Help me convince customer of brownout data loss.

[Acanthus]

Hi fellow ATers, never asked you guys for anything before, but i have a customer that doesnt belive the wiring in his house can cause PC problems, the wall socket he has it plugged into is effected by short brownouts when one of his utilities (not sure if its heating or water pump) in his house kicks on.

Hes been having intermittent problems for months, been through 2 power supplies, and 4 FORMATS from random data loss. I have stress tested every part in the PC in another system with the same parts, all check out.

His Rig:
Intel Pentium 3 850Mhz 100fsb
256MB PC133 SDRAM cas2
Abit SA6R I815 motherboard
Antec 430w truepower (this is the 3rd psu)
Asus Geforce 2 MX 220 32MB
WD 600BB 60GB hard drive (possibly 80BB dont remember)
Lite on burner and cdrom

Also i strongly believe the motherboard was damaged in the latest power supply death, IDE2 no longer detects any devices, luckily i can use the raid controller for the HDD and dont need to replace it yet.

The problem is the customer didn't believe me when i saw the lights flicker when the utility kicked on, and i told him that would explain the problems he was having ( i was stumped up to this point, but the brownout caused the comp to freeze ). He thinks because there is a surge protector on there the comp wont be effected. I want to print out this thread with some of you comp experts and show him that my belief is valid. ( i have 5 PC certs ).

My reccomendation is to either put the wall socket on its own circuit (so its uneffected) or get a UPS to prevent the brownouts from hurting the PC, both are relatively small projects (he owns his home). But im afraid if he refuses im going to cancel his warrenty service.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Make it a poll, then show him the thread.

Get him a cheap $30 UPS from Officemax and plug everything into there. Tell him it's a "New And Improved Surge Bar"

- M4H

 

[NaughtyusMaximus]

All that surge protectors do is act as a fuse in the event that a *large* power spike lies along the line. When short brownouts like this occur, the supplied voltage to the wall outlet is lower than the regular 120V (rms). There is *not* a large current and voltage spike which would allow the surge protector to act as a fuse (and die in place of the computer). The result of the lowered supplied voltage (and current) is that the power supply of the computer can not provide enough DC current and voltage to the computer, this has the same effect as unplugging a computer (and not properly shutting down) would have.

When the brownout dies (and regular current and voltage are returned to the wall outlet) there is a slight spike. This is the spike that would probably be causing the most damage to his computer, as the spike would NOT be large enough for the surge protector to act as a fuse, thus it proceeds to the computer's parts unhindered, and free to cause damage.

My suggestion is to tell the client that if he pays you for your time, you are willing to replace his parts for as long as they continue to die, but if he wants to have a stable computer he should listen to your diagnosis and buy a decent UPS and remove the computer from the same circuit as the offending appliance.

 

[Acanthus]

thanks for the replys guys keep em coming i want to give him at least 5 reccomendations if at all possible

 

[arcenite]

It's pretty simple if you ask me. The fact that his computer froze when the brownout occured should be a heads up for him. Get that guy a UPS, or make alot of money off him replacing his parts

Bill

 

[moonshinemadness]

Get a UPS, should save any further problems, even a cheap one seen as its only protecting the PC for not much over a minute i guess.

 

[Looney]

Yeah, get him a UPS. We just had a thread last night about this issue as well.

 

[thorin]

Just put it like this.

1) He trusts you (and us) and gets a UPS for $30 or so and stops wasting HIS TIME, YOUR TIME, and OUR TIME. With the amount of time he's spent bringing the system to you and being frustrated he's probably easily already cost himself more then $30.

2) He keeps everything how it is and ends up with a couple hundred dollar paper weight for not listening.

BTW Nice sig...I used to blast that song every morning in college as my wake up tune.

Thorin

 

[ScottMac]

Make a deal with him:

You put in a UPS. If, after 30 days or so, the problems disappear, he buys the unit from you. If he decides not to buy the unit, take it back, scratch his contract, and wish him well.....

(Actually invoice him for the UPS when it's delivered, with a 30-45 day net)

Brownouts DO cause power spikes of sorts: power supplys treat voltage / current as a single value unit. If the power dips, the power supply tries to compensate (keep the same power level) by boosting the necessary component. Further, depending on the construction of the power suppply, the "dying" power may cause the power supply to generate its own spikes on the various power rails as it tries to compensate. There could also be some inductive or capacitive spikes generated as the power collapses (this is not as common in switched supplys, but can happen ...)

