I'm sure we all hate computers at one time or another, and since I've made my living off the beasts for the last *censored* years, I really should have a better attitude about them in general. But I don't.

My "main cruncher", the new (couple months old) AMD 3700+ Windows box designed for the best RAC for the buck, just died. Smell of burning plastic, power supply very hot to the touch... Sigh. Hopefully the PS didn't take anything else with it.

I guess this PS joins the stacks of dead hard drives, dead CD drives, dead keyboards, and dead mice out in the shed, that I really should bag and send to the dump. Or a museum. Anybody need a set of 14" removeable-pack disk platters? :-P

Anyone with any horror stories, feel free to add to the thread...

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I'm sure we all hate computers at one time or another, and since I've made my living off the beasts for the last *censored* years, I really should have a better attitude about them in general. But I don't.

My "main cruncher", the new (couple months old) AMD 3700+ Windows box designed for the best RAC for the buck, just died. Smell of burning plastic, power supply very hot to the touch... Sigh. Hopefully the PS didn't take anything else with it.

I guess this PS joins the stacks of dead hard drives, dead CD drives, dead keyboards, and dead mice out in the shed, that I really should bag and send to the dump. Or a museum. Anybody need a set of 14" removeable-pack disk platters? :-P

Anyone with any horror stories, feel free to add to the thread...

Hey Bill, I think that you had it alot worse than I ever could have (knocks wood).

Cannot add anything to it as bad or worse I fear, but they can be a pain. May I ask what you were running on it besides Rosetta?

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May I ask what you were running on it besides Rosetta?

Rosetta, CPDN, and Einstein actually were running at the time... SETI suspended.

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My favorite was back in the dual celeron days (Go Abit BP6!). .

I bought all new equipment. . mb, cpus, case, etc. I think it was the 3rd computer I built myself.

After installing everything and plugging it in (with the side panels off, something always goes wrong so why put them on?). . touching my computer would turn it on. . touching it again would turn it off.

It was like one of those touch lamps. It wasn't supposed to do that, but it didn't really hurt anything.

I about jumped out the window trying to figure it out. It turns out the two power on leads on the motherboard were touching the case underneath. . my guess is my touching it was just enough to complete the circuit that is normally tripped when you push the power button.

Sorry to hear about your PS, Bill. . hopefully it died peacefully and didn't take anything with it. I've had a couple die (own + work), usually the MB is toast, but everything else is fine.

-E

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Well, I had an 'interesting' experience working on D. Baker's desktop just a few weeks ago. I was informed that 'something was wrong' and that his desktop had been freezing quite a bit lately. I climbed under his desk, laid upon my side and then opened the chassis of his desktop. I then powered the machine up to see if I could now hear anything amiss (I don't hear well, so I have to have my head close to things to hear anything).

As the system powered up the CPU fan began to rattle a bit, so I applied my usual quick rap to the chassis side to settle the fan down and get it balanced and spinning freely. To my surprise a cloud of dust was unleashed from every flat surface within the chassis.

There was a bright flash and a loud BANG!

Without thinking I grabbed the power cord, yanked the plug from the wall and rolled back away from the desk, rolling into one of the piles of scientific paper littering Baker's office (he's not the tidiest character you'll ever meet). I repeatedly blinked my eyes as the after image faded. The stench of burning electronics filled my nose.

I realized what had happened....the dust shorted out the power supply resulting in the 'exciting' display. I used the lab's pressurized air to clean every freakin' bit of dust out of there, replaced the power supply and had things working in 10 minutes....a bit wiser for the experience.

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Hm.... that one reminds me of another.

I was doing the Mac interface code and HP driver code for a robotic warehouse, where we used Mac Pluses (ok, it was 1989...) for the user's workstations. If something went wrong with just about any part of the whole warehouse, they usually called me first. (24/7...) One of the supervisors called and said that one of the Macs "smelled funny", and that they had called PC Support and got the usual "we'll send somebody over in a bit, we're pretty busy" response.

