I guess I just have magic fingers

[An Haddock]

I'm sure many people have been in a position where you take a car to a mechanic, only to have it not do whatever bad thing it had been doing, right?

Well, same thing happens in computer stores.

At least one in twenty people come in with a problem that doesn't present itself when we look at it.

Other times, it seems I have some sort of Neo-esque ability to psychically connect with machinery and make it work. For example:

1. Fellow had built his own computer from parts purchased online. It wouldn't turn on. Tested power supply, made sure wires were plugged into proper ports on motherboard, etc. Everything was kosher. So I pushed the power button. And it turned on. We charged him a 6-pack of beer for turning his system on.

2. Intern puts a new hard drive into a system and gets ready to load Windows. System does not see the new hard drive. Technician looks at system, sees nothing wrong. Tries to load Windows. System still not recognizing hard drive. I look at it. They both didn't notice that the power cable for the hard drive wasn't plugged in.

3. Earlier today the technician had to remove a hard drive from a case. It was a Dell and all you need to do is squeeze these two plastic tab things and the drive slides right out. She tried for five minutes without success. I walked over and pulled it right out. Joked that she had "loosened it up for me".

Probably forgetting a couple of other examples, but ladies... I have magic fingers. And I know how to use them.

[Midorikawa]

The whole "it works for the tech but not the customer" bit is highly frustrating for both sides. Had one customer where it took a week of back and forth before I was able to track it down. Computer kept crashing, but only at her place.

Turns out, it was a bad CMOS battery, which I wouldn't notice because it wouldn't die by the time I plugged it in and turned it on. When the customer got the computer, she'd not have time to set up the computer and turn it on for a few hours. This gave the dying battery enough time to lose settings. Then, when she did turn it on, she'd setup BIOS like she was taught to, and set the CPU to the max frequency (overclocked, and was causing system crashes), since she knew the higher number was better.

I never noticed it because I'd have it moved to my workstation, plugged in, and on in 15 minutes.

[HYHYBT]

I've had similar effects on my relatives' computers, and I don't even know what I'm doing to start with or why they ask me. But my cousin's Macbook display backlight died a while back, out of warranty. He bought a new screen and put it in, and it worked for, oh, a month or so and quit again. He gave up and got something else, but still had this laptop that he didn't know what to do with and couldn't get his stuff off of, so he had me look at it. My first thought was to copy everything off before doing anything else, which I did using Target Disk Mode. Easy, but it doesn't fix the display... except that it came on about halfway through and has been working perfectly ever since., but hey, it works now, so OK.

So then his sister's... I think it's a Toshiba laptop. Runs Vista, anyway, which I've never used. But she wants me to look at it because sometimes when she presses the power button, the display, fan, and a couple of the lights around the keyboard come on, but the screen stays totally black and nothing else ever happens. But about half the time, it works fine, and the store said that if they send it in and it works the first time the folks at the service center try it, they'll just send it back with a large fee for doing nothing. So she wants me to do *something* with it first. Sure, why not? Again I start with a backup, once I figure out how to do one in Windows and how to get the disk formatted, which for some reason takes more than an hour just for that to run when mine will do it in less than a minute. So then I play with it a bit. I turn it on and off, and it will come on a few times in a row, then won't a few times, no hint of what's different. Just to have something to do, I pull out the hard drive and memory, put back just the memory, and try it again. Only half the time will it complain about not finding the drive; the other tries it just sits there, same as it was doing before. Put the hard drive back in, and it hasn't *not* worked since... and again I'd done NOTHING. I still have no idea what was wrong with either of them, and now my cousins think I know what I'm doing.

[Mystic]

What I would love is a really computer stupid friend with too much money who replaces things at the first sign of it not working. I'd be more than happy to have his "not working" equipment given to me where I could "figure out something to do with it". hehe

Sadly, I know people like this. I'm just not on the in... yet.

[Geek King]

Only half the time will it complain about not finding the drive; the other tries it just sits there, same as it was doing before. Put the hard drive back in, and it hasn't *not* worked since... and again I'd done NOTHING.

Sure you did--You disconnected the drive and reconnected it! There may have been a loose connection that you fixed when you plugged the drive back in. I used to see it all the time with NIC cards during office moves until onboard NIC became the norm.

Welcome to the wonderful world of computer repair.

[An Haddock]

Put the hard drive back in, and it hasn't *not* worked since... and again I'd done NOTHING. I still have no idea what was wrong with either of them, and now my cousins think I know what I'm doing.

That was your mistake - you fixed it. You can now expect to get phone calls from everyone in your family to fix your computer problems.

I know I do.

[Der Cute]

Oh, you work with computers? So how do I do.......*insert some kind of random oddball software request here*

How the F do I know? I fix the hardware.

cutenoob

[r2cagle]

but ladies... I have magic fingers. And I know how to use them.

Can you get that spot for me right there on my back?

[HYHYBT]

Sure you did--You disconnected the drive and reconnected it! There may have been a loose connection that you fixed when you plugged the drive back in. I used to see it all the time with NIC cards during office moves until onboard NIC became the norm.

Welcome to the wonderful world of computer repair.

Oh, I know, that's why I tried it, but it still seems odd, because it *wasn't* giving missing drive errors before, but was stopping before getting that far, and it continued doing the same with the drive removed. It's only after it was back in that it behaved itself consistently. But hey, I *told* her I hadn't done anything, so if it starts acting up again, she can't blame me