c/computer-technicians

Hit 10,000 repair jobs logged in my system today and it changed my whole view on what I do

Dropped $80 on a magnetic parts tray and it's already saved my butt twice

Been doing house calls for about 6 years now, and I finally got sick of losing screws behind drywall and under desks. Picked up one of those big magnetic trays with the rubber bottom last month for $80. First job I used it on was this old Dell tower where the owner had like 30 different sized screws loose. Second job was a server rack install where I dropped a tiny M2 standoff and it stuck right to the tray instead of bouncing into the abyss. Anyone else swear by a specific tool that seemed like a gimmick until you actually used it?

Just realized my thermal paste application method has been wrong for over a decade

I watched a guy at a shop in Pittsburgh do a thin spread with a credit card last month and it dropped my CPU temps by 8 degrees compared to my old pea-sized blob method so has anyone else switched techniques and seen similar results?

Question about cloning drives: old ghost method vs new acronis way

I used to clone drives with Norton Ghost back in the day. Boot from a floppy or CD, take an image, restore it. Worked fine most of the time but took forever and would error out if the source had bad sectors. These days I just plug a drive into my SATA to USB adapter and run Acronis. It handles bad blocks better and finishes in like 20 minutes. But I have a buddy who swears Ghost is still more reliable for older hardware. Anyone else see a difference in failure rates between the old school way and the new tools?

TIL I've fixed over 2000 computers since I started tracking in 2019

Was going through my shop notes the other day and decided to count up all the tickets I've logged since I started keeping a spreadsheet. Hit 2,047 repairs as of last Friday. That number surprised me because I don't feel like I've been that busy. Most of them are simple stuff like virus removals and hard drive swaps, but still. It's a lot of machines. Has anyone else kept a running count of their repairs and gotten surprised by the total?

Server room fire at a small office in Wichita changed my whole approach

Last Tuesday a guy from a data recovery company came in to talk about a job. A fake UPS battery pack caught fire in a client's closet server room, melted three drives, and they lost a week of QuickBooks data. Now I refuse to install any battery backups that don't have a visible manufacture date within 2 years. Anybody else seen these counterfeit batteries showing up more often?

Decided between a refurbished Dell and a custom build for my shop PC

Honestly, I went with the refurbished Optiplex from a place in Austin for $250, and it handled everything from diagnostics to basic network sweeps just fine. Has anyone else picked budget prebuilts over building for a workbench machine?

Found a good client setup at a coffee shop and it changed how I work

I was grabbing coffee at a spot downtown last Tuesday and saw a tech working on a laptop with a little USB temperature sensor plugged in. He was monitoring a server room remotely while sipping his latte. That hit me hard because I've been hauling my full toolkit to client sites for years running unnecessary trips. Now I set up remote monitoring on every new build I do, and it cut my on-site visits by like 60 percent in 3 months. Has anyone else found a simple tool that killed a ton of their drive time?

PSA: That $60 all-in-one screwdriver set was a total waste

Bought a cheap 50-bit screwdriver set off Amazon for $60 and the bits stripped after three uses on a Dell Optiplex. Lost an hour of billable time because I had to hunt down my old Wiha set to finish the job. Anyone else found a budget brand that actually holds up?

Guy at the local repair shop told me to try thermal paste spreading trick

I was in at Mike's Computers last Tuesday swapping out a dead PSU and the tech there said to spread thermal paste in a thin line instead of a pea dot. I tried it on a customer's old HP tower and now the temps are running 8 degrees cooler under load. Has anyone else had better luck with the line method over the pea drop?

Had a week where every machine I touched had a stuck fan bearing

Last Thursday alone I replaced six case fans across four different builds, all with that same grinding rattle. Made me wonder if there's a bad batch floating around or if it's just the summer heat cooking the grease out of them. Anyone else seeing more fan failures than usual lately?

Picked a used Dell Optiplex over building my own for a customer's office PC... kind of regret it

Had a client last month who needed 5 workstations for a small real estate office. They wanted cheap but reliable. I was stuck between buying used Dell Optiplexes off eBay for $150 each or building them with new parts for around $400. I went with the Dells because the price was hard to beat. Now I've spent 3 hours updating BIOS and dealing with random driver crashes on two of them. Clients getting annoyed. Has anyone else taken the cheap route on used office PCs and ended up kicking yourself?

Found out my can of compressed air cost more per ounce than gasoline

I was cleaning out a dusty old Dell tower last Tuesday and ran out of canned air. Grabbed a new can from the shop, and for fun I did the math on the price per ounce. That can of air was like 5 dollars for 10 ounces, which works out to over 60 bucks a gallon. Gasoline was hovering around 3.50 a gallon that week. Has anyone else done the math on what we spend on basic cleaning supplies?

