My future mother-in-laws laptop kept locking up and shutting down on her after about 6-7 months of owning the unit. She sent it back to Compaq because it was still under warranty and the service report indicated that they had reset the memory and did a BIOS check and that it was tested as working. Shortly after that, the same issue started again. It is still not repaired and the warranty is up. I have already run the System Recovery disk and checked the memory. The fans are all working nad the unit does not appear to be overheating. It has stopped the random shut downs, but now it will lock up and the screen will become a mess of jagged lines and distorted imagery. I am thinking of either the board or the memory needing to be replaced at this point.

Appeal this to Compaq... as it is still part of the failed service they gave you, when the computer was not really fixed... How far out of warranty is it.. and how far back was the service repair... and please describe what you mean by "...lock up..." because other owners my have the same problem.

if the warranty work was not done as expected, then you have legal recourse. This is probably small claims stuff though.