c/computer-technicians

Static wrist straps were my joke until I zapped a $400 drive in Phoenix

I spent 5 years laughing at ESD gear and then fried a client's hard drive in 20 seconds of dry Arizona air, so what do you actually use to ground yourself when you're on site and nowhere near a plug?

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richard_shah•1d ago

My old mentor said always test PSUs under load, I ignored him for 5 years

Back in 2018 my first shop mentor kept telling me to throw a dummy load on every questionable power supply before swapping it out. I figured a multimeter check was enough and blew through replacements like candy. Last month a client in Denver came back with a dead board because I shipped a unit that showed 12V at idle but sagged to 10.2 under boot. Now I rig up a cheap resistor bank and a hard drive to test every single one, takes ten extra minutes but I stopped burning through returns. Has anyone else gotten burned trusting idle voltage readings?.

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jade_lane19•1d ago

Took a chance on a cheap thermal camera, kinda shocked it paid off

I've always told customers to stick with the big name thermal imagers because the $150 ones seemed like toys. Last Tuesday I picked up a budget model at a shop in Austin for a duct leak hunt, and it caught the cold spot dead on. Still not gonna use it for main board work, but it earned a spot in my bag for insulation checks. Anyone else find a low cost tool that surprised them on a real job?

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thea246•2d ago

Paid $180 for a data recovery tool and it saved a client's whole business

Had a small law firm come in last month with a dead RAID 5 array. Their IT guy was useless, told them everything was gone. I dropped $180 on a recovery utility instead of sending it out for $1200. Got every file back in about 4 hours. Client nearly cried. The tool paid for itself on that one job alone. Anyone else ever gamble on cheaper recovery software and win big?

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ninag10•6d ago

Dropped $140 on a fancy thermal imager, my old FLIR was fine

Bought a new thermal camera for motherboard fault hunting last month and it turned out to be slower and blurrier than my trusty five year old FLIR. Sent it back and got a refund, but the shipping cost me $12 out of pocket. Anyone else waste money on a tool upgrade that just didn't pay off?

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hart.ryan•6d ago

Dropped $80 on a USB-C hub that nuked my bench station, cheap backup saved the week

I grabbed this high-end powered hub for my repair bench, figured 12 ports and 100W passthrough was worth the cash. Three days in, a short on the board fried two SSDs before I caught it. Now I'm back on a $15 unpowered dongle, zero issues so far. Anyone else trust powered hubs or is it a liability on the bench?

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paul_webb45•6d ago

Ran 30 laptops through a thermal paste change today, what a difference on the old i7s

These 2015 Dell Latitudes were all hitting 95C under load and throttling hard, swapped the crusty paste for some MX-4 and they're sitting at 70C now, has anyone else found that the screwdriver type really matters for getting those heat sinks off without stripping?

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walker.rowan•8d ago

Caught myself using canned air to clean a PSU and it clicked

I was blowing dust out of a 750 watt unit in a client's office near Detroit when I realized the can was spraying moisture on the caps, and that's why I kept seeing corrosion on boards I worked on, so now I only use a brush and a shop vac, but has anyone else had that wet spray ruining their repairs?

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brookepark•9d ago

One Tuesday went from 12 dead laptops to a full RAID rescue, what a swing

Last month I had a Tuesday where three drop-offs turned out to be the same bad batch of power supplies, then a small law firm in Austin called about a RAID 5 that dropped two drives overnight. By 4 PM I had rebuilt the array with a spare drive and restored their files, but I still had to tell the other customers their boards were toast. Do you get weeks like that where every call is either a miracle or a nightmare, or is it usually steady for you too?

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umab35•10d ago

Found a dusty old iMac in a thrift shop in Boise, spent 4 hours reviving it

Stopped by a Goodwill on my way back from a job in Boise last Tuesday and spotted a 2011 iMac in the back corner. It was dusty, had a cracked corner on the bezel, and the hard drive was clicking like crazy. I snagged it for $40 just for the fun of it, took it home, and swapped in an old 240GB SSD I had lying around. After a fresh High Sierra install and 8GB of RAM from a parts machine, it boots in under 30 seconds now. Not bad for a twelve year old machine, honestly. Anyone else rescue old Macs from thrift stores or am I just a sucker for junk?

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robin_foster1•12d ago

I finally stopped trusting my old thermal paste routine after a 3 AM server call

Used to just slap Arctic Silver on every CPU the same way since 2016, but last Tuesday a client in Phoenix had a Ryzen 9 hitting 95C at idle and the spread pattern was uneven and crusty. Turns out the older paste had dried out from sitting in a hot van for 8 months and I never checked the batch date. Anyone else had a thermal interface material fail on them randomly, or do you track shelf life now?

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jessicaw11•19d ago

Client said my invoice was 'too clean' and now I add more detail

Had a business owner tell me my line item for a Windows reinstall looked too simple, like I was hiding something. Started listing every driver update and backup step with a small charge each. Has anyone else padded their invoices with extra breakdowns just to keep clients from questioning the total?

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bettymurphy•20d ago

My label maker now has a real job after the server room incident

Three weeks ago we had a power blip at a dental office in Tacoma. Nothing crazy, just a quick flicker. But someone had labeled the UPS input and output cables with the same color tape. I traced the wrong line for 45 minutes, pulled the plug on the only machine holding their appointment backups. Nobody screamed, which was worse. Now I label every cable with a printed tag that says where it starts and ends. Even the ones that seem obvious. Has anyone else had a labeling system save them from a dumb mistake?

