My laptop is back from it's French jaunt! And it works! It was sent off on Thursday and was back on Tuesday - now I maybe wrong, but I think that's bloody good service!
So, what was broken... well they managed to fix the static within the case by completely replacing the motherboard! I am a little peturbed that they also replaced the harddrive - 'cause it was working fine when I backed it up (and wiped it... this could be the downfall). I'm guessing that when they put the motherboard and then tried to start it up and it went "HARD DISK BOOT FAILIURE INSERT SYSTEM DISK PRESS ENTER". They then probably shouted 'merde' after realising that they'd put the million screws back in and they all needed to come out again... and didn't think... ah ha... we'll use the restore disk and try that...
Now all I've got to do is recover all the data... whoop!