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c/computer-technicians

17

joseph_ellis85•2d ago

Just realized the difference between a cheap thermal paste and the good stuff is way bigger than I thought

I used to grab whatever generic paste was on the shelf, but after a client's gaming rig kept overheating, I tried a tube of Arctic MX-6. The CPU temps dropped by 12 degrees Celsius under load, just like that. Has anyone else had a simple swap make that big of a fix?

19

gavin692•6d ago

Had to pick between a $30 thermal paste or the $8 stuff for a gaming PC fix

Went with the cheap one on a customer's rig and the temps are actually 5 degrees cooler after a week. Anyone have a go-to brand that's reliable without the crazy price tag?

0

sarah_hart•7d ago

Cleared 100 dust-clogged laptops from a school district this month

It was a contract job for the local high school. They had a pile of old Dell Latitudes and HP ProBooks that teachers said were overheating and shutting down. Every single one was packed with that thick, felt-like dust from classroom air. The milestone hit me when I logged the last serial number. It's not the money, it's seeing the scale of neglect in one place. What's the biggest single-source dust bunny nest you've had to deal with?

30

cameronn62•7d ago

Back in 2010, a client in Phoenix had me replace a motherboard on a desktop that was just caked in dust

I mean, after seeing the thermal paste had turned to dust itself, I started checking that on every single repair ticket. Anyone else have a simple check that became a standard part of your process?

14

wendy391•8d ago

Hot take: I was wrong about using canned air on a laptop fan

Had a student's laptop overheating, the fan was making a grinding noise. I always used canned air to blow dust out, but this time it just pushed the dust deeper into the heatsink. A tech I know in Phoenix told me to hold the fan still with a toothpick and then blow it out. Tried it, cleared a huge dust clump and the temp dropped 15 degrees. Anyone have a better method for those tiny, fragile fans?

21

joel_butler•8d ago

Honestly, I think the push for everyone to use static IPs on small office networks is overkill.

Last week in a Denver shop, I watched a junior tech spend 3 hours manually assigning addresses to 15 devices that would have been fine on DHCP. Has anyone else seen this happen, or is it just me?

23

robinson.hannah•9d ago

A customer asked me why I always wear nitrile gloves when I work on his laptop

He said, 'Is it for your safety or my computer's?' I told him it was mostly to stop my skin oils from getting on the parts, but he pointed out that the real risk is me touching my face or a drink and then the keyboard, transferring germs. It hit different because I'd never thought about the cross-contamination angle, just the static and grime. Has anyone else changed a small habit after a simple question like that?

16

jamiew53•9d ago

Walked into a small business in Boise and their server closet was a fire hazard

They had a 48-port switch sitting on top of a pile of old UPS batteries, with the power cables all tangled and pinched in the door. The heat coming out of that closet was unreal, like a furnace. I told the owner it was a $5,000 data loss waiting to happen, but he just shrugged and said it had been fine for years. How do you even start that conversation with a client who doesn't see the risk?

28

mark_hayes•9d ago

Update: The week I had to fix the same server three times for the same client

Last week was one of those times that makes you question the whole job. A client in our office building had a server that kept shutting down. I replaced the power supply on Monday, thinking that was it. On Wednesday, it was the main fan. By Friday, I found out their office manager was plugging a space heater into the same wall outlet, tripping the circuit. Each visit was a separate billable call, but I felt like a fool for not asking about the environment on day one. The client was annoyed at the repeat issues, and I spent more time apologizing than fixing. It was a clear lesson in asking the stupid questions first, even if you think you know the answer. Has anyone else had a simple, non-tech issue cause a major headache like this?

12

laurag79•10d ago

Just got a call from a happy client about a machine I fixed six months ago

I was at my workbench in the shop yesterday when my phone rang. It was a small law office I helped out last fall. Their main computer, an old Dell Optiplex, was running so slow they were ready to toss it. I went in, cleaned it up, swapped the hard drive for a cheap 250GB SSD, and added some more RAM. The whole fix cost them maybe $120. The office manager just called to say it's still running perfectly and they've saved a ton by not buying a new one yet. It felt really good to hear that a simple, low-cost fix is still holding up strong. It's a nice reminder that we don't always need to push for the biggest, newest thing. Has anyone else had a client come back with good news long after a repair?

19

the_wren•10d ago

Just cleared 1000 dust-filled PCs from my shop in Denver

I hit that number after three years running my own repair spot, and it really made me think about how much gunk gets inside these things. Most of them were from small offices that never had any cleaning done, which explains the constant overheating calls. Has anyone else tracked this kind of thing and noticed a pattern with certain clients?

16

sarah_hart•10d ago

Spent 3 hours on a weird power issue that turned out to be a single bad USB cable.

I'm torn between thinking I should have swapped the cable first and feeling like the intermittent nature made it a legit puzzle, so what's your take on when to start with the simplest fix versus a full diagnostic?

7

gibson.sarah•11d ago

Cleared 500 dust-filled laptops this month

I'm a tech at a university repair shop and that number really hit me... it's just a constant stream of overheating from blocked vents. Most were fixed with a simple air duster and a five minute cleaning. Anyone else seeing way more of this lately, or is it just our campus?

19

averymartin•11d ago

Just saw a huge mess of cables at a new office park in Tempe

I was out at the new tech office park in Tempe yesterday for a quick drop-off, and I peeked into one of the server closets they had propped open. It was a total nightmare. Wires were just hanging down like spaghetti, no labels anywhere, and I spotted at least three power strips daisy-chained together on the floor. The whole setup looked like it was done in a rush, probably by someone who didn't know any better. It's a serious fire hazard and a nightmare waiting for the next person who has to trace a network issue. I'm talking hours of work just to make it safe, let alone functional. Has anyone else walked into a fresh install that was this poorly done? How do you even start fixing that without shutting the whole place down?

