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Education Do you remember your very First Computer Repair For Customer?

Discussion in 'General' started by DeafGamer2015, 15 Apr 2012.

  1. lilgoth89

    lilgoth89 Captin Calliope

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    ill post again for another interesting ""repair"" i did this week but my brother took the credit for :grr:
    his friend owns some chinchillas and lets them out once a while to run around
    unfortunatly one of the elder ones decided it would be a good idea to nibble thru the charging lead for his lapop ( between the wall and power brick ) the resulting jolt killed the chinchilla, and knocked out his houses power. so they asked my brother...who asked me...
    after looking for a while i couldnt find a replacement ( cheeply ) so in the end i simply connected the wires to a block, wrapped it in ductape and it works fine :)
    i ended up wrapping almost the lengh of the power lead in ductape
    apparently it works really well now, and the other 2 chinchillas dont seem interested in that now
    although they have turned there gnashers onto the tv wire ( will soon be wrapped in tape )
     
  2. mansueto

    mansueto Too broke to mod

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    Hmm, probably 2-3 years ago when I was still working at a mechanic shop. The IT guy we had knows how to don networking and windows server but doesn't know how to assemble a pc or hardware. Anyways, our work had gotten a few new computers to replace some of the older ones that were in use. We had the old ones set up in a spare office for remote desktop so people could still access their files as backups. One day the IT guy decides we should start moving stuff and dusting them out, so he takes one down (An old dell, optiplex I believe) and he just take's a air compressor blower to the pc while it's on. Guess what decides to happen, the proprietary power supply fan blades decide they just want to shatter and explode everywhere. The first thing the IT guy does is turns it off, than asks me how to fix it. Being 2-3 years ago I was either 17 or 18. I calmly tell him we need a new power supply, but being an old dell, you'd have to order one. He just decides that he was going to leave the job to me and I'd figure it out.

    In the end we got a cheap intel matx motherboard, a intel e5200 and 2gb of ram and scrounged up some spare parts from donor computers and I got windows going on the new pc, threw the old hard-drive into it and copied over anything important. Not a big deal, but the shock of fan blades exploding was not fun, especially when the IT guy just decided to bail on me when sh*t hit the fan.

    Haven't really had any interesting stories, all of the repairs I've done for friends or family (who usually do pay) is just reformatting, removing viruses and malware, standard things like that. The odd time you'll get those really old machines that are caked with dust, but nothing a can of compressed air can't take care of.

    Related to lilgoth's story, one of my dog's chewed threw my brothers laptops power chord but luckily it wasn't plugged in so we just covered the wires with electrical tape and ordered a replacement. Better safe than sorry.
     
  3. Landy_Ed

    Landy_Ed Combat Novice

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    Once upon a time I aspired to be a Novell CNE (certified netware engineer), then I met one when we had issues with our EPOS at Escom Glasgow where I was working. I was so disappointed when he admitted he could not identify a hard drive. A defining moment for me in my choice of future career.

    So far the only thing he was capable of that I didn't know at the time was working out the base memory requirement to mount a volume (and I remember the exact moment when I discovered I needed to know specifically that info - England v Germany Euro '96 were about to kick off and a colleage who was allegedly knowledgeable on the subject had gone AWOL... English, as you might guess).

    And anyone goes thinking such issues are the stuff of historical legend, fusionIO drives apparently need 2Gb ram for every 80Gb storage for the drivers to work at their optimum.

    Been diagnosing sql server performance issues for the last month...fusion IO and EMC SAN slower than raid 1 das if you don't start your infra design with high IOPS in mind rather than bandwidth...
     
  4. DeafGamer2015

    DeafGamer2015 Minimodder

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    Well your brother (excuse me) is an idiot for taking your credit where it should be given to you lilgoth. and Poor chinchilla.

    Wow that IT guy must be an idiot to forget to turn off the PC before doing the air thing.. at least he's not working for you guys anymore.


    That's pretty cool there! :rock:
     
  5. noizdaemon666

    noizdaemon666 I'm Od, Therefore I Pwn

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    I suppose my first "customer" was actually a few months ago. My fiancee's friend's mother's father to be exact lol

    He wanted a new computer, which I promptly built and installed for him. I've been back twice, one being an internet issue the last time being printer related.

    First time through I swapped the old USB connection to his modem/router to an ethernet one. He paid me £20 even through all my objections. I would have quite happily done it for nothing, I plugged a cable in for God's sake :hehe:

    The printer issue was a bit more tricky. He had a fairly old hp printer which Windows 7 couldn't find a driver for. I did a manual search and found a work around. I had to install a driver for a different printer, then tell Windows to use that driver for the actual printer. 10 minute job. Again £20.

    A very nice old man all in all, not particularly interesting but it's surprising in the fact he paid way over the odds both times I was there when some people wouldn't offer to pay at all. (I charged him £5 on top of parts cost to build the computer for him).
     
    Last edited: 21 Apr 2012
  6. DeafGamer2015

    DeafGamer2015 Minimodder

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    That's pretty awesome there Noiz!
     
  7. Kainrpg

    Kainrpg What's a Dremel?

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    i used to work at the the tech guys. dsgi's call in tech support.

    i can actually say i've heard it all. people buying computer saying they tryed to turn it on wont power up. and they aint plugged anything in.

    other people thought that laptops could bounce and assumed it was under warranty when they dont.

    some people thinking that a pc is water resistant. (the smoke said otherwise) and try to claim on warranty.

    had one customer while i was trying to educate him how to use the internet he just threw the tower across the room and said come pick it up its broke. then i had to explain it was malicious damage and could not do anything.

    i finally went up a pay bracket and had to deal with the field repair staff thought my life would be easy. agency staff really know nothing it was like talking to customers but making them open the case and swap components.
     
