Excellent Diagnosis, Doctor

[Geek #1]

As most of us do PC troubleshooting regulary, I thought it would be a nice idea for a thread.

So then what is the best/worst/funny diagnosis story you have.

I always like the users who can look at a flashing light in their car and make a rational decision to the nature of the problem. Yet do the same with a PC and its:

User - Err, It says scandisk found an error. Press a key to continue. What do I do now??

[procrastination]

"What did your error say?"

"KERNEL32.DLL failed to initalize. Or something like that... But its ok because I never use my CD Player."

"Ok, well it looks like you have everything under control. Let me just close out this job as 'user needs no further assistance'."


I think he will be back...

What do you guys think?

late

PRO

[procrastination]

Guess what computer was in my office this morning?

WHAT A SUPRISE!!! I could hardly believe it. I mean, the user told me himself that he didn't use his CD Player..?!

LOL

late

PRO

[Papa Smurf]

The one fix that sticks out in my mind goes back a few years.

I was called out to a flickering monitor atd a school so I loaded a replacement monitor in the car and drove out the site. I find the monitor and sure enough it was flickering so I swapped out the monitor. Guess what same fault. OK swapped the video card, still flickering. So I'm thinking what else could be causing this fault I decided to swap the power supply switched the PC on and ... OK you guessed its STILL FLICKERING.

I began looking round the office for anything that could cause the flickering on the screen, The only thing I found was strip lighting located 15cm away from the back of the monitor. BINGO I thought I had found it, switched the strip lights off, fired up the PC and STILL flickering. So I move the PC onto the floor and switch it on and find out it has no flicker, Move the PC on the desk it has a flicker again.
I switched off all the lights all plugs EVERYTHING I could think of in the office and try again, Still nothing.
For some reason I asked the user what was in the office next door cause I could find nothing in her office to explain the problem. When we went next door I discovered the main electrical substation for the entire school located 2 feet away from where the PC was situated on the desk. No wonder it was flickering.