Good Luck

Scott

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: ScottMac
Make a deal with him:

You put in a UPS. If, after 30 days or so, the problems disappear, he buys the unit from you. If he decides not to buy the unit, take it back, scratch his contract, and wish him well.....

(Actually invoice him for the UPS when it's delivered, with a 30-45 day net)

I completely agree, something like this is the best idea.

Thorin

 

[Jeff7]

My suggestion is to tell the client that if he pays you for your time, you are willing to replace his parts for as long as they continue to die, but if he wants to have a stable computer he should listen to your diagnosis and buy a decent UPS and remove the computer from the same circuit as the offending appliance.

Yeah, really; this is called "return on investment" - and heck, I just like having backup power supplies! Both of my PC's have them. If the power blinks out for just a second, which it does sometimes on nice sunny days (it's usually fine through thunderstorms...go figure), you'll love your power supply. And if there's an extended power outage, like say 4 days or more (ice storm, Christmas), then it can be used to power small electrical items for maybe 1-2hrs, depending on their consumption, and the UPS' capacity.

Just a note though, as far as I know, some UPS's may not handle brownouts well - the line voltage must drop below a certain point for them to activate - if the voltage is low enough to cause PC problems, but not switch the UPS' battery power on, the sag could pass right through. I don't think this is probable though - I've got a Tripplite UPS, and the power dips sometimes, which trips the backup. I can't think of a single time when the power's dimmed or gone out completely, and the computer's acted up as a result.
But random data loss (and the lockup when the brownout occurred; that'd be a DUH to me) shouldn't be happening on any healthy PC.
Also explain that electricity is like food to a PC. Feed it an inconsistent supply of lousy food, and it'll choke, and lose something. If it gets clean, steady power, it should work fine.

 

[miken]

Not all UPS's have line conditioning, which is what you are looking for. Get a straight line conditioner or make sure that your UPS does that. They are not $30. More like over $100.

Brownouts will destroy a PC quicker that Blackouts. It's not the outage that causes physical damage, it's the spike as the power returns.

 

[Smilin]

Hm.

I don't know if I'd be worried as much about hardware issues. Sure a brownout (typically followed by a spike when a reserver transformer kicks in somewhere on the grid) and other power issues can damage hardware, but hardware can be replaced...not cheaply but it can be done.

I'd be worried to death about data corruption during a brownout. I'm assuming his hard drives are not running on a raid controller with a battery backed up cache. I'm also assuming he's not using registered ECC memory. With these assumptions in mind it is NOT possible to guarantee a computer system will simply "compute" accurately with power drops. When you get a brownout that doesn't cause your computer to reboot you should immediatly reboot anyway. Bit level errors can popup all over the place from main memory to soundcard buffers to registers in the cpu itself. Burning out a cpu or erasing a file is one thing but having the decimal point move in a spreadsheet is something entirely different.

If you are covering these repairs under a warranty out of your own pocket I would definately void that thing. He's making a choice to damage his equipment, let him live with it.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: miken
Not all UPS's have line conditioning, which is what you are looking for. Get a straight line conditioner or make sure that your UPS does that. They are not $30. More like over $100.

Brownouts will destroy a PC quicker that Blackouts. It's not the outage that causes physical damage, it's the spike as the power returns.

put the wall socket on its own circuit (so its uneffected)

unaffected... and that is still subject to fluctuations

or get a UPS

bingo

 

[PrinceXizor]

What does HE think the problem is...or does he think burning through two PSU's and four reformats is normal...that seems to be an issue here. He pays you for the computer and the tech. support, but when you tell him what the problem is, he argues with you? He obviously has his own two cents, or thinks your ripping him off. All of this over a $30 UPS?

I'm in a business that MAKES smoke detectors, yet, I had someone argue with me for thirty minutes telling me HIS smoke detector recharges the battery...such a product is not commerically available....yet ....but he argued with me for 30 minutes about it. This sounds like a similar situation. Tell him, your certifications, experience (and common sense) dictate that he needs a UPS for his system and if he doesn't get one you will void his warranty.

 

[Acanthus]

thank you guys this is more than enough to show him.