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So I destroyed a PC at work today

Bateluer

Bateluer

Lifer
There was a problem with the desktop becoming nonresponsive and unable to return from what appeared to be a standby mode. Since it had a CRT display, I swapped it out with an LCD and tossed the CRT in the recycling area. Still didn't resolve the issue though.

It was an older system, a P4 1.7Ghz with 128MB of SDR RAM. I'm almost glad I never got to see the system in working WinXP, it had to be a total dog.

After swapping out several video cards, the RAM, I finally decided to take the hard drive out and test that in another machine, which worked fine. While that was running some diagnostics on the drive, I tried another video card in the old tower. Just a simple PCI card, a GF2 MX 400, I believe it was. Installed it, and powered up the system. The system spun up for about 3 seconds before there was a pop! Then the magic smoke was released. The PSU was toast, luckily the hard drive with the critical data was out of the system at time.

So I got to work a few hours over time getting a replacement machine imaged for her, plus getting her apps reinstalled and such. Major pain when the user doesn't really know what they need/had on it in the first place. And since I was not able to see the machine powered up, I had no idea what applications were installed on it. The only things the user knew for certain were 1) She was Adobe Acrobat Pro installed and it was critical to the files she needed to edit and 2) It had to be the specific version of Adobe, or else her automated scripts would not work properly. She didn't know what version either.

So, yeah, good times.
 
I was hoping this thread would tell a tale of you destroying a computer in a comical way involving a snorkel, 4 gallons of maple syrup and a cattle prod. But alas.
 
Good riddance. Just got a P4 2.6GHz 512MB RDRAM dell from a company that was throwing their old PCs out for upgrades.
that P4/SDR system must've been torturous to use.
 
Originally posted by: chorb
I was hoping this thread would tell a tale of you destroying a computer in a comical way involving a snorkel, 4 gallons of maple syrup and a cattle prod. But alas.
Click to expand...

With pics! :laugh:

 
Originally posted by: astroidea
Good riddance. Just got a P4 2.6GHz 512MB RDRAM dell from a company that was throwing their old PCs out for upgrades.
that P4/SDR system must've been torturous to use.
Click to expand...

i worked on a 1ghz celeron with 128mb of ram and windows xp

i installed a broadband service on it...you couldnt tell, yet they were delighted to have the service. go figure.
 
I was a coop at my company and the virus scanner was totally outdated and one day I accidently clicked on one of those pop up ads that pretended to be a prompt box ( i missed the X box). The computer was so fubared they had me send it back to the corporate headquarters.
 
Originally posted by: xSauronx
Originally posted by: astroidea
Good riddance. Just got a P4 2.6GHz 512MB RDRAM dell from a company that was throwing their old PCs out for upgrades.
that P4/SDR system must've been torturous to use.
Click to expand...

i worked on a 1ghz celeron with 128mb of ram and windows xp

i installed a broadband service on it...you couldnt tell, yet they were delighted to have the service. go figure.
Click to expand...

I just got done working on a P3-500 MHz machine with 128 ram and windows XP. I upgraded the ram to 1 GB while I work on it, then I'll take it out again once its done.

I think it has also given up the ghost though, it is having serious troubles. I can't get windows installed at all. Oh well, off to the dump heap.
 
I'm on a 1.8ghz Celery with 1GB right now, my co-worker has a P3-800mhz with 256MB, we're both running WinXP SP2 with IE7 and Office 2003. Works great for what we need it for, my whole job can be done with only Outlook, IE/FF, and notepad.
 
Originally posted by: chorb
I was hoping this thread would tell a tale of you destroying a computer in a comical way involving a snorkel, 4 gallons of maple syrup and a cattle prod. But alas.
Click to expand...

now that would have been good times.
 


So I got to work a few hours over time getting a replacement machine imaged for her, plus getting her apps reinstalled and such. Major pain when the user doesn't really know what they


WOW!...you get overtime???!....
;p
 
Originally posted by: us3rnotfound
Dell uses some of the cheapest power supplies.
Click to expand...

Actually their current ones aren't half bad. The one in this old dimension 2400 I have sitting here isn't a bad unit either, not necessarily powerful but it just runs a P4 2.8GHz with a single HD, CD burner, and integrated video.
 
Originally posted by: us3rnotfound
Dell uses some of the cheapest power supplies.
Click to expand...

There's a guy employed by dell that works in my building full time doing the upkeep on all the dell computers (everything is a dell on lease except for some Unix workstations).

My one of my hard drives crapped out on my work station, and it's a decent workstation too. He came by to take it up to his cube to work on it and he was talking about how the parts they used in these machines were terrible... Even Dell employees don't think they use decent parts.
 
power supplies run on smoke. If you let the smoke out, they no worky any more.
 
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