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Vent: The day I proved 'never work on family PCs' is wrong
Everyone says don't touch family computers, but I fixed my cousin's laptop last Tuesday in 20 minutes. Took a $0.03 capacitor to replace on the motherboard and it booted right up. Anybody else have a quick win that goes against the usual advice?
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lilyt2311d ago
The $0.03 cap thing is pure luck though. Most people can't solder surface mount parts without lifting pads. I did fix my dad's Dell once by just reseating the RAM sticks. Took 2 minutes. He swore he already tried that. But he didn't push them all the way down. Sometimes the quick win is just checking the obvious stuff first before blaming hardware.
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mila_murphy11d ago
The resistor on my old monitor cost $0.08 and I messed up the first pad trying to desolder it. It's way harder than people think when they say "just replace the cap." Your RAM fix is exactly the kind of thing that shows how often we skip the simple checks first.
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williams.luna11d ago
Yeah the "he swore he already tried that" part gets me every time. My buddy Mark once spent an hour trying to fix his mom's HP laptop that wouldn't turn on, checked every power setting and even replaced the battery before finally noticing the power cord was unplugged from the surge protector. She had pulled it out to vacuum and forgot to plug it back in. He still brings it up every time someone mentions computers being broken. Sometimes the quick win is just making sure the thing is actually plugged in.
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