnostic fee -- since their diagnosis was obviously wrong. But their tech stuck to his original diagnosis and said that they WOULD NOT REFUND the diagnostic fee.
Epilogue - After replacing the motherboard, I put the ORIGINAL hard drive (the one that Discount Electronics said was fatally compromised by a malicious virus) back into the unit and it continues to work perfectly to this day. So unless the virus disappeared on its own, it appears that, in fact, there never was anything wrong with the original hard drive. I understand that everyone can make a mistake from time to time, but my beef with Discount Electronics is that they would not admit their error or refund the money for their erroneous diagnosis. I would not recommend Discount Electronics to anyone.
"