  8. bsp

    bsp Minimodder

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    I gave someone a linux live cd to try out.. I told him to select the try option.. not the install one.

    He installed linux on the entire thing and formatted everything. All his data.. gone.

    I ended up doing a bit-by-bit read of the disk over a weekend and ended up getting most of his stuff back.
     
  9. DeafGamer2015

    DeafGamer2015 Minimodder

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    Whoa! that's pretty interesting.

    Seriously? he clicked the install button? ouch...
     
  10. DeafGamer2015

    DeafGamer2015 Minimodder

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    ok Anyone else??
     
  11. mars-bar-man

    mars-bar-man Side bewb.

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    I just flat out refuse to do it anymore. it got to a point that because I could fix a PC, I could fix anything. An Aunt brought me her kids 360 and asked me to fix it, for free. Then and had family friends asking. The uni mates.

    9/10 times it was a simple case of Googling the problem. Never got a thanks for it though. So I just don't do it now.
     
  12. DeafGamer2015

    DeafGamer2015 Minimodder

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    Oh wow.. mars.. that's understandable..
     
  13. Dreamslacker

    Dreamslacker Minimodder

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    Oddly, I don't remember having to fix a computer hardware wise much. It was mostly just helping out friends and family upgrade or assemble new computers. Commercially, I did consultancy for cybercafes which precluded I.T. work and some planning (space and fire safety).

    I suppose for work (I did a short stint as a tech in a cybercafe that started me off on the consultancy work), I had 56 sets of computers reformatted overnight to clear all the junk (and keyloggers that the previous dishonest tech left there). That was with a boot floppy and CDrom. Ended up recovering 30 sets from non-bootable condition.

    I also implemented system security (Winboost anyone?), virtual-CD emulatorsand network file-sharing on Win98SE. A first over in this sunny island as far as system security went.
    Ended up quadrupling the monthly income within a week of starting work and the boss gave me a nice bonus for it when I left (2 month temp job).

    The funniest thing that ever happened (related to computers) was when I was over at a friend's place. Now this guy is also an enthusiast and he smokes in front of his computer with the side panel off.

    I just happened to mention that it was bad practice since the gunk would build-up on the circuit boards. He dismissed my comment and said that he chooses only quality parts and that he has never had any issues etc.
    Well.. He lighted up right after that and a boom resounded in the room. The power supply chose that exact moment to blow up and took out everything in the computer. It was bloody hilarious seeing him panic to grab his car keys and say 'Lets head down and buy new parts'.
    Apparently, it was the weekend and the wife's turn to play her games on the computer. He ended up buying a completely new set (including LCD and peripherals) and scrambled to install windows on the unit before the wife got home.
     
  14. AmEv

    AmEv Meow meow. See yall in 2-ish years!

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    First "customer"...

    Not too long ago.

    LaserJet only has USB port. No Ethernet.
    Janitors' job is to shut all computers off at end of day.
    Teacher calls and asks why it wasn't printing.


    2+2=
     
  15. DeafGamer2015

    DeafGamer2015 Minimodder

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    That's awesome that you got an massive amount of money and a nice bonus.. I bet you spent that already.. LOL

    wow that's pretty interesting..
     
  16. DeafGamer2015

    DeafGamer2015 Minimodder

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    Double Post.. Delete this please Mod!
     
    Last edited: 2 May 2012
  17. lp rob1

    lp rob1 Modder

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    Well, here is an interesting story:

    I was browsing some forums, when I saw a duplicate double post. Laughing at the person who had pressed submit twice with lack of patience (I think the name was something like Game Freak?) I waited for a mod to delete the offending post.

    :D
     
  18. DeafGamer2015

    DeafGamer2015 Minimodder

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    What? that's odd.. I didn't see the double post until you mentioned it.. I didn't press the submit twice..
     
  19. munkey

    munkey What's a Dremel?

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    I used to do tech support for dell before everything was shipped overseas. The most memorable call I got was a user that when he opened IE the webpage took up the whole screen and all his toolbars had disappeared, links, google, menu all of them. After spending quite a while going through all the repair options we had available he told me that when the problem first appeared was when his cat had walked across his keyboard. So we started at the top row (F-keys) and figured out that F11 turns on full screen mode in IE. I still have to educate my users on this issue at least once a month.

    Another one that always stood out was a customer called in because his optial drive wouldn't read a specific cd. After confirming that the drive was good with another cd he informed me that the issue was with a specific cd-rw disc. As it turned out he had been storing all the data for his small business on the cd-rw and was re-writing it every day. I had to tell the guy that all his data was gone since cd-rws are only meant to be re-written a handful of times before they fail.


    One call I heard about another tech getting was a lady that had just received a new laptop for her son that was going off to college and she was concerned about how hot the bottom gets during use and was concerned about her sons testes. After the tech explained to her that that is why they are called portable computers (not laptops) the lady continued to argue about the issue. Overall it took two or three supervisors to convince the lady that the heat was by design and to just use the computer on a desk.
     
  20. nimbu

    nimbu Multimodder

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    Does installing the DFS chip in to a dozen BBC Model B's to help the IT teacher at school count?
     

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