PC Repair Shop Horror Stories

[legend8887]

Just think it would be fun to tell our horror stories while at PC repair shops as I know they are endless.

[Unhelpful]

Just think it would be fun to tell our horror stories while at PC repair shops as I know they are endless.

It wasnt at a PC repair shop, but I once had to repair a PC that was overheating.... It was full of spiders. Was great.

[scaryjam823]

It wasnt at a PC repair shop, but I once had to repair a PC that was overheating.... It was full of spiders. Was great.

Did you find out why it was overheating?

 

Once when I was a kid I had an old windows 98 laptop. It ended up getting about 120 viruses on it (I was 11) He cleaned the viruses for $100 but he also installed windows xp... I don't know the full specs but it had 256mb ram, 40gb hard drive. Needless to say it didn't run well. Thanks tech guy I'll never go to for messing with stuff nobody told you to.

[legend8887]

Did you find out why it was overheating?

Haha.

[techswede]

It wasnt at a PC repair shop, but I once had to repair a PC that was overheating.... It was full of spiders. Was great.

.. i would've just left the house.. EFF that!

[AustinKZombie]

My first Laptop caught on fire at the store, they said it was malware!?!

[legend8887]

My first Laptop caught on fire at the store, they said it was malware!?!

Lol.

[Mentalguy]

It wasnt at a PC repair shop, but I once had to repair a PC that was overheating.... It was full of spiders. Was great.

must have been a bug in the system

[Matthias2556]

My first Laptop caught on fire at the store, they said it was malware!?!

so malware can PHYSICALLY harm your pc!?!?!?

jk

[Misanthrope]

Way back in the day when I had my second computer ever, first one I got for some gaming. I had some issues with the PSU I think, or some other type of issue I can't remember now. Anyway what I DO remember is that back then dedicated graphics cards were still a pretty new development and here in Mexico they were basically non-existent on retail pcs at all. So after I got my PC back from the "repair shop" I opened up the case and noticed that my Geforce 2 MX (I wasn't kidding with the "way back then" as you can see) was gone and I now had some crappy, 2D only card. I immediately send my dad back to the shop (I was too pissed off to even deal with the store clerks without beating the shit out of them) and he told me that after a bit of arguing the owner of the shop came out, took the crappy card I was switched to and looked up the serial number and oh surprise, he found out that he had it registered on his inventory meaning there was no possible way that my imported system came with it. He basically proceeded to threaten to fire the entire staff and told everybody to get out without touching their pcs and surprise, surprise: one of the guys had my Geforce 2 MX card and was already playing Quake III Arena the fucker.

 

After that whenever I need to take the machine to a repair store I insist that they do whatever testing I need (for lacking of parts to do it myself) right in front of me and had done so like that ever since.

[Unhelpful]

must have been a bug in the system

BOOOOOOO

[AustinKZombie]

iT ACTUAL BURNED LIKE SMOKE AND EVERYTHING

[NInety]

My first Laptop caught on fire at the store, they said it was malware!?!

Must have been a faulty firewall.

[Charger]

iT ACTUAL BURNED LIKE SMOKE AND EVERYTHING

its all downhill after you let the magical blue smoke out

this could help with that problem(joke product) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/10622

[Misanthrope]

Here's another one since I sadly have more than a few: I upgraded the system from my last story to a better Athlon processor and a Geforce 3 ti 200. It ran pretty sweet on that configuration for a couple of years but I had a bit of an issue: I had everything too cluttered in my room which is legendarily messy (check my album for a pic) and I was sweating my balls off so I decided I wanted to hook up a portable air fan cooler thingie (a portable condensing unit they're quite popular here). I also wanted to play some guitar so I hooked up my guitar amp. I also had my computer running and I checked and it was hooked up on a different extension cord...or so I thought. Turns out that the second extension cord for the fan, the lamp, the guitar amp, etc. was tangled all around the room but ended up connecting to the same wall outlet as my PC and predictably it went down.

