PC repair guys, story time!

PC repair guys, tell us your most horrid stories.

I don't have any.  Mostly because I don't remember.

Mouse nest.

When I was in University, I worked at our computer lab. Aside from the constant porn, one day a football player came in who had jammed a phone cord into their ethernet jack forcefully until it was stuck.

After finally removing it after some work being careful not to damage the computer, he still didn't understand what was wrong, so I had to walk him to the student store and show him the difference between a phone cord and ethernet.

one day a football player came in who had jammed a phone cord into their

I was expecting a spicier ending to this sentence.

Quote from: John Davis on August 05, 2019, 10:01:48 AM

one day a football player came in who had jammed a phone cord into their best friend's urethra.

I was expecting a spicier ending to this sentence.

You're welcome.

I was the art director, but the only on site person that could plug in a toaster.
Had a guy complain his computer was too slow.

"You're not that good at your job anyway so it's a wash"

He gathered up a hand full of aluminum chips from the CNC router table and spilled them on the motherboard to blow it up.

No horrid stories. Just an almost-horrid story with a a happy ending:

Around 2008 or 2009 the Ethernet on my iMac died very shortly after the extended warranty would have run out if I had bought the extended warranty, which I hadn't. There was no Apple store in town yet. Just an independent (non-Apple-owned) Mac store. They told me the Ethernet is on the logic board (which is what they said the motherboard is called in a Mac) and replacing it would cost about $200 less than buying a whole new iMac with the latest specs. They said there was no other fix. Buy a new logic board or buy a new computer. So I searched on line and found a USB-to-Ethernet dongle. I don't remember the price. Something like $25. It worked perfectly for the next 8 or 9 years, until I got a new computer because the old one was just so out of date its time had come.

My PC repair horror story;

A friend of mine asked me to fix his PC. The hard disk was on the verge so I rescued his data.

Now, if you've used windows then you know that explorer indexes thumbnails automatically. So it's really hard to not see pictures during this process.

There was a large folder filled with images of preteen girls. Not nude. But definitely sexualized. I guess that's a thing some websites do.

So yeah. Awkward.

I'm not a pc repair guy, just the occasional troubleshooting or dealing with some malware crap that a couple friends need dealing with sometimes. 

I did get a laptop working once using a nail and a piston. 

(basically just had to crimp down a connector to repair the wiring of the power supply that had worn out.  It wouldn't run without it because the battery wouldn't hold a charge anymore.  Those were the only two items on hand to do it)

Had to work on a PC at a customer's house.  There were both heavy smokers and had the computer in their kitchen.  Nicotine + dust + grease getting sucked into computer = disgusting when you open the case.

Saw another tech open a PC to find a power cable jammed into the expansion slot when the customer installed an expansion card.

I had to get inside the computer that controlled the CNC router table.
There was 3/8" of dust/dirt on every horizontal surface.
Took 10 minutes of 60psi air to blow it clean.
The power supply never stopped barfing out dirt.
I gave up on it.

Back around '93 or so I was asked to look at an old IBM PC (original model 5150) running a CNC grinding machine.  The machine was dead, so I tried replacing it with a newer machine (I think it was an IBM PC-AT), but it didn't work because the newer machine was too fast for the custom expansion boards and software required.  It took some hunting, but I was finally able to find another model 5150 to get the grinder back up and running.

I got roped into expanding our Novel Network from 3 to 5 computers.
I said I don't know how.

Whatever.

I bought 2 new 386's and network cards.
Installed the software. Read the 3 book instruction manual.

It would not work.
I finally called Novel and they said the software was for a 286.

Told the boss I had good news and bad news.
The bad news?  Get out your check book.
The good news?  I get to go back to drawing pictures.   

One year at the lab we had a fellow and his girlfriend come back in week after week after week, each day as we cleaned the viruses off their computer and so on. We had to reformat it several times and somehow the junk kept coming back, or never left. It was obviously beyond their means to get a new one. I eventually got it sorted though.

I think remembering a bit more we couldn’t reformat it because they didn’t have an install disk. So we had were legally supposed to not give them a license.