Bad day

[ell]

Ever had one of these? I got in a hp envy h8 1414 that the owner says the sound just stopped working. I plug it in and its very quiet (too quiet) fans running but there's no video at all. I immediately suspect mobo or gpu. so I pull the graphics card and now it won't even power on, swap the ps and it starts but still no video, even with a different card. Agh, so it appears the ps AND the mobo are dead...on my bench, nice. Tried every trick, did get 6 beeps and then 5 beeps at one time, removed the ram, cmos battery, nothing dead. Naturally I didn't charge a dime, but felt terrible, he was totally understanding, thankfully, but wow, yes I was grounded too.

 

[Your PCMD]

I had one like that on a Dell last week. Tried everything I could but got no video. Went through a half dozen video cards and still no video. It would power on, fans would run, etc. Switched the PSU twice. Tested existing PSU, its good. Finally, after saying a few choice words, I popped in an old GeForce 610 and it came up. Went into BIOS and just hit default settings, F10 to save and all worked. Popped the clients video card in and it worked like a charm. I have no clue what the issue was but I did not charge the client as I did not want it back as a warranty repair.

 

[Larry Sabo]

I had a rotten, totally-wasted morning, also with a HP Elite, running Win 8.1. 40 minute drive to client's house, 1.5 hrs trying to resolve glacial browser rendering and inability to print, before pulling the plug and walking away empty-handed because the client was getting impatient.

Unfortunately, I had sold my USB wireless adapter the day before so I couldn't use it to pin the blame on the Ethernet cable/connectors/port of the router. IPads connected to internet and printed to the wireless printer via the same router okay. System wouldn't go to boot menu so I could boot a live Linux CD; couldn't use my netbook to triage the PC or Ethernet cabling because the cable was buried behind a humongous desk/cabinet/flooring. I could ping google without packet loss, averaging 33ms. No proxies, DNS, or HOSTS issues. d7 found no surprises. RogueKiller wouldn't update but was clean with dated definitions. (Only Windows defender in use.) Device manager happy. Customer's husband phoned after I had been there 45 minutes to ask if I had it fixed yet. Etc., etc., etc. Some days are like that.

 

[ell]

Thanks for posting guys, Murphys law in action. Guess we should be glad we're not surgeons, things can always get worse!

 

[trevm999]

yes I was grounded too.

Was the desktop grounded too? You're better off being bonded if you're not both grounded. Not that I think this actually caused problems.

 

[ell]

Guess my client wasn't too upset, he's bringing me two more friends laptops in the next week, but I still can't help but feel responsible. He said the PS was an upgrade about a year ago or something and was surprised it failed. The ps died when I swapped the GPU out. Never seen both ps and mobo go at the same time. I could get the ps to come on for a second or two if I toggled the switch in back.

 

[fencepost]

Never seen both ps and mobo go at the same time.

Depends on how ugly the PS dies, and if it was a surge that made it all the way through.

 

[Krynn72]

I've seen a bad PSU kill a mobo plenty of times. On one of my personal machines a defective Zalman PSU toasted my motherboard, video card, one HDD and one of four RAM sticks all in one go.

Thats when I learned that the PSU should be the single best quality part of any system. I now always pick my PSU first, and it doesn't ever get changed just to make room in the budget for something else.

 

[MDD1963]

Was the desktop grounded too? You're better off being bonded if you're not both grounded. Not that I think this actually caused problems.

Saw a well-known tech on youtube advocate touching the outside of the metal case before installing RAM to dissipate static; it did not seem to occur to him that a floating metal case sitting on top of a spinning plastic mount on a wooden table might not provide the anti-static protection he had hoped for.

 

[glennd]

Saw a well-known tech on youtube advocate touching the outside of the metal case before installing RAM to dissipate static; it did not seem to occur to him that a floating metal case sitting on top of a spinning plastic mount on a wooden table might not provide the anti-static protection he had hoped for.

if the unit was plugged into the mains which has a ground connection then that would be appropriate.

 

[MDD1963]

if the unit was plugged into the mains which has a ground connection then that would be appropriate.

I don't think many folks think they can get away with reseating/changing memory modules on motherboards these days simply because the computer is 'shutdown' with a power supply still attached/plugged in; certainly, the one or two lights on the mainboard and/or it's NIC should alert the user that some level of power is still applied to the mainboard in this state.

 

[trevm999]

Saw a well-known tech on youtube advocate touching the outside of the metal case before installing RAM to dissipate static; it did not seem to occur to him that a floating metal case sitting on top of a spinning plastic mount on a wooden table might not provide the anti-static protection he had hoped for.

The point of this is to get at the same potential difference as the computer. If you are at the same potential difference, no static discharge can occur. A worse scenario would be if you were grounded, and did not touch the case before installing ram and the computer was not grounded.