What has been your most difficult technical task reguarding fixing a computer?

[Keri]

I'd have to say this POS Dell laptop I have now and am working on for a cu.

Curser was always showing the "Working in background" icon even with nothing running. Reinstalled Win ME and damn thing still did it.

Formatted and installed XP....Problem gone. While setting XP up and updating things the screen went funky after a reboot. The same funky you see whne RAM on a video card screws up. My thought was "Oh great, Now I have to tell this cu his video died while I was working on the OS and that it's not my fault.

Called the customer and told him what was happeneing. Waited for him to blow up and tell me I screwed his laptop up. Then he tells me "Oh yea, It does that sometimes.....Twist on the screen till it clears up". Baffled I did what he said and it straightened out. ??

Had to twist hard on the LCD to get it to go away but then it was fine. Weirdest thing I have ever seen. Will be glad to give this thing back when his new optical drive gets here tomorrow.

[Ranger_abx]

The worst hardware problem was when I was setting up a small network for testing at work. This was back in the 90s when PCs didn't come with LAN cards. I had a brand new box of LAN cards, and I would put one in a PC, test it on the network, then unhook it and carry it into the lab room I was using. When I had them all done I hooked them all up in the lab and none of them had network connectivity.

Suspecting network problems, I spent a lot of time messing with the router, replacing cables, replacing the LAN cards, etc., and nothing worked. I tried taking a PC out of the lab and putting it on another network and it worked fine. I tried bringing my own workstation into the lab and it worked fine in the lab. ***??? I went nuts. I got some other people to look at it and no one could figure it out.

So what was wrong? After an immese amount of troubleshooting, I figured out that all the brand new LAN cards I was using that all came out of same box that had come directly from the manufacturer had the same MAC address.

[Tinker]

Originally Posted by PCBruiser

Moral of the story, never assume that even the simpliest hardware device can't bring down your system. In this case, the short still allowed the floppy to work for the most part, but not to format a disk, but because of the short on the circuit board it was issuing continuous hardware interrupts to the CPU.

I could not have said it better myself. It took me two months to figure out that a USB Flash Card reader was causing me problems. All the systems pointed to the HDD. I pulled the HDD and marked it as bad, bought a new HDD installed it and did a fresh install of XP and a couple of weeks later it starting doing it again. I do not remember what pointed to the card reader but I pulled it out of service and have not had the problem again. I am bald now (from pulling my hair out) but the problem is gone. I am still using the HDD that I marked as bad.

[bjbgraphics]

I recently came across a letter I sent to Dell regarding an odd problem with my brother's XPS-T in 2000.

I have quoted the entire letter below, but the problem in a nutshell was that the DVD-ROM was scratching zig-zags in his CDs so I had him buy a new CD-ROM. After installation, the new CD-ROM exhibited the same exact behavior. So, I called Dell and they authorized sending a new motherboard which I installed and the CD-ROM was still scratching CDs.

I called Dell back and after several hours on the phone with a Tech Support Manager in which he half-jokingly asked me if the computer was near a cemetary or other haunted area, he issued an RMA for a full computer replacement.

To add to the oddity, before I sent it back I tried the original DVD-ROM with the new motherboard installed and it worked fine! I couldn't believe it... I explained my late find in the letter and would have understood if they revoked the RMA but a brand new system with much better specifications was received shortly after sending everything back.

Till this day, my only guess is that the old motherboard was somehow screwing up the optical drives, but that doesn't really explain why the original DVD-ROM ended up working with the new motherboard and the CD-ROM was still scratching away... Weird.

BJB

9/28/00

To whom it may concern,

I am writing this to explain the current condition of this computer. As of my last call to Technical Support, the computer’s technical status has changed, and this should be explained.

The initial problem with the computer was that the original DVDROM (Toshiba) that came with the computer had suddenly stopped working. When a CD was inserted into the DVDROM, the drive would attempt to spin up but seemed to get stuck, as if something was binding inside the drive.

After several attempts, the drive would stop. When the CD was ejected, there was a noticeable scratch along the middle tracks of the disc in a zigzag pattern.

The drive was seen by BIOS and the operating system (WIN 98 SE) and was listed in device manager with no problems or conflicts. The power supply was fully tested for electrical output and was deemed to be running properly.

Under my assistance, a new CDROM (Kenwood True 52x) was bought and installed. Again, Bios and the Operating System recognized the drive. However, when a CD was inserted, even during boot up, or in full DOS, the drive exhibited the same behavior as the faulty DVDROM.

After several hours on the phone with Dell Technical support, the order was issued for a motherboard replacement. The new motherboard came, and the old one went back. Installed, booted up…. still the same problem…

On the next call, Technical support was baffled, and, after three different technicians-who had me restoring old registries, booting off of WIN 98 disks, checking memory allocations, and formatting the entire hard disk-I was connected with Michael. He tried “everything” but could not come up with a solution. He and I were completely baffled, and he suggested that the computer might be haunted!

He finally sent out the order for a system replacement and thus ended my communication with Technical support. He told me that it needed to be authorized by his manager, and that once that happened, the new computer would be on its way. I called to check on the status of this process as it moved along, and the new computer arrived shortly thereafter.

