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Computer hell??
10 years ago
General
An Old Fox's life
I'm sure that I have mentioned in my journal that in a former Job I worked at Dell as their Sr Quality Auditor... That job is long gone now and I still have to wonder why Mikey did what he did. I guess money is way more important than people. Dell idd a great job of moving all the older well paid people into the Refurbish branch then they set many unreal goals and still we made them all... Finally in a turnabout move he went and subcontracted out the Refurbish work to a contractor that really didn't care and neither did Dell about things being fixed well.
Where is this leading? Computers of course! So I have been tinkering again with computers with builds for friends and some basic repairs. I built a couple of machines and was working on my Hopefully new Roommate's new computer.
http://www.gofundme.com/zc3u2ag
The last pieces showed up Friday.
I also received a package from a friend. It was her old computer she retired a year back and left it to sit. She explained that it shut down randomly. Along with her stating it had a newer Video card and some other things like it was running windows 7 on it. We have a mutual friend that is in need of a better computer than what she has now. Her's is old and constantly being patched up and barely runs some days. The plan was for me to check the system out and fix it if needed and then ship it our to the other friend in need.
The Post office decided to open the box and look at the contents. I guess they just don't consider a computer with Readable media just media mail. I had to pay 22.50 to receive the package. When I opened it again myself It was sad just sad.
The post office had opened the case and never put the cover back on. The system was packed in foam peanuts that were now all inside the computer. I shook my head at the condition of the computer on top of the extra peanuts inside.. It was nasty!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....psjlemz0s6.jpg
This was after two cans of air blowing out and my removing the Video card memory, both fans and more!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....psu8fikupu.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....ps8jc0zzm7.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....psnmbiu4nv.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....psmiwauyu0.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....ps9uuzabzl.jpg
Now remember I had wiped it off and out spent two cans of air blowing things. I decided to put some elbow grease into this and began a full clean of the system. I took the totally gunked over fans and scrubbed them and used a Q-tip to work on the blades and insides to get the caked on stuff off. I used several kinds of cleaner on the system. It had lots of tape that had to be removed along with what it had accumulated inside.
Now I will tell you that Smoking is bad for your health? Smoke and smoking around a computer quickly kills it~ Add to that animal fur and if you look closely the system was peed on! yep prob more than once. And it still ran before it was boxed? Wow Just wow. I scrubbed cleaned brushed and more to get the system clean and ready for more. Taking out the small items and even the Dims that were coated with gunk! Each piece was worked and cleaned.
Some of the issues I found were:
A. Owner said she had them work on it adding Memory for 8 gigs.
I found 6 gigs in system two sticks of 2 gig and two sticks of 1gig and only
the two gig sticks matched. the others had different speeds.
B. Video card was huge and sucked up 116 watts of power and the system came with a 230-250 watt power supply. Granted she had it replaced but I am betting its the same range of power. Add to that gunked up stuff and fans running all out with the rest of the load ......
C. The system had sat for all that time out and was totally gunked up with stuff along with the doggy pee. You have to just see what smoking does to a system. Ugh its gross and more. This is probably the main cause of the shut down issues. All the gunk covering cooling fins of processor cooler and fan blades reduces the computers ability to cool and it gets hot and auto shuts down.
After the clean up I sat down with my stack of Dims I had. I was surprised that I had two sticks of 2 gig Ram the same speed as the others in the system! Yea! full 8 gigs and all the faster speed to boot. With the brushing and cleaning of the fans I am sure the computer will run way cooler now. And I can check to see if they are really running also.
The outside was Ugh ugly and dirty. I peeled off tape and stickers. Scrubbed the side panel inside and out. Pulled the front bezel and cleaned it inside and out using a brush. Then I used more cleaner and then used a trick to bring back the color on the case. It looks almost new now.
I pulled the huge video card for testing now and have two lesser power consumption to check also. So later I will be finishing the reassembly and firing up the computer and praying its not dead..
Where is this leading? Computers of course! So I have been tinkering again with computers with builds for friends and some basic repairs. I built a couple of machines and was working on my Hopefully new Roommate's new computer.
http://www.gofundme.com/zc3u2ag
The last pieces showed up Friday.
I also received a package from a friend. It was her old computer she retired a year back and left it to sit. She explained that it shut down randomly. Along with her stating it had a newer Video card and some other things like it was running windows 7 on it. We have a mutual friend that is in need of a better computer than what she has now. Her's is old and constantly being patched up and barely runs some days. The plan was for me to check the system out and fix it if needed and then ship it our to the other friend in need.
The Post office decided to open the box and look at the contents. I guess they just don't consider a computer with Readable media just media mail. I had to pay 22.50 to receive the package. When I opened it again myself It was sad just sad.
The post office had opened the case and never put the cover back on. The system was packed in foam peanuts that were now all inside the computer. I shook my head at the condition of the computer on top of the extra peanuts inside.. It was nasty!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....psjlemz0s6.jpg
This was after two cans of air blowing out and my removing the Video card memory, both fans and more!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....psu8fikupu.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....ps8jc0zzm7.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....psnmbiu4nv.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....psmiwauyu0.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....ps9uuzabzl.jpg
Now remember I had wiped it off and out spent two cans of air blowing things. I decided to put some elbow grease into this and began a full clean of the system. I took the totally gunked over fans and scrubbed them and used a Q-tip to work on the blades and insides to get the caked on stuff off. I used several kinds of cleaner on the system. It had lots of tape that had to be removed along with what it had accumulated inside.
Now I will tell you that Smoking is bad for your health? Smoke and smoking around a computer quickly kills it~ Add to that animal fur and if you look closely the system was peed on! yep prob more than once. And it still ran before it was boxed? Wow Just wow. I scrubbed cleaned brushed and more to get the system clean and ready for more. Taking out the small items and even the Dims that were coated with gunk! Each piece was worked and cleaned.
Some of the issues I found were:
A. Owner said she had them work on it adding Memory for 8 gigs.
I found 6 gigs in system two sticks of 2 gig and two sticks of 1gig and only
the two gig sticks matched. the others had different speeds.
B. Video card was huge and sucked up 116 watts of power and the system came with a 230-250 watt power supply. Granted she had it replaced but I am betting its the same range of power. Add to that gunked up stuff and fans running all out with the rest of the load ......
C. The system had sat for all that time out and was totally gunked up with stuff along with the doggy pee. You have to just see what smoking does to a system. Ugh its gross and more. This is probably the main cause of the shut down issues. All the gunk covering cooling fins of processor cooler and fan blades reduces the computers ability to cool and it gets hot and auto shuts down.
After the clean up I sat down with my stack of Dims I had. I was surprised that I had two sticks of 2 gig Ram the same speed as the others in the system! Yea! full 8 gigs and all the faster speed to boot. With the brushing and cleaning of the fans I am sure the computer will run way cooler now. And I can check to see if they are really running also.
The outside was Ugh ugly and dirty. I peeled off tape and stickers. Scrubbed the side panel inside and out. Pulled the front bezel and cleaned it inside and out using a brush. Then I used more cleaner and then used a trick to bring back the color on the case. It looks almost new now.
I pulled the huge video card for testing now and have two lesser power consumption to check also. So later I will be finishing the reassembly and firing up the computer and praying its not dead..
Reminds me of the wearable systems I got on my desk to repair after test users accidentally put them into the washing machine and pulled them out after half the washing was done.
There it was less biological residues but more chemical ones, but it was yucky , too.