A valuable lesson from a "so-called" Tech...

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Hey All - we've all admitted in the past that we've made mistakes as Techs. The following is just to prove that even if you've been working with PCs and Servers for several years, you ain't infallible...

Yesterday, after having giving me warning signs for some time now, my main HDD finally died on me - wouldn't boot at all. No sweat, say me - I already had a stand-by lined up to drop in it's place. I open the machine up, pull out the old drive and drop in the new one. At this point, I realise that rigourous as I am with backups, there was one file created yesterday that I needed that wasn't backed up. So, I drop the old HDD back in as a slave hoping that I can pull the file off it from the new drive. So several re-arangements and drive-swaps later, we are all up and running, re-installed and ready to roll.

All's now working well at this point, with the bonus that having formatted the old drive and scandisked it, it's working fine - enough to at least play with mirrors, stripes, etc (but I would not trust it 100% for data storage). So I'm happy.

This morning I go fire up the PC to work on some files and ....NADA. Dead. No lights, no fans, nothing. "Bother and tosh" says me. Unless it's only the power cable, then it's a new PSU. Switched the cable, sockets, etc. Nothing. Luckily in the garage I have an ancient PSU which I can try, but it's only 150W as opposed to the 300W thats gone ( I was running 2xHDDs and a CD-RW and DVD-ROM of fit, so it prob was maxed a bit). Still enough to prove its the PSU at fault.

I drop in the spare PSU and ....NADA !!!! Squat.

At this point, I'm running out of options. As I take one final look before bursting into tears I notice, tucked away in a corner, a small loose wire that say "PWR SW". Hallelujah!!!!! Grab the mobo manual, locate the jumper and slip it back on. Drop in the old PSU, hit the switch and....

VIOLA !!!!! He Lives !!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I had been re-arranging the HDDs, the gradual movement of the IDE cables had slowly but surely worked loose the power switch jumper, several inches away from where I was working. It only showed up as dead this morning because everything was running sweetly as I closed the case - it was powering up that was going to be the problem, hence the issue showed up this morning.

The moral(s) ?

*You will always make mistakes - it's human nature.
*Always look beyond the obvious.
*Never give up - look hard and deep at any problems you encounter - you will learn from them all.

HTH

 

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Yeah, I'm sure that's a word-for-word quote.

I remember plugging in a CD drive while the computer (actually,I should say "my friend's computer"...) was on. Bang! Flash! Dead!
Luckily only the fuse in the wall plug had gone. Felt highly silly and mightily relieved. Bother and tosh I did not say!

 

I think my claim to fame must be forgetting to put the coolers onto the cpu`s. Cant beat Pressing the power button with that strange feeling that youve forgotton something, and then the strange smell of toasted silicon.

Stu

 

Actually a loose something is pretty common, Gav. Especially when you've been working "under the hood" for awhile. You're bound to have accidentally hit something or tugged on something. I can't count the number of times, I've worked on and reconfigured ancient hardware and managed to foul something up.

This stuff doesn't just happen with hardware. One of the funniest things (at least to me) happened just a day or so. I took on a side project at the request of a friend. We are applying new themes and revamping a series of files for numerous slide show presentations for a training outfit (I can't say who). We decided to use the OpenOffice beta 2 Impress application which has a lot of nice features but, being a beta, it can be a bit buggy.

At one point, the software bogged down on me. I was in IM with my friend and she suggested that I reboot my laptop. No problem. I click Start then Shut Down and open the dropdown menu. For the life of me, I couldn't find the option I was looking for. I felt ridiculous. How many times had I rebooted computers and not even thought it. Now I couldn't find the option that would let me reboot the computer...but it had to be right in front of me.

By now you've probably figured out that I had the word "reboot" stuck in my head and the actual option is "restart".

 

I think that's the key, Trip. I didn't post this just to point out the daftness of the situation...more as a lesson to anyone working with systems, or looking to becoming a tech, that at some stage it's going to involve troubleshooting problems that aren't initially what they seem. The key is the perseverence, looking beyond the obvious and having faith in one's learned skills.

(Didn't feel like that at the time I had that little power wire in my hand tho )