So I go out to the warehouse, and didn't really have any trouble finding the Mac in question, as there was smoke coming out of the vents on top, and 20 people standing around looking at it. I go over and unplug it, then pick it up and carry it out in the middle of an aisle away from anything flammable. Then I get the trouble ticket number from the PC Support call and call them back. "Um, on this trouble ticket #98765? You think you could get somebody over here fairly soon? It's on fire and there's smoke coming out of it..."

PC Support broke all records. Somebody was there five minutes later.

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After 3 Dells [I'm totally NON tech, don't ask me what I'm doing here] I'm fed up with them. They send a tech out with a new hard drive. Then it's my fault that I don't have the right disks to reload. [Despite tech pointing out that the antiquities I'd been shipped were useless] So I go to download the drivers I need from Dell website onto my laptop. Whereupon CD drive dies. [Warranty ran out in August on THAT machine]. After tech hung up saying he'd call in 2-3 days and it'd be easy for me to double click and install, jiggled drive enough to burn a CD. So with drivers loaded [what the hell are drivers anyway other than big golf clubs?] I plug in the wireless doohickey, but can't get to internet because I need software. So I get the Dell chat idiots who promptly send me off to wireless hell where the wait time is longer than I'm prepared to stay awake tonight.

Where the hell is Michael Dell?? I could save him hundreds of dollars of his tech peeps time if he'd just cough up for the expletive deleted tech to load the expletive deleted software the original hard disk CAME with. Why is it suddenly MY problem that their packers didn't send me the right disks?

I've now wasted 4 entire days on a computer with a year to run on the warranty, except it seems they've changed the service rules on me. I used to be their #1 fan, but if this is how they treat long term customers, they can go the way of Ford and GM.

I'm beyond pissed off. Computers should be usable by people who just want to do research and type reports. Dang arrogant geek squads. I don't build my own transmission when my car breaks under warranty. Why the hell should I have to rebuild an entire hard disk worth of software loads AND drivers and whatever else comes on the flipping things when THEIR lousy design breaks?

Rant, fume, spew, growl, snarl.

i have seen dust short out powersupplys before, yes its definatly a good idea to use some method (i use compressed air) to blow the dust out of your computers every few months or so depending on where the computer is located

i always hate it when one of my computers die an early death.. in fact alot of my friends have some of my cast off computers that are still running but were too slow for the gameing i do when im at home.

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Rant, fume, spew, growl, snarl.

Yep - yet another typical PC user! :-) Seen the same thing from Dell, Gateway, Compaq...

You may fault Apple for many things, even customer support at times, but one thing they have _always_ done well is send you everything you need, all in the box, with _excellent_ "Read me first" setup instructions. I wouldn't dream of giving my parents (12 o'clock flashers*) anything _but_ a Mac, any extra up-front cost is just irrelevant (and lately, not even much). My mother in law went against my recommendation and bought a Windows box. Five years and one community college course later, she still couldn't correctly forward an email, or get anything to print right. Every time I was asked for help, I just looked at her and said "I don't do Windows". Didn't, either, until this %*&%*# "cruncher"**.

* 12 o'clock flasher - someone who is so technically skilled, that every clock on the VCR, DVD, microwave, phones, etc., are permanently flashing "12:00", as they can't set the time on them.

** I should have known I was going to have grief from it. I have spare USB keyboards and mice all over the place, so I didn't buy a keyboard or mouse when I got the CPU, MB, PS, case, etc... I put all the hardware together, then handed it off to a friend of mine to install the OS. I'm not _that_ masochistic. Got it back, set it up, plugged in kbd and mouse, turned it on, watched it boot - then got the "detected new hardware, click here to install" message. For the mouse. Couldn't CLICK, until it was INSTALLED! (Keyboard didn't work either.) Had to run to Wal-Mart at 1AM and buy a ^%&^* PS/2 keyboard and mouse so that I could get my USB keyboard and mouse working...

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* 12 o'clock flasher - someone who is so technically skilled, that every clock on the VCR, DVD, microwave, phones, etc., are permanently flashing "12:00", as they can't set the time on them.

