Johnny DA rides again!

HCHTech

HCHTech

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Had what I like to call a "Johnny Dumba$$" moment this morning - always love sharing those. :-)

Diagnosing a laptop for extreme slowness - both in booting and running. Passed hardware testing, cleaned up a couple of browser infections, no malware, disk passed short and long tests.

Then, just staring at the thing for a couple of minutes waiting for inspiration, it occurs to me to look at the system information screen. 2.2GHz i5 running at.....wait for it.....300MHz. Immediately check the power settings, nothing weird there, I turn off speedstep in the bios, no change. Then I finally notice that the battery isn't charging. I swap out the power supply, and things are immediately normal again - . I should have looked there first. I'm blaming it on not enough coffee, yeah, that's it. :rolleyes:
 
It was a Dell, using a Dell charger. The one I swapped in was a universal charger, and it worked anyway, so this one must not have been one of the ones that care about the brand. I think the original one was just on it's way out.
 
Every white box I've built, and I mean every stinking one...

I push the power button the first time, and have that mini-heart attack because it doesn't power. Then I run through the connections to see what's up and... I forgot to plug in the AC cord to the back of the unit.

Hundreds of machines, over decades of time, at least I'm consistent!

So I guess what I'm saying is, there's absolutely no chance of me judging you for taking all that time to find a dead power brick. Plus, in all fairness... they don't fail all that frequently.
 
HCHTech said:
It was a Dell, using a Dell charger. The one I swapped in was a universal charger, and it worked anyway, so this one must not have been one of the ones that care about the brand. I think the original one was just on it's way out.
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I have a universal that powers and charges my e6530. Some of them wont and the computer will run a slower speed and not charge the battery. (plugged in not charging warnings)
 
Speaking of dumba$$ moments. Had mine this morning. Walked into my shop, 10 minutes later had 3 cop cars and 5 police officers there. I'm like W..T..F..

All because I forgot to turn off the alarm. Note to self: call security center and have a LOUDER keypad installed. Sheesh.. :rolleyes:
 
Your PCMD said:
Shush you... :D
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Oh man, I'm with you for sure. I was happily working on a computer a couple of weeks ago when one of my (young) techs returned from an onsite - he comes straight over and says something along the lines of "OH MY GOD - CAN'T YOU HEAR THAT?" The hard drive was making a high-pitched whine, apparently, and I was right on top of it and didn't hear it. Dogs all over the neighborhood were probably thinking "WTF is that?!" I have a audio spectrum app on my phone I use when I'm running sound at the church so I can visually see if there is something going on in the upper registers - I think I'll have to start using that on the bench!
 
mikeroq said:
I don't think his name starts with sapphire.
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Your PCMD said:
But we all know @sapphirescales would probably call that chump change. :D

We like poking at @sapphirescales but he's a good guy. We all poke fun at each other occasionally but it's all in good spirits. ;)
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Come see me in 2040 and that's probably what I'll be charging. Inflation is terrible. But in all seriousness my rates are 1/2 to 1/3 of that right now. Not even I could get away with charging that much! I charge full retail ($69.99 - $89.99) for brand new laptop chargers and my diagnostic is $75. So at worst I would have charged $165, not $500. :P
 
No, there was quite a bit of press around it when it came out. There was also a brief fad (or possibly just discussion) of similar ringtones that kids could use that teachers wouldn't be able to hear (like it wouldn't be obvious from just watching people).
 
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