My experience in Tech Fixes

[tbroadwater2010]

So this is gonna be my 500th post and i felt like making it a good one so i am going to tell a story, and we can all discuss things like this that may have happened to you! (TL:DR Readers, LOOK DOWN )

 

So on the side of my regular job and being here on LTT forums helping people out, i like to work on PCs and help people get them up and running. This is no hidden fact to those i game online with. I have many people whom i game in Second Life with that know i work on PCs and ask for help. 

 

A friend from SL asks me why her PC is not booting and gives me a lot of information about how it was not booting correctly and would not turn on at all at one point. Naturally i attempted to help her any way i could from booting with only one stick of RAM, to removing parts like the GPU, to even reconnecting connectors on the MOBO. To no avail the PC still had "issues" and i was unable to fix it over the internet.

 

She asks then if she can send me this PC, to which i replied "of course you can, pay shipping both ways and we can do this." And there is where it all the funny stuff starts to happen. Like a snowball rolling down a hill we start the long and daunting task of getting this PC sent to me. The user of the PC was on a tight budget and could not send the PC right away, after 2 to 3 months of me reminding her, as well as MANY others pushing her to finally send the PC, she does which cost her $50 and included insurance on the PC. This means now i have to be present to sign for the package or it cannot be delivered. Being that i work hours that the Post Office delivers in, i was unable to get the PC. I ended up calling the Post Office, getting them to send me a slip in the mail allowing them to leave the package on my porch, all of this over 5 long days. FINALLY the package arrives, MAN that took forever.

 

It gets better, i finally get the PC out of the box and plug it in, the screen comes up that i have to go through the setup process. I do so, and the computer resets and boots, TO WINDOWS, NO ISSUE?!! WHAT?! 3 months of testing and 3 months of waiting for a PC that WORKS?! GAH!

 

So i finally get into the PC and look around, there are a crap ton of viruses causing the PC not to work correctly. I told her i would upgrade the system to Windows 10 and clean format it with the Media Creation Tool. She agrees and i attempt to do this, which was giving me errors. I spent another hour on this PC wondering why it wouldn't let me upgrade from Windows 7. Finally i look down, and the Date was 1/17/2009... WELL SHIT... So after fixing the date and time, wouldnt you know the upgrade started to work. Finally the PC is reformatted and has Windows 10 on it.

 

I crack open the case and look into the horror or cable wiring and lack of management. What was the back of the PC for anyway?! Shaking my head i decided that needed to be fixed as well.

 

AFTER ALL OF THIS.... I waited 6 months to work on a PC that had nothing wrong with it..... Thats how my life rolls i guess!

 

TL:DR? SKIP HERE

So my question for discussion and my well used 500th post, do any of you have funny storied about PCs? Share them! I want to hear of all the funny things that has happened to you!

[yannickverc]

Funniest thing that ever happened to me was when I was teaching my dad how to use my old iMac. I was like "Now you have to click here" (While I pointed at the screen with my finger)

 

He legit pushed the screen with his finger and asked why nothing happened. I never laughed so hard in my life

[Guest]

The time i said "Its easy to clear the dust out of a GPU, i have done it multiple times"

Than tries to record a video to help him since he didn't know how to dismantle his GPU.

And i lost a screw that i looked for 2 hours until i found it under the wheel of my chair.

[tbroadwater2010]

Funniest thing that ever happened to me was when I was teaching my dad how to use my old iMac. I was like "Now you have to click here" (While I pointed at the screen with my finger)

 

He legit pushed the screen with his finger and asked why nothing happened. I never laughed so hard in my life

I have spent my whole tech career teaching my parents to NEVER touch the screen. Its TERRIBLE for it. That finally sunk into their heads and i was so happy.

 

NOW, my parents have a touch screen laptop..... -.-

[yannickverc]

I have spent my whole tech career teaching my parents to NEVER touch the screen. Its TERRIBLE for it. That finally sunk into their heads and i was so happy.