*Now, this is the part that is not on record. During the time between when I last spoke to Michael and now, I was able to get the original DVDROM working! If you’ll note, I never tried the old DVDROM with the new motherboard. It was assumed that if the brand new CDROM was not working the old one shouldn’t work. Well, it did work, but the Kenwood was still having the problems. At this point, I was not really sure what to do.

So, I have sent back the problem computer and have included both drives for your own testing and troubleshooting. The computer should be in the same working order as it was when I last worked on it: the new motherboard is in; the DVDROM (Toshiba) should be working; and the CDROM (Kenwood) should be scratching away. I leave it at this and I am sorry for any confusion or trouble this might make for you.

Thank you for your wonderful support and your excellent products.

[Deer Slayer]

Originally Posted by BJB

I recently came across a letter I sent to Dell regarding an odd problem with my brother's XPS-T in 2000.

I have quoted the entire letter below, but the problem in a nutshell was that the DVD-ROM was scratching zig-zags in his CDs so I had him buy a new CD-ROM. After installation, the new CD-ROM exhibited the same exact behavior. So, I called Dell and they authorized sending a new motherboard which I installed and the CD-ROM was still scratching CDs.

I called Dell back and after several hours on the phone with a Tech Support Manager in which he half-jokingly asked me if the computer was near a cemetary or other haunted area, he issued an RMA for a full computer replacement.

To add to the oddity, before I sent it back I tried the original DVD-ROM with the new motherboard installed and it worked fine! I couldn't believe it... I explained my late find in the letter and would have understood if they revoked the RMA but a brand new system with much better specifications was received shortly after sending everything back.

Till this day, my only guess is that the old motherboard was somehow screwing up the optical drives, but that doesn't really explain why the original DVD-ROM ended up working with the new motherboard and the CD-ROM was still scratching away... Weird.

BJB

The only thing I could think of is some sort of virus got into the mobo's bios of the first board. The virus maybe was designed to screw with the firmware of optical drives, to make them scratch CDs! When you fired up the machine with the original DVD-ROM, it attacked the firmware of that drive, but it was unable to write itself into that particular drive's firmware permanently. When you replaced the DVD-ROM with the kenwood CD rom, that drive's firmware was completely succeptable to the firmware virus, and it was damaged permanently! That's the only explanation I have for the new drive not working with the new mobo. When you connected the DVD-ROM to the new mobo, it was virus free, so it worked! I dunno, I've heard of some weird stuff, but that's just odd! You never know what kind of stuff might be going on in a computer behind the scenes! :o

[pepsi_max2k]

considering i've never build a whole pc from scratch yet, i've gotta say probably the worst task so far is trying to network and share an internet connection between two computers. damn windows ics, even when it's set up properly it doesnt work. though so far i've yet to encounter a problem i've not fixed. cd rom not reading ea's battlefield 1942 cd? change data transfer mode. monitor causing ea's bf2 to crash? reinstall. cpu core with a huge chip in it? ignore it, works fine. monitor loosing half it's colors? straighten pins. bios sounding like a police siren and no post? unplug, wait, plug back in. hard drive making weird noises? wait. wait a little longer... fixed. which is pretty much the same with all problems i've had. just wait. and they fix themselves.

well, apart from my dad's non-booting laptop. not sure what happened there, but it was about 4 years ago. unfortunately he took it back to pc world to have it fixed. no surprise then that he wasn't too please when it came back. goodbye data.
oh and i've still not fixed my problem with jre yet. can't run anything with java on my machine, no idea why, but the java program windows are all blank, just gray, the buttons are there but you can't see anything. so that might be my worst problem if i don't get it fixed. kinda sux to be on a primarily java programing degree and not be able to run any java progs

ooh and my mum's got a 350mhz with about 192mb ram. i just stuck 2000 on it, cd burner, media players, everything works fine. a little slow to start up firefox but other than that, no slower than when we first got it about 98/99.

[JaGWiRE_abx]

Pepsi, i'll tell you one task I couldn't do regardless of where I went, I just got the answer to run a 50 foot ethernet cable from my router unforteuntly which I still don't like to have this run sucessfully, no one wanted me tutortial me step by step becasue I don't think anyon knew themself.

I wanted to share (ICS) my computers connection with my xbox so I could play xboxlive with a cat5e crossover cable. I was able to go to my modchip bios and use ftp from my pc, but that's as far as it could go .

[pepsi_max2k]

JaGWiRE i'll pm you what i think cos i'm sure no one wants the thread hijacked with lame networking advice from a total amatuer...

[Bofinn]

Spider Black Widow Plus VLB with 32MB of ram - 8 modules that plugged into the video card. What a nightmare of reseating memory, crappy drivers and Windows 95 just coming out.

[JaGWiRE_abx]

Hm.. When I built this rig I wasn't sure if I had bad ram or a bad psu, but it was probably both, that really got me and my dad frusterated .

Anyway, what i'm trying to do with ics definitley requires a professional, I posetd here, but no one seems interested in hours of help when I could just run a damn 50 foot cable across my house from my router, I won't nag and it doesn't really matter that much.

[Bofinn]

Originally Posted by JaGWiRE

I posetd here,

I would start a new thread for your problem.

[JaGWiRE_abx]

I did start a thread, but this one i'm letting go.

Another thing that aggrovated me? Setting up my dell 2005fpw myself when the manual sucks and I am pushing trying to snap the panel together fearing of breaking it because I had to use so much force not sure if I was even doing it right, damn manuals!