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the_jennifer•23d ago

Spent $400 on a UPS, it kept my server alive but not my sanity

I bought a refurbished 1500VA UPS for my home lab after two brownouts killed a NAS last spring. The unit worked fine, but the alarm beeped every time the power flickered, and that happened 14 times in one month. Anyone else ever just rip the buzzer wire out and deal with the risk to sleep at night?

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lee.lucas•25d ago

Lost a full backup array to a dead RAID controller yesterday

Client's server at a dental office in Waco started throwing SMART warnings on one drive, so I ordered a hot spare. Before it even arrived, the controller itself died and took the whole RAID 5 with it. Checked the logs and it had been reinitializing the array after every reboot for weeks, no notification ever fired. I had to explain to the dentist that their 4 TB of x-rays were gone because we trusted a single controller without a second copy. Any of y'all run a secondary controller or external replication for small office servers, or just eat the cost when this happens?

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williams.amy•29d ago

My cable tester setup changed after a $60 lesson in Seattle

Used to just trust my Fluke and move on, but last spring I got 12 bad drops in a new office build out. Turned out the punchdowns were fine, the issue was a cheap patch panel I didn't verify pin by pin. Now I run a full wiremap plus a TDR test on every single run, takes maybe 3 extra minutes per drop. Also started labeling both ends with a Brother labeler instead of just memory, saved me twice already. Has anyone else switched to doing pinouts on every run or am I being paranoid now?

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the_mia•1mo ago

Just realized hot glue is the better fix for plastic standoffs

I keep seeing folks bash hot glue for motherboard standoffs that snap off, but after 12 years in this trade, I've had better luck with a $6 glue gun than any epoxy or zip tie method. Last Tuesday a client in Denver brought in a prebuilt that had three broken standoffs from a rough move. I cleaned the holes, set the board, and dabbed hot glue around each one. It held through a full burn-in test and they've had zero issues since. Epoxy takes forever to set and zip ties can short traces if you're not careful. Hot glue is easy to remove later without wrecking the case. Am I the only one who thinks this is the practical answer, or do you all have a better trick for stripped standoffs?

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sethanderson•1mo ago

Finally stopped using guesswork for thermal paste, now I weigh every application

After three RMA'd GPUs in Austin, I bought a $25 jewelry scale and started measuring 0.2g per CPU, and my last two builds hit temps 8 degrees cooler, so has anyone else switched from the pea method to actually weighing it?

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sagesingh•1mo ago

Hit 1,000 completed tickets and it hit different than I expected

Passed 1,000 closed tickets this morning after a brutal login loop job for a dentist office in Toledo. I thought it'd just be another number, but seeing that counter roll over made me realize how many weird problems I've untangled. Anyone else track milestones like this, or am I just making my own spreadsheet weird?

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the_simon•1mo ago

Finally caught my thermal paste mistake after 7 years of builds

Was reading a teardown thread and someone mentioned using a pea size dot, but I always did a line. Checked an old card I pulled apart last week, the paste had spread uneven and left a dry corner on the die. Anyone else just follow the first tutorial they saw without double checking?

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pat_hall87•1mo ago

Swapped my multimeter for a thermal camera on an HVAC call, risky move

Had a customer in Dayton with a weird intermittent tripping issue on their condenser. I was about to order a new contactor, which is my usual go to, but I decided to trust the FLIR One I got last month instead. Spotted a hot spot on the compressor terminal that a standard probe would never have caught. Turned out the wiring lug was loose and arcing under load, not the contactor at all. Tightened it down, unit ran fine, and the customer thought I was a wizard. Now I'm second guessing how many times I swapped parts unnecessarily over the years. Has anyone else made the jump to thermal imaging for basic diagnostics, or is it overkill for most house calls?

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angelaellis•1mo ago

Debated between a used Dell PowerEdge and building my own NAS for 6 months

I needed a home server for Plex and file storage, so I spent forever going back and forth. The PowerEdge R730 looked like a steal on eBay at $350, but the noise and power draw scared me off. Ended up building a FreeNAS box with an old Ryzen 5 1600 and 6 used 4TB drives for about $500 total. Three months in and it sips power at 65 watts idle, which saves me around $15 a month compared to what that Dell would have pulled. The setup took 4 hours of fiddling with the TrueNAS install, but now it just runs. Anyone else go the DIY route and regret not just buying enterprise gear instead?

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oscar_hunt61•1mo ago

Rolled my eyes at a coworker who swore by cheap thermal paste. Guess who was right?

I spent $15 on Arctic Silver for a repaste job and my temps dropped maybe 2 degrees. He used the $3 stuff from Micro Center and got the same results. Has anyone else found the expensive stuff is just a waste?

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taylor.mary•1mo ago

Unpopular opinion: ditch the canned air for a data vac

For years I used to blast dust out of PCs with those $5 cans of compressed air. Then I did a deep clean on a server rack at a law office downtown and spent $40 on air in one afternoon. Got a Metro DataVac a year ago and it has paid for itself already. Has anyone else made the switch and noticed less moisture problems on boards?

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pat_hall87•1mo ago

Three hours wasted on a driver issue that should have taken 10 minutes

Had a client bring in an older HP laptop last week that kept blue screening. I ran all the usual tests, swapped RAM, checked the hard drive, even replaced thermal paste. Finally dug through the event logs and found a corrupt display driver from a Windows update three months ago. Booted into safe mode, rolled it back, and it ran fine. Took me three hours to find a fix that took maybe two clicks. Anyone else feel stupid when the answer is that simple after tearing half the machine apart?

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