 

NOW, my parents have a touch screen laptop..... -.-

Touch screen should be the only thing allowed near old people. They don't get it that you have to move your mouse to move the pointer. It's like rocket science to them

[tbroadwater2010]

Touch screen should be the only thing allowed near old people. They don't get it that you have to move your mouse to move the pointer. It's like rocket science to them

I know right. Its just hard to teach someone their whole PC life not to do something and then tell them they should do it all the time now. *Facedesks*

[yannickverc]

I know right. Its just hard to teach someone their whole PC life not to do something and then tell them they should do it all the time now. *Facedesks*

I'm happy my parents don't use a computer. (Besides my dad once every 4 years and my mom at her work, but not at home)

 

I can do whatever I want online without parents seeing it :^) 

[tbroadwater2010]

I'm happy my parents don't use a computer. (Besides my dad once every 4 years and my mom at her work, but not at home)

 

I can do whatever I want online without parents seeing it :^) 

My parents dont touch my PCs, I dont have time to fix their screw ups on my own PCs. LOL

[ThinkWithPortals]

Teaching my grandmother to use her old Dell. A few of my favourite quotes:

 

"Which of these buttons is the Adobe?"

 

*points at Windows Vista logo* "Is this The Google?"

 

*I try to explain the concept of Wifi to her*

"Well?"

I say: "Well what?"

"Why?"

"Why what?!"

"Why fye? You keep asking me 'Why Fye?', I don't know. You tell me!"

 

I facepalmed so hard my hand is now fused to my forehead, I'm undergoing surgery and numerous skin grafts to repair my damaged skin.

[tbroadwater2010]

Teaching my grandmother to use her old Dell. A few of my favourite quotes:

 

"Which of these buttons is the Adobe?"

 

*points at Windows Vista logo* "Is this The Google?"

 

*I try to explain the concept of Wifi to her*

"Well?"

I say: "Well what?"

"Why?"

"Why what?!"

"Why fye? You keep asking me 'Why Fye?', I don't know. You tell me!"

 

I facepalmed so hard my hand is now fused to my forehead, I'm undergoing surgery and numerous skin grafts to repair my damaged skin.

OMFG this is priceless. LOL.

[ThinkWithPortals]

OMFG this is priceless. LOL.

I can tell you, it wasn't f**king funny at the time I nearly died of frustration!

[tbroadwater2010]

I can tell you, it wasn't f**king funny at the time I nearly died of frustration!

No i think the amount of frustration you are feeling is exactly what makes me laugh, cause ive been there.

 

There are people who dont know that just because something is NOT on your DESKTOP, doesnt mean you dont have it..... Always fun getting calls saying "I dont have XXXXX" only to find out it was there all along, it was in their start menu...

[tomaatvk]

Well, a few funny things happened to myself I guess:

1. My first computer (that wasn't a crappy €340 laptop) I got at a store, I chose the parts, they assembled it. After having it for about a year I slowly got more and more into the pc itself (litteraly, I had it open a lot and I was working on stuff inside it quite often). My case was a K-380 but I didn't think it had an HDD LED because I never saw a light blink or something. So after having the PC for about I year I decided it was time to mod some of the other standard case LEDs to become the HDD LED. I cut some wires, soldered the correct connectors to them only to find out the HDD LED connector had been hanging loose 1cm away of the HDD LED header.

 

2. Past Ocktober I went to a small lanparty of around 30 people. This was a month after I changed my case to the K'nexinator 5000 case (buildlog in my signature). After sitting there for around 10 hours and talking to some people, just having a small break from the gaming we started talking about the machines we have and I appearently had the best hardware in the small group of 5 that I was talking with at that point in time. I started wondering if my pc wasn't only the best of that small group but also of everyone there so I started asking around and well... The desktop made up of K'nex leftovers from my childhood was the most powerfull machine at a lanparty.