5

sean_torres71•11d ago

I swore by canned air for cleaning PCs until a dusty office job in Phoenix changed my mind.

I was cleaning a server rack at a small law firm there, and the canned air just blew the dust deeper into the heatsinks. The owner pointed at the temperature readouts going up and said, 'You're just moving the problem around.' Now I always use a proper vacuum with a static-safe brush first. What's your go-to method for a really bad dust situation?

5

wells.karen•12d ago

Can we talk about how many people still think more RAM always fixes a slow PC?

I read a study from a tech repair chain that showed over 40% of customers ask for a RAM upgrade first when their computer is slow. The real issue was usually a failing hard drive or too many startup programs. What's the most common misdiagnosis you see walk into your shop?

26

paul286•12d ago

Vent: Everyone told me to replace the whole logic board on that MacBook Air, but I tried something else

Had a 2020 MacBook Air come in last week, no power at all. The usual crew online and even a guy at the local parts store said it was a classic logic board failure, just swap it, bill the customer $700. I wasn't convinced. I pulled the board and spent an hour under the microscope. Found a tiny, burnt looking resistor near the USB-C power input, part number R5510. I had a donor board from a different model with a cracked screen. The resistor looked the same size. I carefully swapped it with my hot air station, set to 350 degrees. Plugged in the charger and the damn MagSafe light came on. Booted right up. I charged the customer $150 for the diagnostic and repair, not $700 plus a new board. Everyone acts like board-level is dead, but sometimes it's just one stupid 10-cent part. Has anyone else had a win with a simple component swap recently that saved a whole machine?

5

emery199•13d ago

A whole shop got hit by that new 'silent' ransomware last Tuesday

I walked into our repair shop and every single machine, from the front desk PC to the three bench units, was locked. No loud warnings, no weird pop-ups, just a black screen with a tiny text file on the desktop. The note said to pay 0.5 Bitcoin to get our files back. We hadn't seen the usual signs because this thing hid in a fake driver update a client brought in on a flash drive three days prior. It spread through the local network without setting off any alarms until it activated all at once. We lost a full day of work and had to restore from a backup that was two days old, meaning we redid a lot of jobs for free. The scary part was how quiet it was until it was too late. Has anyone else run into this specific strain, and what did you do to clean it?

15

the_faith•14d ago

A client's old photo recovery made my week

I was at a shop in Portland and this older guy brought in a 15 year old hard drive with family pictures he thought were gone for good. After a couple hours with a USB adapter and some software, I got most of them back and he just kept saying 'thank you' over and over. What's a small fix that made you feel good lately?

3

elliot_barnes•15d ago

Warning: that old thermal paste can cause more trouble than it's worth

Had a client's gaming rig in Denver overheating after a simple RAM upgrade. The choice was between cleaning off the ancient, crusty paste and reapplying with my tube of Arctic MX-4 or just trying to reseat the cooler as-is. I spent the extra 10 minutes to do a full clean and fresh application, and the CPU temps dropped by 18 degrees Celsius under load. Has anyone else had a simple maintenance task turn into a major fix like that?

22

nora_walker57•19d ago

A client in Tulsa told me to just 'swap the motherboard' on every PC that boots slow.

I had to explain that a $400 part and two hours of labor isn't a fix, it's a waste. How do you handle customers who think they know more than you do?

26

white.nathan•22d ago

PSA: A client in Tacoma made me rewire their entire office because they didn't like the color of the ethernet cables.

Last week I finished a clean install at a small law firm, everything tested perfect. The owner walks in, points at the blue Cat6 runs along the wall, and says 'I wanted gray to match the trim.' I had to pull and replace over 300 feet of cable, which took a full day. Has anyone else had a job completely derailed by an aesthetic choice after the tech work was done?

2

the_paul•22d ago

Got called out to a small office in Portland where every PC was suddenly crawling

It was a Tuesday morning and the owner said his 12 workstations were moving so slow they couldn't even open a web page. I got there and the network was fine, but each machine was at 100% CPU. Opened Task Manager and saw a process called 'svchost.exe' eating everything, but something felt off. I dug deeper with Process Explorer and found it was actually a crypto miner hiding in a temp folder, likely from a bad email attachment someone clicked. I had to isolate the network, run a script to kill the process on each machine, and then do a full scan with Malwarebytes. Took about 4 hours total. Has anyone else run into a miner that good at pretending to be a system file lately?

4

grantf73•24d ago

Shoutout to the guy at the electronics counter who asked about my job

I was grabbing a new tube of Arctic Silver 5 at Micro Center yesterday, and the older guy at the counter asked if I was a tech, then said 'you folks are the real doctors for when life grinds to a halt.' It hit different because I was coming off a long day of password resets and driver updates, and it reframed the whole gig. What's a simple customer comment that actually made your day better?

18

rileyb61•25d ago

Pro tip: A cheap USB hub fixed a weird audio issue on a Dell Optiplex 3060

Had a client's Optiplex where the front headphone jack just stopped working after a Windows update. Audio drivers were fine, settings looked right. On a hunch, I plugged a basic $15 Anker USB hub into a rear port, then connected the headphones to that. Sound came through clear. Seems the internal header connection got flaky, and the OS routed audio through the USB bus instead. Has anyone else used a USB hub as a workaround for busted onboard audio jacks?