So not having parts I wasn't sure if only my power supply blew up or if I had more parts that went down with the electrical mishap I just created it. Took it to the repair shop which took a while since I insisted that the owner tested it infront of me and back then it was almost impossible to find a pc repair shop that handled AMD processors but I finally found a guy. He was pretty cool and told me ok the first thing we'll do is hook up your system as is to another PSU and if we don't get a boot we'll start checking all your parts on another board I have here.

As soon as he turned the power on we were surprised (to say the least) to hear a loud crack, probably as loud as a small firecracker and immediately killed the power. One of the capacitors from the Mobo actually blew up and was launched across the room! After that we proceeded with the testing only to find the 2 lonely survivors: An optical drive and 2 sticks of ram, everything else burnt down.

[Cwazywazy]

Ah. I've never had any problems with my local computer shop. (Family owned.)

 

Most of the stuff there is like Core 2 Duo laptops and the such but the only things I've bought are a computer case and a few parts laptops that I revived. (Except one, which nearly caught fire due to a short in the display plug.)

[mgsstar]

Great that my first PC repair shop wasn't bad but its pretty interesting to see the lights dim a bit when you flick the power switch on a power supply.

[cloudius]

I don't think this counts as a horror story but marely a "c'mon,seriously ?" story. So i had an old pc that i brought it to the shop for cleaning purposes. The guy opened the case,pulled some cables,took out the graphics card and ram and so on. Then in the middle of the cleaning, he was cleaning the ram with some rubbery,play-dohy stuff . I didn't (still don't) know what it was , so i've asked.I suppose i asked with some excitement or something.What i was curious.Anyways, he said (with a quite straight face) ; "Oh crap.I deleted everything on your computer." . I stood there with a blank face ,dropped eyelids and an open mouth until he finished .

[Ryoku]

This happened to my brother, So he brings his PC to a repair shop because it wouldn't boot up anymore, they tell him they will take a look at it and let him know whats wrong and decide what to do from there, they find out the mobo died so he tells them to order and new one and replace it.  After about a month he calls them up and asks whats taking so long, the person tells him they are still waiting on parts.  After about another month he calls them up and is pretty pissed, and the person on the phone has no idea what he's talking about and told him they have no record of his pc, now my brother is livid, storms over to the store, makes them call their manager in tears them a new asshole and sends them to find his pc that they some how managed to loose. A few hours later they found it tucked away somewhere in the shop, fixed it right away.  Only good thing about this is he only payed cost for the mobo and didn't pay a cent for labour.

[EvilLemur]

Never taken a pc to a repair shop. i just learned how to do it myself. 

[Hyp0xia]

I'll never forget the customer who brought in their desktop PC to service and repair at Micro Center, saying it didn't work. Turns out he had slathered thermal interface material all over the hard disk drive.

[Charger]

I'll never forget the customer who brought in their desktop PC to service and repair at Micro Center, saying it didn't work. Turns out he had slathered thermal interface material all over the hard disk drive.

seems like an odd place for that.

 

I myself have never taken a computer to a repair place or worked at one so i have no stories to tell. When i was younger my brother's friend's dad would fix our computers and after around age 10 i was fixing our computers and for years since family/friends computers (always fun to drive 4 hours to Las Vegas until you remember you are going there to see family and fix a computer).

[Antistatic12]

My first Laptop caught on fire at the store, they said it was malware!?!

um WOW.

so did they replace it or blame you.

 

[-iSynthesis]

I went to our local pc shop... shit... can you believe this? They have about 300+TV`s, but the highest end Graphics card is some shitty xfx radeon 6670 and power supplies... damn... No modular, highest 80+ rating is 80+. Nothing higher

[Arshdeep]

It wasnt at a PC repair shop, but I once had to repair a PC that was overheating.... It was full of spiders. Was great.

Wonderful. Ruined my day..... Holiday Days. I make no sense.