Shake dust from sandals after leaving HP Total Support

I believe that I am now quit of HP Total Support for the foreseeable future.

In their penultimate non auto-generated message to me, a supervisor admitted that in their previous message they had asked, yet again, for information that I had already provided. He finally also wrote, flat out, that HP would "tattoo" the replacement board I had installed so that Windows XP would think it were the original HP board and stop demanding activation at a cost of about $300 I replied thanking him for the information...

Thanks for Guidance

I appreciate the reply to my post. I don't know if it is worth my recapping the board-- it isn't a very good board, lacking an AGP slot and not possessing much in the way of "headroom" for expansion. I posted in an effort to learn if this problem is widespread among HP machines, and in frustration with HP Total Support, an oxymoron whose humor I am unable to appreciate in the current situation.

My solution was to replace the board with a cheapie that claims to have a "lifetime guarantee", and all will be well if I can now get...

I was recently contacted by a family member whose HP Pavilion model 522n would no longer boot. After picking up the machine on Sunday night, I discovered bad capacitors. I cannot say exactly which model board this is: it has precious few markings, but as near as I can tell it is an "IMPERIAL_GL 20020409" This last might be the manufacture date?

According to HP's website, the board should be an ASUS P4G-LA, but it is not: it doesn't match the picture that appears at the HP website's description of this model.

Has anyone else encountered this board/model?