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ForumsIn the past, I have mentioned many of the mistakes I had made as a Computer Technician, mainly to show beginner technicians that it can happen to any of us and so they can avoid my mistakes.
The point of this article is to get some reader discussion going so we can all learn from eachother. So the question is:
What Was The Biggest Mistake You Made As a Computer Technician?
As always, comments are open and you dont need to sign up to post a comment. You can even post annoymously if you wish. Just click the comment link below this post.
I was testing the hard drive in a laptop by swapping it out. When working on laptops…make sure you keep your screws in a clear, memorable order….
When reassembling with the old hard drive, I reinserted a screw that was about .2″ longer than the rest (used for the outside edge of the case) in the wrong part the case. Result? I put the screw through the motherboard. It *did* still POST but…I wouldn’t rely on that laptop.
I’d been a tech for about 5 years when that happened.
Windows 95 was just released. A residential customer with lots of money to burn on the wrong things demanded I install the Win95 package he purchased on his son’s 486 computer. The Win95 package was the diskette version, the ATI video card was not supported, the machine barely had enough memory to run Win 95. It took days to install and tweak, the customer was not happy with how slow the once “fast” system was with Win95, he decided to buy a Dell as replacement, Dell screwed up the order, sending him the wrong peripherals and multiples of speakers and displays. This guy was not happy.
As a courtesy to a valued client, I agreed to look at her elderly aunt’s computer. I diagnosed an impending failure on hard drive. I tried to save her some money and told her to take it back to CompUSA since it was still within the warranty. She said she had no car so I agreed to drop it off for her.
6 weeks later, I get a call from the elderly lady asking me what happened to the family biography she had been writing for the past year.
CompUSA did call her and explain that she would lose everything and that she needed to pay for a backup, she declined, they swapped the HD and rebuilt the OS and returned it to her.
Then her attorney son calls me, not CompUSA, and after endless complaining says “let me ask you something, are you incorporated?”. The next day, I filed to incorporate.
Chain restaurant business customer had problems connecting to ftp site required to process transactions. They were using a Win98 OS (this was mid 2004 and time for 98 to go). I told her I could probably fix the problem with an upgrade to XP. She agreed and I ran the update. It did fix the problm. Only thing is it did not save the files as it should have. I’d only been in business about 9 months and learned the hard way to disk copy everything on a business hard drive and NEVER depend on the customer to tell you what is important. I now copy nearly everyting on each rebuild even though the customers sign a release saying that it is their responsibility to tell me what needs to be saved. Being right doesn’t win customers. Thinking ahead and sometimes thinking for them does!
A business brought in their computer to have us reinstall it and when it was done they wanted us to setup their dial-up. The customer’s last name was nearly the same as another in our database and I ended up setting his dial-up location to a town about 30 miles away, because that’s where the other customer lived. The customer never checked the number he was dialing when he got the computer back. After a month he called us, demanding that we pay his $800 phone bill that resulted from dialing the access number 30 miles away which ended up being long distance.
Now we have another line of fine print on our receipts and we always tell the customer to check it when they get home.
I really just do this on the side as I currently work for a decent sized company in thier IT department. For things done here well letting the user ok the deletion of his files that had no backup. The stuff I do on the side nothing really so far except letting some of my co-workers get away with free work. It isn’t too bad when I do it during my normal working hours. But I did take some home and not get paid worst was a HDD recovery in which the virus scan took 2+ days. I didn’t really discuss payment before hand so I can’t ask for it at the end. But yeah I won’t let too many people get free work out of me and I don’t mind small jobs I can do while I am at work. I need to make it understood that I do charge to my co-workers. The upside to the HDD recovery was I got to keep the old HDD.
The biggest mistake I’ve made? Probably letting myself get angry at a customer on the phone. Luckily, my business partner was around so I could hand the call off to him, but if he hadn’t walked in when he did, I shudder to think!
Cuke: How did you manage to set it up for long-distance dialling *by accident*? It shouldn’t be possible to dial long-distance without deliberately putting in the number with the LDD prefix.
