percussive maintenance

[avenger_jcc]

Just thought I would share something amusing with you all....

We had one of our machines here stop powering up correctly. One of the techs methodically troubleshot it to hardware, and was down to the point of having reseated the processor, replaced the memory and checked the power supply. Nothing seemed to be working. It would power on, beep a few times and nothing else. Exasperated, he asked me what I thought. I suggested it may be a motherboard problem, since everything else is done. Then I jokingly asked if he tried "percussive maintenance."

With that he brought his fist down on the case with a resounding thud.

to our shock and great amusement, It booted.

Its a solder problem on the motherboard apparently... If you move it it wont boot, flex the motherboard a bit and it will (no its not touching, we checked.)

*shrug* hope it brings both a chuckle and a term you can use .... "percussive maintenance"

Avenger

[zigar]

hehe...had something like that here...except it was more "machine inversion therapy" stood the box upside down and it would boot...right side up...no go...i'm guessing the weight of the cards twisted the board 'just so"....what made me turn it upside down???...who knows...but it worked until i could get a replacement mobo...made playing cd's tough though...hehe

[avenger_jcc]

anyone else got some cool, funny custom techincal terms? I know Ive posted the tokether before (machine with 2 nics, one talking TCP/IP one talkin tokenring...

[Syini666]

I don't have any custom terms, but ive delt with a few problems that were bizarre... My Sony Playstation started acting up a long time ago, and after fidgeting with it, we discoverd that it would play disks fine if it was turned upside down. On a different occasion, my laptop was having a problem reading the HDD (apparantly it was on a unlevel surface and didnt like it) so I had to put a shim under it to make it level so it would read properly

[avenger_jcc]

yes Ive heard of the playstation inversion solution before

[jezter6]

Since this is a topic for interesting terms, I happily submit mine.


End User Re-Education Device (U-RED) Pronounced "You are red"


What is this mystical magic device:

A tack hammer to the skull.


Suddenly my end users remember how to print without calling the help desk.

God I love technology.

[avdven]

I had that with an old television after I moved. I had to place a small piece of wood underneath the CPU board in order for there to be enough contact for the tv to work.

One tip, though, if you have problems with a computer starting and it offers a number of beeps. If you go to the motherboard manufacturer's web site, they usually have a listing of what a certain number of beeps represents. I had that problem when I replaced a motherboard a while back. It gave 8 beeps and then 3 beeps and stopped booting.. I did some research and found that the 8 beeps were regarding an improperly inserted AGP video card and the 3 beeps signified a fatal error at boot time. I reinsert the video card, pushing it hard enough for it to lock into place, and it worked perfectly from that point on.

AJ

[neel]

I've alot of solder problem..the percussion method always works with me

[Terr]

Originally posted here by avdven
I had that with an old television after I moved. I had to place a small piece of wood underneath the CPU board in order for there to be enough contact for the tv to work.

One tip, though, if you have problems with a computer starting and it offers a number of beeps. If you go to the motherboard manufacturer's web site, they usually have a listing of what a certain number of beeps represents. I had that problem when I replaced a motherboard a while back. It gave 8 beeps and then 3 beeps and stopped booting.. I did some research and found that the 8 beeps were regarding an improperly inserted AGP video card and the 3 beeps signified a fatal error at boot time. I reinsert the video card, pushing it hard enough for it to lock into place, and it worked perfectly from that point on.

AJ

For the true hardware freaks, you can buy a POST-card, which will display the Power On Self Test codes to help you diagnose problems. Basically it can give you a numerical error code instead of you having to rely on beeps. I'm sure someone out there markets a rediculously-deluxe version which may attach to a small display and print out the error in text without you having to look up the code in a book.