Worse computer you tried to fix

[dream431ca]

One of the worst computers I have tried to fix is my friends computer. Recently he bought a new CPU, motherboard and a 250Gig Hard drive. He knows absolutly nothing about computers. And when I say nothing...I mean nothing. I was at his house countless times before for other things. Once I stayed there until 2 in the morning. I should be charging him.

Anyway, so he bought all this new stuff, and I installed windows XP, and what do you know, I couldn't get his internet to work. I tried for 30 minutes trying to get it to work, then he called his dad's friend which fixes computers for a living. I spent an hour and a half talking to him and trying to fix his internet. He was stumped. He was hooked up to a router which is also hooked up to his dad's computer. So I went to his dad's computer room, unplugged his cord from the router and plugged it in to the actuall modem directly. The internet worked. I plugged it back into the router and the internet was still working. That got me confused.

Anyway, his internet was fixed so I let him install the updates to windows. And I went home.

The next day he calls me and says his computer restarts by itself everytime he starts up windows. I felt so dreadful. All that work yesterday for nothing. So after lunch I went over to his house again, and after long hours of tweaking and trying different things, I figured out it was service pack 2 that was causing me all this grief. And...now I'm stuck. I have no idea what to do. My guess is that, the hardware somewhere is screwing up. I have installed windows 5 times and it still restarts itself. His hardware is:

Asus A8V deluxe
AMD 64 3000+
Radeon 9800

that's the most important things anyway.

That is the worst computer I have tried to fix!!

How bout you guys?? Oh and if you wanna give me some advice about what to do with service pack 2, by all means, go right ahead.

 

[Garfield_]

It could very well be a virus or hardware issue. Try to cancel the automatic restarts, system restore i think its called. And use www.antivirus.com for scanning the PC. If no viruses or changes, try reinstalling windows

 

[Glirk Dient]

I have always been able to solve the problem...probally the worst has been a hardware failure as you can't fix that without some money.

I have found some tricky things but it's always fixable with a re install of windows and hardware is all pretty easy.

 

[Ren.182]

I worked at a college last summer as an IT technition. From time to time i had to go to a different campus which specifically taught things like plumbing, electrics, bricklaying etc etc.
Well, next to the workshops were computer rooms. And i had to take some of these computers apart because their CD-drives wern't working. The insides of the computers were COMPLETELY covered in dust. A layer of dust, a few mm's thick covered every component. I was shocked that anything worked. I took the CD drives out and put the new ones in. I picked up the old one as i left and a stream of dust just fell out of it and there was loose bits inside it. Those rooms were disgraceful, felt sorry for the computers

 

[JFry]

Have you tried starting in safe mode? If that works do that and add apps back in one at a time until you find the one that is causing it to reboot.

My worst was prolly when my mobo failed. I replaced my power supply, ram, and hard drive before trying the board. Though I may have been subconciously upgrading on purpose.

 

[Sieg]

HA! The service pack bug, I had that problem with my laptop, wasn't pretty...bluescreen everytime.

Worst comp I tried to fix was....

Me : " Lady, your missing a cpu, a computer can't possibly function without one "

Lady: " Do how have any clue how much one of those pieces of metal cost? Can you somehow get it to work without one? "

Me: " Lady, please, could you be alive without a brain? "

Ladu : " Are you insulting me? Thats it, get out of my house, I'm hiring a real technition "

Me : "eh....what about my money? "

Lady: "Money, dream on"

*boots me out of the house*

 

[nofx]

The old HP Pavilions.. one time i had to fix this ladies computer because her internet didnt work so it required alot of bending and pulling at the telephone cord note this was dialup. It took like ten minutes to fix and get her back online.. the computer took about 4minutes to boot and i got paid 25 dollars.

 

[15357]

HA! The service pack bug, I had that problem with my laptop, wasn't pretty...bluescreen everytime.

Worst comp I tried to fix was....

Me : " Lady, your missing a cpu, a computer can't possibly function without one "

Lady: " Do how have any clue how much one of those pieces of metal cost? Can you somehow get it to work without one? "

Me: " Lady, please, could you be alive without a brain? "

Ladu : " Are you insulting me? Thats it, get out of my house, I'm hiring a real technition "

Me : "eh....what about my money? "

Lady: "Money, dream on"

*boots me out of the house*

hahaha, I had a similar experience:

Me: Um, sir, your computer is wet....

Guy: Yeah, I put ice inside to make it cooler.

Me: .........

 

[dream431ca]

hahaha, I had a similar experience:

Me: Um, sir, your computer is wet....

Guy: Yeah, I put ice inside to make it cooler.

Me: .........

Some people should never own any form of electronics....you should have just told him to keep it in the fridge next time. . Did you burst out laughing after he said that? I would have....then I'd probably get kicked.

 

[Ren.182]

Haha, some awesome stories.

Damn the human race is stupid sometimes.

 

[Cole]

Did you use an Xp Disc(Store bought or um internet "Downloaded") or a Restore Disc(From Dell or some place).

I believe it's an HD problem, make sure it's 100% plugged in perfect.

 

[RandomX]

The worst computer I've tried to fix was an old (and I mean freakin' OLD) HP desktop running Windows 3.5! The cursor would not go up past the halfway point in the screen, so I couldn't get to any of the icons. Luckily, we got a Compaq with Windows 98 to replace it... another pile of crap but not nearly as bad as the first.