Computer Crash Survey or Opinion

[Wurny]

Do crashes in Windows 98 cause any physical damage to the hardware of the machine? Like say playing a game and it locks up or what not? A customer of mine says it does and she heard this from who knows where and I would like to get as many responses to this as possible so I can prove it to her that it does not cause physical damage to the cpu or harddrive like she says...

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-= If the world didn't suck, we would all fall off...=-

[The-Fro]

I've never heard of software problems (freezes, hangs, etc.) ever creating hardware problems. They are often caused by hardware problems, but never the other way around.

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When I hear someone say they give "110%" to whatever they're doing, it makes me feel good inside, because I know I'm not as big a moron as that person is.

[ReBoot]

Depends on the crash.
If it crashes while flashing a BIOS, then it definitely causes problems. That's about the only time though. Crashes are usually hardware caused, and software suffers.

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Who needs a life, I have Internet!
members.cnx.net/reboot (http://members.cnx.net/reboot)

[goofball]

have fun convincing her, she has it from an unknown party and she believes, you are a computer tech that only wants the money for repairing it,

but the only damage it can do is to leave temp files and lost clusters behind that scandisk will clean up

[Thunder32]

Software crashes do not harm hardware. Try leading her to this conclusion. Clients always believe the guy in the cubicle across from them before the believe a trained professional.

[UncleMarv]

Have fun indeed. Although, I would use the argument that if she is unable (or unwilling) to give up the source, then take that for what it's worth.

As my compadre's have already stated, just because paper beats rock doesn't mean that software beats hardware (except in that rarest of rare cases where a machine goes AWOL while update the flash bios).

As her if the other source is so smart, why isn't she using them to work on the systems?!

[RGK01]

To keep her happy, you can explain to her that she is partially right. Software crashes, hangs etc.. can cause damage to the operating system (meaning software!) and repeated crashes will destabilize the system to the point that formating and reinstalling is the only thing that will fix it.

However, other than flashing a bios, the only other crash I know of resulting in damage to hardware was when a customer's crashes were actually being caused by power surges, and the surges caused damage.

[goofball]

and flashing bios is not a software crash or a hardware crash, it is that thing inbetwen called firmware

[UncleMarv]

Doh! You had to go mention that tweener thing called firmware!

Just wanted to tell everyone to keep up the good work with the posts... we can sure use each other's help.

[The-Fro]

Just came across an interesting opinion on the subject. Of course, the guy's an OS/2 Warp fan, so his credibility is questionable, but he has a few interesting points. Worth reading, it's not that long.
http://www.osopinion.com/Opinions/TomNadeau/TomNadeau26.html


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When I hear someone say they give "110%" to whatever they're doing, it makes me feel good inside, because I know I'm not as big a moron as that person is.

[This message has been edited by The-Fro (edited February 29, 2000).]