Just Stopped Working

[kato2274]

Most of my tech tales revolve around corporate users and their idiocy, but last night; I had one I feel I must share.

I agreed to take a look at a computer for one of the workers who are remodeling my mom’s house. It "just stopped working" he said. "I turn it on and the monitor just blinks" I picked the machine up from my mom and was pleasantly surprised to see it was a celeron 433 from HP. I had actually grabbed a spare p133 machine for parts on the assumption that the machine would be both old and beat to hell.

I picked up the mini tower and it rattled. Definitely stuff rolling around in there. Another small shake and more rattling. I swear I could have done a cuban pete impersonation (from the mask) had I had another identical machine.

Before I opened it I noticed that the back of the power supply was set to 230V. Maybe that was the only problem I thought. That and some screws rolling around. I set the PSU to 115 and started on the case screws.

When I cracked it open, I found slot covers, motherboard posts, screws, case retention clips, jumpers and ribbon cables rolling around inside.
The floppy drive power pins were completely broken off. Neither the hard drive nor the CD-ROM was jumped and the hard drive had pins bent to almost a 90-degree angle. There was also an odd smell on all the equipment and it was slightly "greasy" to touch.
Still I'd give it my best effort. Swapped some parts and ran some tests, and in the end found a dead board and hard drive in addition to the broken floppy drive. The celeron 433 and memory were still okay though. The CD-ROM is jumped was probably okay too.

I gave the guy a call. "You've got a toasted system." I said "I could order parts for it and get it working, but since your most expensive components are dead, It'd be more cost effective to buy a new system." I offered to scrap his current system adding the few working parts to my inventory and offering a small credit towards a new machine.

"This machine wasn't dropped or knocked off a desk was it?" I asked.
"No" He assured, "It just stopped working the other day."
"No one has tried to repair it, or been inside the case" the HP warranty sticker was broken and looked like it had been for sometime.
"No it just stopped working"

Call me crazy, but there is no way that machine just stopped working. I doubt it was ever working in the first place, someone was definitely in there.
I don't understand the need to lie about it though. I could care less if it was a yard sale item you'd like me to evaluate for working parts. Why lie about it???

[MacGyver]

What I do with these kind of clowns is to start quizzing them for troubleshooting purposes. Where did you buy it? When did it stop working? What were you doing before it stopped working? What software is installed on this machine? Is there any important data on here that you need to save? Eventually they will be caught up in their own lies.

But that dead computer - I can't understand how that could happen!

[Social Enemy]

I deal with morons like this all day long.. I work in a call center and take around 35-45 calls a day.. Want to take a guess how many times I hear "it just stopped working, I didn't do anything to it" a day?? About 35-45 times a day. Do these people just think we are stupid or something??

[deseqer]

We had a customer that tried to get his system replaced under insurance. Except when we open the system up it looked like someone took a screwdriver and jammed it into serval of the pc cards, and on the mainboard serval of the caps had been ripped off, and you could still see the claw marks of the tool on the caps. needless to say we refused to do a insurance diag.

[PurpleDoc]

I love the people that try to get away with insurance fraud. Seen everything from people breaking cards in the system to trying to fry it with electicity. I am tired of dealing with idiots. Break out the friggin charge card and buy an el cheapo system and bring it in the shop cuase it doesn't work right. Well duh. A person buys a system for 499 and gets a rebate for 400 and end up spending 99 dollars for a system then gets mad because it can't be upgraded. Don't get mad at me, get mad at the store that you purchased it from, moron. Take a look in the mirror and ask yourself," What kind of computer am I getting for 99 bucks." Not a good one. I am getting tired of being a tech for that very reason. Morons buying Yugos and expecting Ferrari performance.

[senectus]

The loudest bang I ever heard is when we plugged in a power pack that just turned up from spare parts inc. and it was still set to 115v instead of 230v

Scared the crap outa us...

Tho I suspect plugging it in the other way around wouldn't produce the same effect..