My wife is so inept that I got tired of setting the time on her TV and put it on an APC Back-UPS 500.

I don't hate computers, but some computer owners are beyond helping. Especially my relatives. :-)

GP: While I don't know about Geek Squad - I've performed service calls for a couple of the regional outfits that deal with the local Dell/HP/Compaq/Sears computer repair calls.
If the customer hasn't backed up their data - you're not supposed to do it. Replace the drive, start the reinstallation of windows, and leave. (I got in big trouble for taking the system back to the shop and ghosting the data to the new drive and updating the drivers and performing the windows update on the new drive. ) The techs are really limited to what they're allowed to do - and aren't paid to do any extra. i.e. there's no incentive to keep the customer happy; which can lead to very negative feelings about the firms that have been contracted out by Dell etc support. I've heard horror stories about my competition - due in no small part to these rules.

HP was worse; they won't deliver the parts to the client or the repair tech. I'd have to make a 40 minute trip to the airport and hope to show up when dhl/fedex/ups was present in their office (they've got a strange schedule) to pick up any hardware needing to be replaced at the client's location.

Compaq and HP's tech support seem just as bad as Dell's with the non english speaking non techies trying to go through flow charts with me. I mentioned that the model number of the crt monitor I was asking about for a reason - the vga data cable I spent 2 hours trying to track down was not an external vga switch box cable like they kept trying to sell me.

Ended up finding out my only hope was to track down the manufacturer which ended up being, "Top Victory Electronics (Fujian) Co.,Ltd.
Yuan Hong Rd., Shang-Zhen, Hong-Lu, Fuqing City, Fujian, China" Guess I'll have better luck on eBay. *grin*


Exploding caps in power supplies are fun! I've had a few Quantum drives that blew up chips on their logic boards, and an Athlon cpu that blew up after the cpu fan seized, the cpu fan power leads melted on the heatsink and shorted. The worst experience for me was working on crt monitors, worrying about the high voltages present - and having someone ring the doorbell mounted a few feet away.

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I just spent the last six hours trying to install Windows XP on my fairly new AMD Athlon 64 3200+. I am now right back where I started, Windows 2000 SP1. XP won't install, XP x64 won't install, Slackware won't install, Win2000 SP2,3,4 won't install. I had a lot of trouble getting XP x64 on my Athlon 64x2 3800+ a couple of months ago. I am fed up with AMD, I wish I had Intel inside.

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David Stites
Mount Vernon, WA USA

* 12 o'clock flasher - someone who is so technically skilled, that every clock on the VCR, DVD, microwave, phones, etc., are permanently flashing "12:00", as they can't set the time on them.

For the true etymology of this expression, you need to view the "Internet helpdesk" skit. It can be found here, look in the big green bar on the right, third item down: "The skit that wouldn't die."

Two comments on this.

1. Make sure you're not drinking soda while you're watching this, otherwise you risk inhaling said soda.

2. This was introduced to me by my wife, who works customer support for the loal telco's DSL division. She has a suspicion that whoever wrote this spent a lot of time talking to people that work in her office, because it is eeriely close to reality. FWIW, she heard it from one of the field techs she speaks to, they were both bored stiff waiting for some idiot in frames (or LOC or somewhere) to join in a conference call, so the tech played an MP3 of this from his laptop.

P.S. She has never eaten her headset, but she has come close on several occasions.

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* 12 o'clock flasher - someone who is so technically skilled, that every clock on the VCR, DVD, microwave, phones, etc., are permanently flashing "12:00", as they can't set the time on them.

For the true etymology of this expression, you need to view the "Internet helpdesk" skit. It can be found here, look in the big green bar on the right, third item down: "The skit that wouldn't die."

Two comments on this.

1. Make sure you're not drinking soda while you're watching this, otherwise you risk inhaling said soda.

2. This was introduced to me by my wife, who works customer support for the loal telco's DSL division. She has a suspicion that whoever wrote this spent a lot of time talking to people that work in her office, because it is eeriely close to reality. FWIW, she heard it from one of the field techs she speaks to, they were both bored stiff waiting for some idiot in frames (or LOC or somewhere) to join in a conference call, so the tech played an MP3 of this from his laptop.