I’ve been pretty careful about things, so I don’t have any *huge* screwups of my own to relate. I’ve got the usual assortment of “Damn, it would have been easier if I had just X to begin with” stories, though, including one time where I literally spent *weeks* fighting with a tape drive attached to a Fedora Core 3 machine, as the bloody thing would crash the entire system hard as soon as the dump got larger than about 60GB.
I spent *weeks* replacing the drive and the SCSI card and the software and running tests, completely stumped by what was causing the crashes. Eventually the crashes started happening when the tape drive wasn’t running, and then when the tape drive wasn’t installed, and those were my first solid confirmation that the tape drive wasn’t the problem.
The final problem? I have no idea. I still don’t know what the source of the problem was.
What I did is segregated one-half of the RAID (to provide me with a backup copy of everything) and wiped the other half flat, installing a different OS on bare metal, and setting *it* up to duplicate the old server’s functionality.
A month later, once I was certain my problems were solved and I wouldn’t have to revert back to the previous FC3 installation, I wiped the second drive and reconverted it back into a RAID.
(Extra dumbness: Were I doing it again, I would definitely do the RAID setup on the new OS differently. I’d set up the new OS with a “standard” disk, when I really should have set it up with a software RAID immediately, and simply left it in “degraded” mode until I was ready to add the second disk back in. Putting the RAID back, the way I did it, meant: Setting up the second disk as “degraded RAID”. Copying everything from first disk to second. Booting from second. Wiping first, adding it to the RAID.)
Basically, everything worked in the end, but it took me much, much, much longer than it should have.
JohnR: It was in the same area code, but still long distance. perhaps it’s just a Central New York thing, but it’s possible here to just dial the 7 digit number and it still be long distance.
One of the first laptops I worked on had a flimsy plastic cover over the power button. That snapped in half when I tried to put it back on. Cost me $20 to replace it, but hurt my ego more than anything.
I’m not a computer technician….and my first experience upgrading some RAM demonstrates why…schoolboy error, open case whilst plugged in, no earthing….
You know the rest (:
Oh man,
Probably not fully etching a definite line between friends and business. Too many times I’ve dumped hours of time into ‘helping’ people with their technical situations and not charging. Sometimes people think because you can fix an error or address a situation within a few minutes that it should not be compensated. But in all reality the countless hours you have dumped into learning/memorizing those skills… is just that, a ‘trade’ skill.
How often does a ‘friend’ come over to your house and do all your laundry free of charge. Or drives across town to wash your windows?
After thinking about it that way… I definitely draw a line now.
A mistake it appears I repeat once on a while is to give advice or do some free work for friends. But also burned a HDD in a Compaq laptop.
In this particular old model the HDD had a ribbon connector including the power lines leaving the connection lines exposed. I did not secured the ribbon as well as I thought I had and it burned after a couple of hours of work.
RoboMonkey, I like your analogy.
I too have had trouble differentiating between “friends and business” customers. Your analogy certainly will make it easier for me in the future.
On the technical side of mistakes I’ve made, the worst was getting distracted while troubleshooting a RAM issue and swapping a stick while powered up. It was on one of my own machines so there were no unhappy customers, but my ego did take a self imposed bruising.
“Friends and Business”, yup. My step-mother is elderly, and lately seems EVERY TIME that I go visit her and my father, she has a problem. I’ve told her several times before, whatever the error is, WRITE IT DOWN EXACTLY so that I know what I’m looking for.
What’s the problem this time? She says the computer comes up saying it “doesn’t have enough power to do something.” Do what? What were you doing when it happened? Did you write down the error? Jeesh…
Got frustrated enough that I’ve now dragged the machine back home. It’s gonna sit here for about a week before I look at it; perhaps she’ll learn to write down the error next time. Have no clue what she’s talking about; suspecting a dying hard drive, but don’t know.
The biggest issue I have with users is that if ANY LITTLE THING happens that is different than what normally occurs with their machine, they panic. Like if a different icon appears on their desktop. Man, do folks get touchy about their icons.