 

3. I thought a CX750 was a good PSU because it had lots of watts.

[tbroadwater2010]

Well, a few funny things happened to myself I guess:

1. My first computer (that wasn't a crappy €340 laptop) I got at a store, I chose the parts, they assembled it. After having it for about a year I slowly got more and more into the pc itself (litteraly, I had it open a lot and I was working on stuff inside it quite often). My case was a K-380 but I didn't think it had an HDD LED because I never saw a light blink or something. So after having the PC for about I year I decided it was time to mod some of the other standard case LEDs to become the HDD LED. I cut some wires, soldered the correct connectors to them only to find out the HDD LED connector had been hanging loose 1cm away of the HDD LED header.

 

2. Past Ocktober I went to a small lanparty of around 30 people. This was a month after I changed my case to the K'nexinator 5000 case (buildlog in my signature). After sitting there for around 10 hours and talking to some people, just having a small break from the gaming we started talking about the machines we have and I appearently had the best hardware in the small group of 5 that I was talking with at that point in time. I started wondering if my pc wasn't only the best of that small group but also of everyone there so I started asking around and well... The desktop made up of K'nex leftovers from my childhood was the most powerfull machine at a lanparty.

 

3. I thought a CX750 was a good PSU because it had lots of watts.

#1 is funny cause ive been there

#2 is hilarious cause why wouldnt it be

#3 i can admittedly say i did not know CX750 was a bad call until joining this forum.....

[tomaatvk]

Oh, I got a 4th one already:

4. The pc I got at the store had an i5 3570k and an ASUS P8H77-m motherboard but this motherboard had an "overclock" feature which just raised the BCLK a few MHz (to 105 if I recall correctly). After some time I wanted to overclock it further so I got myself an Asrock z77 extreme 4 and a gamer storm lucifer to cool the CPU. I quite nicely bumped the multiplier to 42 and again moved the BCLK to 105 because it worked before (after some slight voltage bumping) resulting in a nice ~4.4GHz. However, after some time I wanted to push it further but somehow, whenever I entered a number higher than 42 for the multiplier it wouldn't stick and go down to 42 again. I searched everywhere but couldn't find out why, I asked people for help and so on, noone knew. I almost gave up but I decided that I was gonna do 1 more run down to find the problem. I was checking to see if the voltage was maybe the problem (idk) and I was looking at CPU-Z during a stress test when I saw that there wasn't a k behind my cpu's name. After reading back on the bills and digging in my system specs I found out, after using it for over 1.5 years that I had a normal i5 3570, non-k in an overclocking board. I had been using the ivy-bridge 4 steps standard overclocking allowance (you are allowed to go 4 multiplier steps above the standard turbo speed on those chips appearently). I now have a 3770k running at 4.8GHz.

[tbroadwater2010]

Oh, I got a 4th one already:

4. The pc I got at the store had an i5 3570k and an ASUS P8H77-m motherboard but this motherboard had an "overclock" feature which just raised the BCLK a few MHz (to 105 if I recall correctly). After some time I wanted to overclock it further so I got myself an Asrock z77 extreme 4 and a gamer storm lucifer to cool the CPU. I quite nicely bumped the multiplier to 42 and again moved the BCLK to 105 because it worked before (after some slight voltage bumping) resulting in a nice ~4.4GHz. However, after some time I wanted to push it further but somehow, whenever I entered a number higher than 42 for the multiplier it wouldn't stick and go down to 42 again. I searched everywhere but couldn't find out why, I asked people for help and so on, noone knew. I almost gave up but I decided that I was gonna do 1 more run down to find the problem. I was checking to see if the voltage was maybe the problem (idk) and I was looking at CPU-Z during a stress test when I saw that there wasn't a k behind my cpu's name. After reading back on the bills and digging in my system specs I found out, after using it for over 1.5 years that I had a normal i5 3570, non-k in an overclocking board. I had been using the ivy-bridge 4 steps standard overclocking allowance (you are allowed to go 4 multiplier steps above the standard turbo speed on those chips appearently). I now have a 3770k running at 4.8GHz.

LOL oh how the letter "K" means so much!