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Please help me diagnose this terrible malaise
I was running out of space on my HP Pavilion 17-ab008no and asked my technician whether it was possible to upgrade my laptop by switching the original SSD 128GB with a corresponding one with greater capacity. He said yes and asked me to go purchase a Samsung EVO 860 500GB, which I did. Alongside the original SSD mentioned above, this laptop came with a 1TB HDD drive. I told my technician that I kept Dropbox, OneDrive, and my Adobe Creative Cloud applications (including several third-party plugins) on that drive.
Please note that besides running out of space, I never had any performance issues with this laptop before. I own several computers, and this HP Pavilion was my absolute favorite — a steady, dependable, and powerful workhorse that's given me nothing but joy.
Well. When I got my computer back, it took me six minutes to log into it, and once I'd logged into it, nothing worked. My technician had installed the Samsung EVO 860 500GB alongside the original SSD, removed the original 1TB HDD, and placed it in an external hard drive cabinet. When I told him the computer wasn't functioning anymore, he couldn't understand it and felt I was questioning his know-how and blaming him unfairly. I told him that it'd been a mistake to take the HDD out, as it was the home of several heavy applications, all of which were configured to run at startup. Before I relinquished the laptop back to him, I changed that configuration so that neither Dropbox, OneDrive, or Adobe Creative Cloud applications would run at startup.
My technician, being in possession of my computer once again, couldn't understand what I'd been complaining about. The computer was working just fine! I tried, once again, to explain the thing about the applications on the HDD and reminded him I'd altered the configuration so as to facilitate booting. I asked him to simply remove the original SSD and to return the HDD to its original place. Instead of doing so, and without consulting me about his plans, he went ahead and purchased a better SSD. He explained that the original SSD was an M.2, so he bought a Kingston A200 SSD M.2 500GB and mounted it in place of the Samsung EVO 860 he’d asked me to buy. Instead of returning the original HDD to its place, he decided to go buy a better HDD, a Samsung EVO 870 SSD M.2 1TB. The original HDD he placed in the external hard drive cabinet.
Of course it ended up with me paying for the new components and compensating him for his overtime.
When my technician finally returned my laptop, its display was not working properly anymore. It flickers, flashes, goes dark, displays vertical lines, you name it. I've run several diagnostic tests, updated GPU drives and tried lots of other troubleshooting steps, all to no avail. I believe the problem is of a mechanical nature, probably a loose cable or something. My technician has personal problems and won’t return my messages. I’ve not been able to use my computer for over a month now.
I’m hesitant to surrender my laptop to a new technician as it contains lots of personal and confidential information on both drives. If the problem is indeed of a mechanical nature, I could encrypt the two drives, but before I do so I must be sure as to whether my diagnose is correct. So I wonder, would you please take a look at this video — Lydia's Pavilion Flickering Display 720p - YouTube — and tell me what you think? Thank you in advance!
Windows 10 Home
20H2
OS Build 19.042-928
Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.551.0
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