P.S. She has never eaten her headset, but she has come close on several occasions.

This is too funny! Thanks for the soda warning.

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Kathryn :o)
The BOINC FAQ Service
The Unofficial BOINC Wiki
The Trac System
More BOINC information than you can shake a stick of RAM at.

The worst part of all this is - my clocks are all set on the correct time. I quickly mastered my satellite TV system. It took me an entire day, but I was able to connect a surround sound system to said TV system. But I can't reload what was never shipped [despite their record]. Guy arguing with me that I should have 2nd disk when documents clearly state ONE disk. Plus they sent a new copy of Office last year as they hadn't shipped that EITHER and I was hosed when it came time for me to have the disks to install the updates. I'm sitting there WITH the original box, WITH the picture sheet from the initial fast install, etc. So Ms Anal-Retentive DOES have everything that was shipped with it. And both techs and installer saying disk colors are wrong for what I should have with my system. Looks like warehouse packers saw an easy victim and dumped their old stuff in the box.

Used to own Macs. Got my first Plus in 1985 when I was in grad school and didn't have time for lessons. But nowhere I worked was compatible with them, so I slowly switched over to Dells who've been plug and play [for me anyway] so I could have the wirless system I need for my battered body which can't sit for long. Biggest problem is the price tag for me. Unlike those of you who seem to have unlimited incomes to constantly buy and replace parts, a new computer is a HUGE chunk of my annual income and has to last for years.

All I wanted from Dell was the same dang software they shipped it with so I could connect to the internet. I could've taken it from there. But no, now I have an expensive doorstop with a new hard drive. And the laptop I'm typing on is out of warranty and has an exquisite burning aroma, so I'm not sure how much longer I'll have any form of internet or e-mail. Whimper

<SNIP>As the system powered up the CPU fan began to rattle a bit, so I applied my usual quick rap to the chassis side to settle the fan down and get it balanced and spinning freely. To my surprise a cloud of dust was unleashed from every flat surface within the chassis.

There was a bright flash and a loud BANG!

Without thinking I grabbed the power cord, yanked the plug from the wall and rolled back away from the desk, rolling into one of the piles of scientific paper littering Baker's office (he's not the tidiest character you'll ever meet). I repeatedly blinked my eyes as the after image faded. The stench of burning electronics filled my nose.

I realized what had happened....the dust shorted out the power supply resulting in the 'exciting' display. I used the lab's pressurized air to clean every freakin' bit of dust out of there, replaced the power supply and had things working in 10 minutes....a bit wiser for the experience.

Wow, you know I usually keep my PCs clean with canned air, but ususally I never thouroughly clean the PSU. Will have to bear that in mind next cleaning :)

This should be considered a PSA no? Perhaps a sticky forumwide?

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Let's hear it for canned air!

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FADBeens

Here a good read and eval of Dell's new machines
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=OTI0

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I just spent the last six hours trying to install Windows XP on my fairly new AMD Athlon 64 3200+. I am now right back where I started, Windows 2000 SP1. XP won't install, XP x64 won't install, Slackware won't install, Win2000 SP2,3,4 won't install. I had a lot of trouble getting XP x64 on my Athlon 64x2 3800+ a couple of months ago. I am fed up with AMD, I wish I had Intel inside.

Sounds you have a hardware problem. Most likely your ram

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Rebel - their experience w/ tech support, especially the lack of drivers, matches mine. I'm also unpleasantly suprised to find my laptop CD/DVD - RW drive failing on a 3 yr 3 month old laptop while my 7 year old Inspiron 5000 is still working 100% despite being actually banged around on the road and having lots of electronics replaced after a lightning hit. Dell appears to be going steadily downhill, a victim of their own success.

As a totally non tech person dependent on things working straight out of the box, they're hosing a steady customer. The US car makers going bankrupt pulled the same stunt and look where they are.

Anyone care to comment on what the computer version of a Nissan sedan is these days?

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FADBeens