[ShadowWynd]

As anyone who has gouged hands inside of a case can attest, components are dangerously loose inside a case. It is not at all uncommon for IDE cables to fall clean off, for jumpers to shift settings, for cards to come unscrewed and fall out of the socket, or those pesky screws to rattle loose and short out the motherboard.

Ssso we always give the "uhuh" response when stuff like this spontaneously happens.

[*SlyVenom*]

[quote]Originally posted by ShadowWynd:
<strong>As anyone who has gouged hands inside of a case can attest, components are dangerously loose inside a case. It is not at all uncommon for IDE cables to fall clean off, for jumpers to shift settings, for cards to come unscrewed and fall out of the socket, or those pesky screws to rattle loose and short out the motherboard.

Ssso we always give the "uhuh" response when stuff like this spontaneously happens.</strong><hr></blockquote>

D@mned computer fairies...

[TheComputerKid]

Are they related to the underwear gnomes or the other sock gnomes?

[CodeDragon]

[quote]Originally posted by TheComputerKid:
<strong>Are they related to the underwear gnomes or the other sock gnomes?</strong><hr></blockquote>

Or even the Electric Drill Chuck Key Fairy

CD

[*SlyVenom*]

[quote]Originally posted by CodeDragon:
<strong>

Or even the Electric Drill Chuck Key Fairy

CD </strong><hr></blockquote>


Good one, I hate that fairy...

[Danger]

We had a Luser come in once to fix some minor problem. OK, thats no big deal, but apparently my boos got a bit suspiscious when he talked yto him over the phone. We have a bench set up in the front of the store for things like installing memory, and verifying a system (like in this case) before we work on it. So this guy brings in his system, all the while emphasising that he 'PERSONALLY' shut down the system right before he brought it in. yeah, right. My boss had him hook it up at that bench to 'SHOW' us what the problem was. It turns out that the system won't boot. not only that, but the windows directory is nearly empty. And, a directory windows.001 existed from an attempted install (failed). And this guy STILL instisted that the thing worked right before he brought it here. (and no, it wasn't a virus. we checked for that, but it had his 'fingerprints', so to speak, all over it anyway)

I hate it when Lusers lie to you like that, as if your stupid enaugh to fall for it!

[CodeDragon]

We had one customer who bought an el-cheapo system - an EMachine as I recall - and couldn't afford it. She paid cash because she was refused credit. Firstly, it came back with a zapped PSU. All well and good, except that the switch on the PSU had been moved from 230V to 115V. If she had had the sense to move it back... Anyway, we swapped it, as it could have been like that out of the box (EMachines are famous for doing that over here), and checked it. When it came back in with the exact same fault(!) we swapped it, charged her (she spat feathers about that) and used a hot glue gun to glue the switch into position.
Next, the monitor came in. She said it hadn't worked since she brought it in last. We checked the monitor. The pins on the cable were either bent or snapped. She also brought in her PC. It wasn't working (again - how could she tell if the monitor was duff?). We checked inside and found loose screws under the mobo and Blood (about 1/2 a pint) all over the chassis!
We took photos of all this for her growing file. When she tried to accuse us of breaking both the monitor and the tower and demanded a refund blah blah, I went to the security officer on duty and got him to re-run the tapes of the days she was in. She had never brought in the monitor before. We pointed this out, and she attacked the assistant manager, managing to break his nose.
Thee months later she was convicted of aggravated assault and attempted fraud. The company is pursuing her for damages.

CD

[Poseidon]

[quote]Originally posted by CodeDragon:
<strong>. . . We checked inside and found loose screws under the mobo and Blood (about 1/2 a pint) all over the chassis!
We took photos of all this . . .</strong><hr></blockquote>

Hopefully once this was discovered, everyone took the necessary precautions for handling blood!

[ßracius]

Those are fun! Just ask them all sorts of questions (mostly trick questions) and when you have the data drill into them. ex. "Well the sticker is torn which means that somebody was in the system repairing it. They did a poor jobs and damaged the HDD, FDD, MBD, etc. You are going to have to pay for it so I would find out who it was and have them cough up the cash. I can do you a favor and scrap the whole system, rebuild a new one and give you a discount."