so its just a faulty power supply?

[GoNz0]

i got a laptop in this week from the guy at city link who brings me my parts each day, he said it stopped working and against his advice his son decided to take it to bits to try and fix it, in the process of doing so he managed to rip the plug off the VGA cable, cut through the wifi leads (yes cut through) and tear the keyboard flat cable halfway across.

he did do a damn good job of putting it back together mind you, hats off to him for that.

the sad thing is the 1st thing i picked up on was the lack of power light on the laptop, so out with the multimeter and 0v coming out the PSU cable, after cutting the end off and resoldering 2 inch further down i got a power light, no screen so i plugged in my external monitor, then my keyboard after i got life and no working keybord.

he is going to be rather annoyed today when i tell him what the original fault was

at least i can get a cable off the bay for £4 inc and a keyboard that looks the save for £15 so its not to bad!

[Sputnik]

People never seem to learn to leave things alone when they are not sure what they are doing and it always ends up costing them more.

The cutting through things reminds me of when my (idiotic) uncle tried to fix his washing machine and just hacked through all the hoses with a bread knife of all things

[watercooled]

People never seem to learn to leave things alone when they are not sure what they are doing and it always ends up costing them more.

Couldn't agree more, I often find that on friends' PCs where another friend 'who knows a lot about PCs' has 'fixed' it, usually by messing with software rather than hardware though. A recent example (I may have mentioned before) being someone disabling Windows Update and removing the original AV because the computer was running slow then tinkering with network settings and creating a network connection named MSN because MSN Messenger wasn't working. Obviously the computer ended up worse off that before and took a good few hours to put right, not least because it was a Windows 98 era laptop running Windows XP (which would explain the slowness in the first place). It's always sort of amusing how people with no idea what they're doing end up creating some really complicated problem and have no recollection how they managed it, usually something you would struggle to recreate yourself if you tried! Of course, it's also annoying that they 'had a look at it' in the first place, turning what would have been a 2 minute job into a 2 hour job putting right what they messed with. The same applies to malware too, you can load as much security as you want on a PC and yet people still find a way to fill the PC with viruses...

[peterb]

Yup - one thing I've learned is if something isn't working properly - it is very easy to make a bad situation worse. Often the best thing is to stop and think about it for 6, 12, 24 hourss, and if it is a major problem potentially involving loss of data, clone the hard drive and work off the clone - at least then if you get it wrong you can always go back to the original start point.

And laptop hardware - a gentle touch - too many little plastic things to go 'snap' at the wrong moment.

[Rob_B]

I got one a few days ago sprung on me by my wife who kindly offered my services to one of her friends....(no sniggering at the back)

"The laptop doesn't work"

Hmm..could that be due to the fact it was cracked/scraped, obviously been dropped & bashed, filty, full of dust & hair perhaps?...
This is from a family who kids has broken their TV twice by pouring water/juice down the back of it...

Turns out the power jack main 'leg' had snapped, soldered it as best I could & it works but it'll soon go. Bad thing is they said I could have it for parts as I said I couldn't fix it, I then persevered because I didn't want to be beaten & now it works so I can't keep it any more
I might just have to 'test' the connection, shame if it were to break again eh

[Behemoth]

I deal with people like that occasionally. It's very frustrating looking at peoples kit when its damaged, or just plain dirty. I had someone just land one in my lap months ago that looked like it had been dragged through a muddy puddle, then a hedge and then dropped in sand.

I said so what do you want me to do with that then ?

Fix it was the reply, told them I wasn't touching it with a mile long barge pole and to just throw the thing in a skip !

[Rob_B]

If the specs are good enough I'd offer to 'dispose' of it for them!
This one was a C2D, 2GB, 250GB….

[Behemoth]

I didn't want the hassle of cleaning it all up, then finding what was good and what wasn't for a few quid off ebay on a EI Systems laptop !

[GoNz0]

nah robbo is a good lad and sorts my parts out ready on a daily basis, about time i helped in return, only charging him a tenner to fix it plus parts. he was a happy man this morning, his son on the other hand has a lot of cars to wash

[Rob_B]

I didn't want the hassle of cleaning it all up, then finding what was good and what wasn't for a few quid off ebay on a EI Systems laptop !

Eeew, you should have said...

I don't mind doing things for mates but anything more than a 'thanks' is rare & gets my goat when I've just saved them hundreds, it's the thought that counts as I don't do it for profit but a nice bottle of Woodford Reserve or something would go down well!

It's when people seem to take the mick I hate, was getting a lift after coming back from hols (as in we'd just landed) & as I was putting the case in the boot it just so happened there was a PC in there that was 'not working & I was going to scrap it' - what a coincidence!

[Behemoth]

i do a fair bit of work for friends and family but they know better than to not give me anything. If it's family I always say if I have to buy anything I will only charge you for the cost of the parts, they always give me something extra on top for my trouble.

Friends are flaming different, some of them royaly extract the urine like it's going out of fashion and in those cases I just say sorry can't do it, not got the time, ask me next week. It's funny how those little problems they have get sorted out in the end, not by me either.

[scaryjim]

... laptop hardware - a gentle touch - too many little plastic things to go 'snap' at the wrong moment.

Oooh, don't remind me. The worst thing that ever happened to me with a laptop was when I was refurbing one to sell to a friend - just put a new hard drive in and got Windows installed when I tipped it to check something underneath and *CRACK* - the power connector was soldered onto a small offshot of the main section of the motherboard and it had snapped clean off. Absolutely no way to fix it. Gutting...

[GoNz0]

epoxy resin ftw jim !

and soldering offending parts to new locations

[Sputnik]

Turns out the power jack main 'leg' had snapped, soldered it as best I could & it works but it'll soon go. Bad thing is they said I could have it for parts as I said I couldn't fix it, I then persevered because I didn't want to be beaten & now it works so I can't keep it any more
I might just have to 'test' the connection, shame if it were to break again eh

I worked with a guy that had done that to his battered old laptop, So he just soldered a cable directly onto the motherboard and had an inline socket on the bit of cable.

[scaryjim]

epoxy resin ftw jim !

and soldering offending parts to new locations

Not sure you can resolder motherboard traces can you?

[this_is_gav]

Eeew, you should have said...

Indeed - urgh!

Only worse laptop I've had the misfortune of working with recently has been a Toshiba Satellite (non-pro) mid-range gaming laptop.

I bought 2 for the bosses nephews and I really, really wish I hadn't. They're ludicrously hot - so hot they turn themselves off after a couple of hours, even when idle. The hard drives in both have died (and when I sent one back to Toshiba, asking to keep the broken one to attempt data recovery, they asked for £125 for the confirmed dead HDD, despite replacing it!!). The motherboard (or CPU, or GPU) has died. The screen died on one.

Despite dismantling Acers and replacing broken and cracked screens for a few years now, I was nearly defeated by replacing the screen on the Toshiba. Like Acer, lots of pulling of plastic fascias is required (as normal with laptops), yet the tabs on the Acers didn't simply snap off, as they did the Toshiba. The internal cable for the keyboard are also a bit trickier than on the Acers too.

Horrible, horrible laptops. Their Satellite Pro systems must be far superior. Frankly lard is superior.