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PC World repair job leaves family seeing blue

'Brand-spanking new' hard-drive contained animal porn

By Kelly Fiveash • Get more from this author

Posted in IT Channel, 26th March 2007 12:39 GMT

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PC World is at the centre of a row after animal porn was found on a hard drive installed during a repair to an 11 year-old's laptop

According to a report in the Dundee-based Courier, Kenneth Morris was playing games on his repaired Philips laptop when graphic images of a woman and a dog popped up on the screen.

Kenneth's parents had taken the machine to PC World in Dundee where they had originally bought it last December after it had developed a fault.

The boy's father, Kenny Morris, who collected the repaired machine, was told by PC World that a "brand spanking new" hard-drive had been installed on the laptop.

However, Morris told the Courier that "my son was on the laptop the next day and there were porn images with animals and women flashing up. It's pretty sick. This was serious stuff and you're talking about an 11-year-old boy."

An infuriated Morris claimed that PC World later admitted a second-hand hard-drive had been used for the repair.

Despite having paid for insurance on the laptop, Morris said he is still waiting for a replacement machine for his son over a week since he alerted PC World to the incident.

He told the Courier: "They are selling these insurance policies and are lying to people. They said the hard drive was new."

However, PC World told El Reg that it had not yet been able to gain access to the laptop in order to carry out an investigation to determine what went wrong.

PC World spokesperson Hamish Thomson said "we'll be in a much better position later today" when the Morris family is expected to hand the laptop over to the computer company.

He said the incident was "a matter of extreme concern" and if an investigation shows PC World is at fault it will "take the appropriate action" to ensure such an incident cannot happen again.

Thomson also added that "it is not uncommon" for a second-hand part to be used in a PC World repair, but it was his understanding with this particular case that a new hard-drive should have been used. ®

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