When things go wrong with the hardware on my computer, I take it to an authorized service dealer for replacement. The service contract covers the cost. It usually means I am without a system for a week, during which time I wander the house aimlessly. It's a good time to catch up on household chores that have been neglected because of the hours spent online playing. I count the days before it's safe to return to my favorite spot in the house: my desk.

In May of this year, I had to take my machine in again for repairs. The computer was crashing constantly, my floppy drive had died, the CPU fan was making a terrible racket and my sound was gone. The technician at the service dealer called to tell me that they had to replace my 2 GB hard drive with an 8 GB one, since 2 GB hard drives are no longer manufactured. Bonus! I was tickled. The floppy drive and the CPU fan were easily replaced. I suggested they just put in an old sound card from their stock, since my computer is low end: while a Sound Blaster or other card would be nice, it is somewhat redundant. I just wanted sound for my granddaughter who uses my computer for her interactive educational software. I can play without sound, and am quite used to it, but to be quite honest I was looking forward to getting sound again. I love the plinking sound of the backgammon chips and the flutter of the cards when I play euchre or crib.

I had my computer home for at least a day before it started acting up again. Since the technician had to install a hard drive, it meant a clean install of all software. My computer, a Pentium I, doesn't like Java and Shockwave. It was a very basic installation: just Windows 98, its upgrades, and my internet service provider's software.

I struggled through with my computer from hell for six months. It was frustrating to say the least. The sound still kicked in and out, the system started giving its usual "illegal operation" and "fatal error" messages. As it accelerated, I called a technician friend in tears. Out of the goodness of his heart, like a white knight, he came to the rescue. He has bailed me out on more than one occasion, since hiring a technician to investigate software glitches runs about $75.00 an hour and is just not within the scope of my budget.

He wiped my hard drive then reformatted and partitioned it in the hope that this would solve the software meltdowns. Windows had its own drive and the few games I play offline were put on a separate partition. Two days later he was back, repeating the process because the crashes continued. We tried to install the sound card driver, to no avail. Windows' online update warned that the driver wasn't safe to install. It kept trying to read my old sound card, the one that had been pulled and supposedly discarded. Illegal operations shut me down over and over again.

I called the computer store that had my service contract. The owner, who was incredibly rude, accused me of lying when I stated that I did not have the drivers for the new card. He informed my technician friend that "any technician worth his salt would install the driver in 10 minutes and if he worked for him and couldn't, he would be fired." We had searched driver databases online, also to no avail.

The next day, my white knight technician friend, who had spent about 10 hours on my computer at this point, came back to try again. For the third time in four days, we wiped and reinstalled. This time he had searched online for my old driver (I turned the original in to the computer store when I picked up my system in May). We installed the old driver. This time we were successful: sound blasted through the speakers. We looked at each other as the same thought that had been in the back of both our minds came to the forefront. My tech friend opened the tower and pulled the card, the same card that had been in my computer since day one. Once again, he wiped the drive and did a clean install. The computer store had defrauded me.

We called the warranty company. At first they did not believe me. I put my A+ certified friend on the phone, and within minutes, I had the authorization to go to a new dealer. I was not impressed. In fact, I was furious. I followed the only recourse I had: I called the police.

The police were surprisingly supportive, but could not help me. Since I personally had not had to pay for the card, it was up to the warranty company to press charges. The computer store had charged me for the technician's time, but since it wasn't on the receipt, I couldn't prove it. The warranty company didn't care very much, they service computers across the country, and one upset customer who could be pacified by finding a new dealer and getting a new sound card just wasn't worth the hassle for them.