i've been building pc's for myself and friends and family for some time now and never done anything truly boneheaded, or had any major problems, until now. check this out:
was upgrading my folks pc in a project that grew a little bit out of control - was supposed to cost maybe $100 but after opening the case and discovering how really ancient most of the components were, the job quickly ran up to $200. fortunately it was a pretty major update so i felt good about the quality of the end product i'd be delivering to them ... except that on delivery it immediately started flaking out - would hang on every other reboot, required cycling power to restart, and then of course all the windows junk about not having been shut down cleanly, etc. quickly got to the point where it wouldn't boot at all.
initially i figured it was the mobo, since it was a pull from a friend's pc that had been acting flaky (and i thought i had fixed). so, ordered up another mobo only to start experiencing the same problems! wierd part was, it worked fine when it wasn't in the case - just resting on my carpeted floor. finally the light goes on - is there something in the case that is shorting pins on the underside of the mobo? a one-minute check reveals a stand-off directly under the ide connectors. doh! if i'd checked for that up front i'd have saved myself hours of debug and my folks a bunch of hassle and frustration. also might have saved the cost of a mobo as the original one still doesn't work - either i didn't fix the problem my friend had or the stand-off caused permanent damage.
so, that's my tale of stupidity. enjoy!
was upgrading my folks pc in a project that grew a little bit out of control - was supposed to cost maybe $100 but after opening the case and discovering how really ancient most of the components were, the job quickly ran up to $200. fortunately it was a pretty major update so i felt good about the quality of the end product i'd be delivering to them ... except that on delivery it immediately started flaking out - would hang on every other reboot, required cycling power to restart, and then of course all the windows junk about not having been shut down cleanly, etc. quickly got to the point where it wouldn't boot at all.
initially i figured it was the mobo, since it was a pull from a friend's pc that had been acting flaky (and i thought i had fixed). so, ordered up another mobo only to start experiencing the same problems! wierd part was, it worked fine when it wasn't in the case - just resting on my carpeted floor. finally the light goes on - is there something in the case that is shorting pins on the underside of the mobo? a one-minute check reveals a stand-off directly under the ide connectors. doh! if i'd checked for that up front i'd have saved myself hours of debug and my folks a bunch of hassle and frustration. also might have saved the cost of a mobo as the original one still doesn't work - either i didn't fix the problem my friend had or the stand-off caused permanent damage.
so, that's my tale of stupidity. enjoy!