Picked up a thermal camera at a shop in Portland last month

I was helping a buddy troubleshoot his gaming rig at a lan party in Portland and he pulled out a cheap thermal camera. We found a failing VRM that was hitting 110°C while the rest of the board looked fine. Has anyone else used one of these for diagnosing weird intermittent crashes?

Fixed my 100th laptop this week - a beat up ThinkPad T430

Fixed a power supply that everyone said was dead, here's what I learned

Had a customer's Dell Optiplex come in last month, completely dead. Everyone on the forums said to just swap the PSU and be done with it. I checked the caps and found a bulged one on the secondary side, swapped it for a 25 cent part from Mouser. Thing fired right up first try. Anyone else think we're too quick to toss power supplies instead of troubleshooting them?

Dell vs HP business laptops - which has gotten worse faster?

I used to swear by Dell Latitudes for their build quality, but the last three I've opened had cracked hinges within 6 months. Meanwhile HP ProBooks seem to have worse thermal paste application every year - pulled one apart last week that looked like someone spread it with a butter knife. Is this just me or has reliability dropped across the board since 2020?

That time a customer called back 3 years later to thank me

Back in 2018 I fixed this lady's old Dell desktop at my shop in Tucson. She was a retired teacher and just needed it to run faster for email and photos. I talked her out of buying a new one and just swapped in an SSD for $80. She called me last week out of nowhere said that computer is still running great and her grandson uses it for school now. Anyone else get random callbacks years later from customers you barely remember?

That time a BIOS update bricked a school computer and I had to fix it with a toothpick

Was updating a Dell Optiplex in the school lab last Tuesday. Update froze at 47%. Then nothing. No POST, no screen, just a blinking power light. Had to pull the CMOS battery, short the jumper with a paperclip, and cross my fingers. Got it back after three tries. Anyone else had a BIOS update go sideways like that?

Finally figured out why my batch file kept crashing on that one weird PC

Spent 2 hours debugging a script that worked on every machine except a Dell Optiplex from 2018. Turned out the environment variable path was too long and it was silently failing on a specific temp directory call. Anyone else run into weird OS quirks that make no sense?

Found a free bootable USB tool that fixed my boot loop in 10 minutes

Had a client's Dell OptiPlex stuck in a boot loop after a Windows update bricked it. Tried the usual stuff, restore points, safe mode, nothing worked. Then I remembered this little free utility called Hiren's BootCD PE. Booted from USB, ran the registry fix tool, and it was back up in under 10 minutes. Client thought I was a wizard. Anyone else use Hiren's for quick fixes like that or got a better free option?

The day I had to pick between two power supply brands for a server rebuild

Last month I was rebuilding a file server for a small law office over in Springfield. I had two power supplies on the bench, a Corsair RM750x and an EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G5. Both are good units on paper but I had to choose one. I went with the EVGA because I have used them before and they have a 10 year warranty. The install went smooth, cable management was a breeze with the modular cables. Server has been running 24/7 for 3 weeks now with no hiccups. But I still wonder if the Corsair would have been quieter under load. Anybody here have experience swapping between these two models in a production environment?

Had a drive fail on a client's server last Tuesday and it was a mess

Tbh I thought RAID 5 on a Dell PowerEdge T330 would protect us but one drive died and the rebuild took over 14 hours. The whole time the client was screaming about their invoicing system being down. I should have pushed for a hot spare from the start. Anyone else deal with rebuilds taking way longer than the specs say?

Walked into a client's server room last week and found a box fan propped up against an open case

I do IT support on the side for some local dental offices. Last Thursday I got a call about a practice server that kept shutting down randomly. When I got there the owner had a regular house fan just blowing directly into the open side panel. He said it helped but the noise was driving everyone crazy. I pulled up the temperature logs and saw the CPU was hitting 95 degrees before the fan even helped. Turns out the thermal paste had turned into basically dust and the heatsink was completely clogged with 4 years of lint. I cleaned it out, repasted it, and closed the case back up. Now it idles at 40 degrees with no fan needed. Has anyone else seen some truly wild cooling setups in their clients' offices?

Hot take: I think the whole 'always use an antistatic wrist strap' advice is overblown

I was reading a post last night where a guy said he fried his motherboard because he didn't ground himself, and everyone piled on telling him he was an idiot. Here's the thing, I've been building and repairing computers for almost 12 years now, and I've never once used a wrist strap. I just touch the metal case before I start and work on a wood bench. Came out of a job in Denver a couple months back where I swapped power supplies on 5 different machines in a dusty basement, no issues. Am I just lucky, or does anyone else think the risk gets blown way out of proportion?