Motherboard tatoo, code purple tatoo, bios tatoo, HP tatoo
Tuesday 29 November 2011 at 10:54 am. Used tags: pc_hardware
HP has engaged in the practice of linking a ‘tatoo’ or serial number between their motherboards and their recovery partitions. This means that hardware changes can prevent their computers from proper recovery. This makes it important to use an HP approved hardware service company to do a motherboard replacement, or anything leading to tatoo changes.
I would love to describe how the technical means of defeating the ‘code purple’, but with the cost of computers these days, it is cheaper to buy a new one. For example, I had a customer that had a one year old HP laptop computer, that upon inspection seemed to have a major problem. So we called HP and told them we needed a warranty repair. They sent Fed-Ex to pick it up, replaced the motherboard, and sent it back, all while leaving the contents of the Hard Drive intact. (They make no warranty of this happening)
On the other side of the one year warranty, if the computer had lost the motherboard, it would not have been worth fixing. Generally we are going to charge between $ 400 and $ 800 to replace a motherboard. So go buy a new computer.
