c/computer-technicians

TIL letting a junior tech shadow me costs me 2 hours a day but saves 10 later

I used to just hand over a ticket and hope for the best, letting new guys learn by trial and error in the back. Last month I started sitting with my apprentice Mike for the first 30 minutes of every motherboard swap or drive recovery, explaining my process step by step. It feels like a huge time suck at first, but I swear I'm fixing fewer callbacks now - he caught a bad PSU on a Dell Optiplex 7050 before I even noticed the symptoms. Has anyone else found that slowing down upfront actually speeds up your whole week?

Update: I used to think thermal paste brand didn't matter until I saw a 15 degree drop on a Ryzen build

I was helping my buddy build a PC for his son last weekend and he insisted on using some cheap $3 tube he got off Amazon. I told him it was fine, same stuff right? He ran Cinebench and his temps hit 95C almost immediately. I swapped it with some Arctic MX-6 I had in my bag and after a 10 minute burn-in the temps settled at 80C. Found a Gamers Nexus video later that showed the same thing with a bunch of pastes tested. Has anyone else seen a big difference on newer chips or was that just a bad batch of paste?

That 'try unplugging it for 30 seconds' advice actually fixed a tough one

I spent two hours last week on a Dell Optiplex that kept boot looping. Swapped the PSU, tested the RAM, even reflowed the caps. Nothing worked. My buddy Greg who works at a recycling center told me to just hold the power button for 60 seconds with the cord out. I laughed at him but tried it out of desperation. Booted right up after that and has been fine for 7 days now. How does a simple drain of residual power fix something that looks like a hardware failure? Has anyone else seen this actually solve a legit broken feeling problem?

Took me 45 minutes to find a bad capacitor that looked fine

Had a Dell Optiplex 7010 that kept crashing under load. I checked everything - PSU, RAM, GPU - but missed a bulging capacitor near the CPU socket because it was hidden under the heatsink. Found it by accident when i pulled the board out and shined a light at the right angle. Anyone else have a hidden hardware fault that wasted way too much time?

Found out thermal paste can actually go bad after sitting in a drawer for 5 years

Pulled an old tube of Arctic Silver out of my tool kit at a shop in Nashville yesterday and it had separated into liquid and solid chunks, which I guess explains why that CPU was hitting 90C under load - has anyone else run into expired paste causing issues like this?

Vent: The day I proved 'never work on family PCs' is wrong

Everyone says don't touch family computers, but I fixed my cousin's laptop last Tuesday in 20 minutes. Took a $0.03 capacitor to replace on the motherboard and it booted right up. Anybody else have a quick win that goes against the usual advice?

Just had a client's server crash because I followed the 'right' procedure

I was at a small office in Austin last Tuesday, fixing their file server that kept throwing disk errors. Everyone says you should always run chkdsk first before anything else, so I did. Big mistake. It locked up the drive mid-scan and corrupted the MFT beyond repair. I had to pull the drive, clone it sector-by-sector with a Linux live USB, and then recover files from the clone. Took me 6 hours and a lot of swearing. Now I think that 'best practice' is fine for healthy drives, but for failing ones, it's a trap. Has anyone else had chkdsk hose a drive when you were just trying to be careful?

Finally came around on thermal paste application methods after a bad repair job

I used to be the guy who would put a pea sized dot in the middle and call it good. Always thought the spreading method was a waste of time. Last month I had to redo a CPU on a gaming PC that kept hitting 90C under load. Pulled the cooler off and the paste had only covered about 60 percent of the IHS. The hotspot was right where there was nothing. So I spread it evenly with a plastic card this time and temps dropped 12 degrees. Now I spread every time. Has anyone else seen a big difference switching methods?

Hit 50 clean BIOS flashes in a row without bricking anything

Everyone talks about how risky flashing a BIOS is, but I just crossed 50 straight successful updates without a single failure. Mostly Dell OptiPlex systems for a school district refresh. Anyone else find this whole 'scary BIOS flash' thing overblown?

Had the worst Tuesday of my career last month

Got called into an office building downtown to fix a file server that was acting up. Turned out a cleaning crew had unplugged the UPS overnight and the drives got corrupted. Spent 8 hours rebuilding the RAID array from backups only to find the tape drive had failed too. Has anyone else dealt with a double failure like that or am I just unlucky?

Went from a power strip to a proper UPS. Night and day difference.

Had a client with a small office. Old power strip setup. Surge took out their server last Tuesday. Lost 3 days of work. Swapped them to a CyberPower unit with battery backup. Next day another surge happened. UPS kicked in. Kept everything running. That basic power strip was $12. The UPS was $150. Worth every penny. Anyone else see people cheap out on power protection?