Sorry, I’m digressing from the original thread.
Back again, this post got me thinking… about some other boo boo’s.
Booting up an early AMD Athlon processor (ya know… the one with the die exposed in early 2000’s.) While it didn’t post for some odd reason, I thought I had turned off the power and slipped off the heatsink to take a peek at something and not realizing the power was still running and suddenly.
*POOF*
A cloud of smoke floated up in the freaking air. Representing the $179 I had just spent in that lovely scent of burning silicon. While the processor literally cooked before my eyes within 3 seconds!
That’s when I experienced the Zen Buddhism moment of, “one hand clapping” continuously by smacking myself in the forehead with my available hand while chanting, “Bonehead!” like a mantra.
The worst experience ive ever had ivolved the deltree command and thats all im going to say!!!!
I wanted to help a friend with his virus problem. He had all of his photos, music and Divx files but had no backup. Amount of space: 22 Gb. My 17 years as technician told me to do the quickest system: From his Hdd to my Hdd. I made a quick test to be sure I got all of the files. I removed my Hd slowly and carefully, then I did a HD format and a New-Clean Xp. When I tried to put back those 22 Gb, my hdd was hardly broken. Still can’t believe it!!. Too much self believing and optimistic work. I’ve lost some years of photos, and …
biggest mistake - Doing free work for hot chicks. Don’t lie, we’ve all done it.
This one time.. I was being rushed and was my nerves were wearing thin when I got careless with $ rm -rf
Well I’m not a techie exactly…cause I don’t really do it for a living…an enthusiast-cum-free jobs for pretty ladies guy (or just ladies…actually anyone)would be better!
I was into a Linux Crash Course and of the sheer excitement of installing Linux (Suse 10.x to be more precise)…I made a dual-boot out of my desktop…initially running XP Pro. The Linux boot loader (Grub i guess) would do its job until I realized that this more green flavored Linux was not exactly my meal due to hardware issues and stuff…it was when the pentium d’s had just arrived! So gone was Linux and along went the boot loader…in the panic that followed ended with a fresh install of XP…with the loss of about 40 gigs of data!
Now I hope everyone knows what data loss means!
This is kinda OT. I’ve been seeing alot of residential OE users save every message they ever received, and can’t understand why OE tanks when it gets up close to 4,000 messages in it’s db. They use it for archiving rather than the send/receive/delete message process. When I tell them the message file is corrupt and all is lost they cry in their beer over the messages lost from dear departed Aunt Gertrude or their e-mailed porn collection.
When first learning DOS, I came across the fdisk.com file. Hmmm, let me see what it does. ‘Delete partition?’, what’s a partition I thought? Sure why not, let’s delete it. We all know what happens to a drive with no partition. Wow, I learned what that does the next minute.
I didn’t do this myself, but I once got a computer fixed and the disk drive was put back in very crooked. It was visually noticeable that it wasn’t positioned correctly! Something so simple!
1. Starting work on a machine while the customer is there. I now tell them I should have it on the table shortly and will give them a call as soon as I have finished doing whatever.
2. Not discussing money. If it is a “friend” I have an associate call to confirm the cost of repair if it hasn’t been cleared up first.
3. Plugging in a hard drive the wrong way. I had an external usb ide cable and the power connector was cheap rubbery plastic. I plugged it in the wrong way. Cost me a new hard drive, a lost night sleep, and a full computer rebuild. Plus, I felt like an idiot.
I double check now and threw away the cheap power supply.
In my younger and no fear (and no sense) days, I decided to change the volatge switch on the back of the psu and then watched as the psu burned out in a massive cloud of smoke!!
Burning a cpu in seconds because I forgot to put the heatsink and fan on.
Electrocuting myself off a power supply once!!
Thank fully I am very cautious nowadays and more experienced!
I sometimes mess up and quote somebody a set price without seeing a system, and then discover I’m going to work something like 50 hours for 50 bucks. UGH. Stoopid-head
I’m the guy who gets all the calls although I’m not that technical. Last week I ordered a hard drive for a friend and it was the wrong kind. More of a look stupid that a major problem but its on the way back to the shop now.
