If it has a hard drive, it should have it’s oil changed, right?
At one of my previous jobs, Fridays were usually pretty easy days. If someone had a problem with their home pc, they could bring it in and I’d work on it then. Our plant engineer brought in his tower saying something was wrong and smelled funny. On opening the CPU, I found an oil-like substance in the bottom. I asked him what this was. He had said that he heard that putting a layer of auto grease between the CPU and fan would help cooling. I informed him that perhaps next time he should use heat-sink grease instead of wheel bearing grease.
It’s not that the peg doesn’t fit, its the hole that’s not right.
Just thought I would share a short story from my early days on an IT Helpdesk. One incident i remember that had me laughing. A woman had phoned me to say a floppy disk was stuck in her drive. I asked her to explain what had happened, I was expecting her to say she had ejected the disk and the metal part had come off in the drive as this had happened to people before.
Her description went like this: “I put the disk in, it wouldn’t read, so I pressed eject but nothing happens, the drive wont open…”
Me: Sorry, the drive wont open?
Yes, I opened it, placed the disk in the tray closed it, it wouldnt read and now it wont open…
Me: Just so I’m clear, can you tell me – does it say anything on the drive?
“Yes CD Rom…”
Me: …and your ‘floppy disk,’ just to confirm, it was square and black?
“Yes…”
There really should be a 30 second/30Mb warranty or, “That didn’t take long.”
Years ago I did a non-paid school work program at (name withheld) in Ontario. We would low-level wipe the hard drives and install Windows 98 before giving the PCs to schools/people/non-profits/etc. One day, a guy picks up a computer for donation. About 45 minutes later he comes back saying there is something wrong with it. “Ok,” I said while plugging it in. I immediately notice it’s not booting quite right. I restart again and watch the boot screen and see a huge logo for “Windows PLUS for XP.” Of course, the user denied doing anything at all and we reinstalled 98.