Guy at Micro Center swore I needed a 1200W PSU for a basic office build

I was building a PC for my wife's cousin to browse Facebook and pay bills. Some kid working there insisted a 300W unit would fry the system, so I grabbed a 1200W Corsair just to shut him up. $250 later and the PC runs fine with a kill-a-watt reading 180W under load. Has anyone else had a salesperson talk you into something way overkill?

Had a client's PC totally die mid-data transfer yesterday

I was moving files off an old Dell Optiplex to a new SSD for a customer in Arlington, and the mobo just gave out with a loud pop and some smoke. Turns out a capacitor blew on the power delivery circuit near the RAM slots. Anyone else run into these old Optiplex boards just failing randomly like that?

Had an epiphany at my uncle's farm in Ohio about my whole cable management approach

I was helping him run some Ethernet to a new shed and he just used zip ties straight through the joists. No velcro, no raceways, just tight bundles everywhere. It bugged me at first but after watching him trace a bad cable in like 30 seconds I realized all my fancy management is just making things harder to service. Any of you guys gone back to simpler methods just for the sake of speed?

The $50 cable tester that made me rethink cheap tools

Last month I was at a job in Billings Montana and my $20 cable tester kept giving me false passes. The customer was getting mad because their network kept dropping and I couldn't find the problem. A senior tech I work with handed me his Fluke tester and I found a bad crimp in about 30 seconds. I bought the cheap one because I figured a tester is a tester, but now I see the difference in reliability. Has anyone else had a cheap tool waste their time on site?

Question about using thermal paste on laptop CPUs

Had a chat with a guy at Micro Center last week who fixes gaming laptops for a living. He told me I've been using way too much thermal paste on every CPU swap I do (like, pea-sized is plenty, not the spread method). I've been doing the credit card spread trick for 3 years on customer machines and probably caused some heat issues without knowing. He said most laptops only need about half a grain of rice worth or they run hotter, not cooler. Makes me wonder how many of my old repairs I should go back and redo. Has anyone else been doing it wrong this whole time and had to change their method?

Figured out thermal paste application after messing up 3 builds

Used to just blob it on and hope for the best... temps were always sort of meh. I tried the pea method on this latest Ryzen build and my idle temp dropped like 8 degrees. Did a paste spread check when I pulled the cooler off a month later and it was nearly perfect coverage. For basic chips the pea method beats the line method every time from what I've seen. Has anyone tested the cross pattern on an Intel vs AMD and seen a difference?

Debate: Replacing thermal paste every 6 months vs. never touch it unless temps are bad

I tried doing a full repaste on my personal rig every 6 months for about a year. First time dropped temps by 8c. Second time? Maybe 2c. Third time i saw zero change. Now im wondering if we are all just wasting tubes of paste chasing tiny gains. On the other hand, my buddy in Austin never repastes and his CPU has been running at 85c for 3 years with no issues. What side are you on? Do you stick to a schedule or just leave it alone?

I used to think you had to replace every bad power supply, but now I test the caps first

Back in my shop in Dayton, we'd just swap the whole unit if a computer wouldn't boot. After a $30 ESR meter showed me that 70% of the time it's just one bulging capacitor, I started repairing them. Anyone else still doing component-level fixes on PSUs, or is that just too risky now?

Question about a client's comment on data backup

A client in Denver told me 'the cloud is just someone else's computer' when I suggested an online backup. It made me rethink how I explain off-site options. How do you guys get past that initial distrust to talk about real backup strategies?

Tried a new thermal paste application method on a gaming rig yesterday and the temps dropped 8 degrees

Unpopular opinion: The 'just reimage it' fix has gotten way too common over the last five years.

I used to spend hours on real diagnostics, but now half my tickets get a fresh Windows install as the first step. Are we getting lazy or is this just the new normal for speed?

Had a user bring in a PC that smelled like burnt sugar and was full of ants.

Turns out they kept it on the floor next to their kitchen counter. What's the weirdest thing you've found inside a machine?

Just lost a whole afternoon to a bad power strip

Had a weird issue where a customer's PC would randomly reboot. Spent 3 hours swapping parts before I finally checked the cheap power strip they were using. It was causing voltage drops. I should have checked it first, but I assumed it was fine. Anyone have a go-to brand for power strips they trust for workstations?

A client told me to just reinstall Windows for every slow computer

He said it in my shop in Knoxville, arguing it's faster than actual troubleshooting. I had to explain that a fresh install doesn't fix a failing hard drive, which his machine had. How do you handle customers who think there's just one fix for everything?