Horror stories from the bench

Roman

Roman

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Contributor
I had a lady bring in her old ThinkPad with the locking dock. Couldn't get to the charging port, so she had to call a locksmith in to remove the dock before I could work on the computer.

A guy came in, saying his desktop wouldn't come on. Hooked it up, popped the side off, started it up. The north bridge chipset shorted out and the computer started smoking. That the first time I had seen that. The second time, unfortunately, was at my house while working on my friend's computer.

I had some mother tell me yesterday that I was incorrect, and that there are indeed 25-foot ethernet splitters and that they were $2.99 online.

An as far as "saving" marriages, a guy came in saying his computer was acting strange. Did a scan and found Koobface, the old Facebook virus. He insisted he didn't have it since neither he nor his wife had Facebook. I took a peek and found Facebook cookies. He called his wife, asked her about it, started crying, took the computer and left.
 
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PsychoRealm

PsychoRealm

Australian Skial God
Contributor
Roman said:
Turns out, her husband was overseas and she was "entertaining" her "friend" online when she came all over the keyboard, shorting it out.
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ewww-eccbc87e4b5ce2fe28308fd9f2a7baf3-573.gif
 
ViperStriker

ViperStriker

Banned
Contributor
Roman said:
Turns out, her husband was overseas and she was "entertaining" her "friend" online when she came all over the keyboard, shorting it out.
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Sweet Jesus...I feel unclean just thinking of that. Even I have never put that much semen into a keyboard.
 
Roman

Roman

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I had a lady bring me her laptop. She ran over it after it fell off of her car. She wanted to know why it was booting so slowly.

Aside from the destroyed case and cracked screen, it also had a bad hard drive. She was outraged when I told her that a part had to be replaced.
 
Ceubie

Ceubie

Gaben's Own Aimbot
Contributor
Roman said:
I had a lady bring me her laptop. She ran over it after it fell off of her car. She wanted to know why it was booting so slowly.

Aside from the destroyed case and cracked screen, it also had a bad hard drive. She was outraged when I told her that a part had to be replaced.
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:facepalm:
 
DaivdBaekr

DaivdBaekr

Moderator
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Roman said:
Aside from the destroyed case and cracked screen, it also had a bad hard drive.
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You make it sound as if being crushed by a two ton automobile wasn't the worst thing to happen to that hard drive.

Actually, considering she wondered why driving over it wrecked it in the first place, maybe it wasn't the worst thing.
 
Roman

Roman

Banned
Contributor
Had a guy today who insisted that the problem with his network was the wireless range extender.

Now, mind you, range extenders are typically horrible. But this guy has forgotten his network passphrase, and felt that replacing the range extender was the solution. He said that Comcast hooked him up the "most powerful router" since he has a big house, and despite all evidence, he proceeded to ignore my advice and bought the extender anyways, convinced he could get it to work sans passphrase.

If you're going to ask for my help, don't tell me I'm wrong, dammit.
 
takethepants

takethepants

Australian Skial God
Contributor
Roman said:
Had a guy today who insisted that the problem with his network was the wireless range extender.

Now, mind you, range extenders are typically horrible. But this guy has forgotten his network passphrase, and felt that replacing the range extender was the solution. He said that Comcast hooked him up the "most powerful router" since he has a big house, and despite all evidence, he proceeded to ignore my advice and bought the extender anyways, convinced he could get it to work sans passphrase.

If you're going to ask for my help, don't tell me I'm wrong, dammit.
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I remember a guy came in wanting to return an extender saying it didn't work. Turns out, he was trying to steal his neighbor's WiFi and then his neighbor eventually put a password on it, preventing the range extender from working. I had a good laugh over that one.
 
Roman

Roman

Banned
Contributor
One of my more memorable stories:

Had a guy come in with an older Dell laptop. PC2100 RAM, 1GB max or something weird. I offered to sell him the RAM and install it. He said he could find it cheaper online.

A week passes and he comes in with the laptop in one hand and a box in the other. He ordered the RAM but said he couldn't install it.

So I draw up some paperwork and charge him ~$40 to take off the clearly-marked "M" panel on the back, pry it off, and insert the RAM.

"Well, I guess you pay a tech for what he knows, not for what he does."

I use that phrase all the time now.
 
Ceubie

Ceubie

Gaben's Own Aimbot
Contributor
Roman said:
One of my more memorable stories:

Had a guy come in with an older Dell laptop. PC2100 RAM, 1GB max or something weird. I offered to sell him the RAM and install it. He said he could find it cheaper online.

A week passes and he comes in with the laptop in one hand and a box in the other. He ordered the RAM but said he couldn't install it.

So I draw up some paperwork and charge him ~$40 to take off the clearly-marked "M" panel on the back, pry it off, and insert the RAM.

"Well, I guess you pay a tech for what he knows, not for what he does."

I use that phrase all the time now.
Click to expand...

win
 
takethepants

takethepants

Australian Skial God
Contributor
Roman said:
One of my more memorable stories:

Had a guy come in with an older Dell laptop. PC2100 RAM, 1GB max or something weird. I offered to sell him the RAM and install it. He said he could find it cheaper online.

A week passes and he comes in with the laptop in one hand and a box in the other. He ordered the RAM but said he couldn't install it.

So I draw up some paperwork and charge him ~$40 to take off the clearly-marked "M" panel on the back, pry it off, and insert the RAM.

"Well, I guess you pay a tech for what he knows, not for what he does."

I use that phrase all the time now.
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This is why when we did RAM installs, I told the person to come back in a hour to make it feel like they're getting their money's worth.
 
Roman

Roman

Banned
Contributor
takethepants said:
This is why when we did RAM installs, I told the person to come back in a hour to make it feel like they're getting their money's worth.
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"Oh, I need to reinstall Windows. This'll take at least a day."

They leave, start OEM recovery partition. :p
 
Tomatketchup

Tomatketchup

Banned
Contributor
I remember once that a guy came in to the computer repair shop and said that he had broken his computer while trying to clean it out. Apparently he didn't know what to do so he decided to use a vacuum cleaner and see if it worked. Haha, that would've been funny if that guy wasn't me 4 years ago.
 
mohawkg2

mohawkg2

Australian Skial God
Contributor
Tomatketchup said:
I remember once that a guy came in to the computer repair shop and said that he had broken his computer while trying to clean it out. Apparently he didn't know what to do so he decided to use a vacuum cleaner and see if it worked. Haha, that would've been funny if that guy wasn't me 4 years ago.
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:facepalm:
 
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