Has anyone left any tools in a machine before or is that just me?
I’ve been told (Girlfriend) to help my father-in-law (almost) with his machine, does anyone else get this?
It always crashes, on inspection he has about 3 anti-virus software running at the same time, god knows how how much bloatware running at the start-up from installed then removed (unsuccessfully) programs
It’s a fairly decent machine, not too old
The point is he doesn’t want my help to fix it as he’s ‘read’ some things about computers and thinks he knows best
In answer to the question though the biggest mistake is trying help someone who thinks that they know best and won’t let you on the damn machine to fix it
New Power Supply wouldn’t fit in the case because the on/off switch. I opened the psu case, took out the toggle switch and twisted the wires together. Plugged it in while still holding the bare twisted wires….Didn’t hurt, but def. embarrasing.
How about setting up a business customer with a new machine, including the transfer from old to new. After deleting the user on the old machine, to set it up for someone new, I realized that the customer’s email had been completely wiped. Luckily, the guy was laid-back about it. Had it been me, personally, I may have considered suicide.
Not charging enough was my biggest mistake in the beginning. Just too much of a softy.
Hello! The biggest mistake I did was reinstalling Windows XP because I wasn’t able to order the icons in “Arbeitsplatz” (”My Computer”) as they were positioned after a fresk installation.
I have done so many stupid things but maybe the stupidest was trying to fit a customer’s laptop hard drive back into its case adapter without my specs on. I was holding the bit that goes onto those delicate pins back to front and when it wouldn’t fit I tried again and again till I lost my temper and rammed it on hard, snapping 2 of the pins off. It was only when I went to fetch my glasses that I realised the full horror of the situation.
Oh yeah, and pointing at something on a customer’s laptop on site and breaking the screen. Everyone just stood there motionless for a good 30 seconds.
hi im only 16 years old. I have many questions. what school would should i go to to become a mac technician because i was planning to go to school for about 5 to 6 years please reply!
Several years ago I was given a bigger HD to replace my original HD as it was makeing loud bearing noises.
Copied the windows 95 over and all the directories and files. Tested the new HD, everything was working OK, after a couple of hours I decided to reformat the original HD.
Reformat went like clockwork, feeling good I stepped back from the PC, the screen went blank.
Ohooooo I says, I attempted a reboot, nothing, tried again, still nothing, put a bootable floppy in the A: drive and reboot, attempt a C:\ and dir, nothing.
Seems the “new” HD decided to fail while I was reformatting my old HD, result, I lost the lot.
Everything on my original HD and the PC lost everything on my “new” HD at the same time.
Ha Ha just gotta laugh.
My client put an icon in his desktop which is somewhat similar to recycle bin. and named it bicycle bin, all his important files was in that folder. When i tried removing all the files in the recycle bin i was wondering why two recycle bins? so the next thing was history… i erased all his files inside the bicycle bin also with the client sitting beside me. i was not able to back up all his important files because it was saved on the desktop. He end up encoding his files from the beginning. peace….
ooooohhh, I’ve had some doozies in my day.
I like to write scripts to automate stuff. In my early days of scripting at my current job, me and a co-worker wrote a script to remove a certain client software from all machines. It also would remove things from a folder on the c drive, and remove the folder under certain conditions. Only problem was, my logic for determining those conditions was reversed. So folders got deleted from quite a few machines that contained very important files.
Another one, very simple mistake to make. I needed to re-image an important user’s computer. Did I back up their data before re-imaging the disk? Nope.
Most recently, a freind needed a memory upgrade for computers at his business. I gave him what I thought were the right chips. He put them in, but being inexperienced in the ways of hardware work, he powered on the computer even though the chips didn’t fit in the slots correctly. POOF! bye bye motherboard. And of course this happened the morning I was leaving for vacation so I couldn’t help him fix the issue.
@Phil Benwell:
I have worked on many car engines in my day as well. I never left a tool in a computer, but I have left a screwdriver under an intake manifold in a small block ChevY!