The last time I do free work.

[BuzzKillington]

A coworker of mine mentioned his computer wouldn't turn on after he got back from boot camp and it's been sitting since. He said he tried turning it on a while ago and it said something about a battery. (I thought to myself, an easy quick fix...replace the CMOS battery and hand it back over).

Instead I get it here to find out the LCD had a back backlight. I give it back to him and tell him it's time for a new LCD... it can be repaired but I wouldn't do it and it'd probably cost quite a bit to have it done elsewhere... not worth it for an old school dell 15".

About a week later my buddy asked if I wanted 2 Dell LCD's. I said Hell yes. Because I got them for free I gave my coworker a newer Dell 17". I told him to bring his tower back to work so I could bring it home and actually get a chance to look at it. I never got a CMOS warning but the computer was extreeemely slow. I checked the harddrive and it had something like 100MBs left. I called him and asked if he wanted his music backed up and he said no so I went ahead and deleted 20gigs worth of music and that brought the rig back to life BUT after running about 15 minutes the fans would kick into high.

I got around to picking up a can of air and just opened up the case. WOW.

Basically I'm down a couple hours of work, a 5 dollar can of air, a 17" LCD and a few pounds of inhaled dust because I had to resort to physically blowing out the case when I ran out of compressed air. I "like" doing things for people but this was an eye opener... I was scheduled 9 hours last week and 10 hours this coming week. Why in the HELL did I do all this for free?

Never again.

[Zephik]

Holy dust blankets! lol

[Mark_Hardware]

geezass! It's like a fricken blanket

[slaveofconvention]

Time to invest in an el-cheapo air compressor - you can get low pressure ones for very little now and they'll pay for themselves in air cans in half a dozen jobs and you never have to worry about them running out. I've seen some seriously dusty PCs in my time, but I do think you got em all beat :p

[nevermind1534]

I usually just use a blow dryer with the heat turned off to clean out computers. I've seen one or two computers that look that bad.

[farlo]

thats the worst dust problem ive ever seen, seriously the only thing close to that ive seen was tar-y dust from a chain smokers pc.

[BuzzKillington]

It had that cakey dust in there too, coating every fan. I was entertaining the thought of cleaning them off but that's right about when the "F-THIS!" hit me.

[TheGreatSatan]

The ones that come from cigarette users are the worst.

We have an enclosed tech bench that we put computers in so they are out of the way and not at risk of being stolen. It has holes on the sides for the computers get some fresh air. When I walked anywhere near the bench I would smell the cigarettes. When I opened the bench, the long trapped hot cigarette air slammed me in the face.

I am not a smoker you and would feel like throwing up all over their disgusting case

[nevermind1534]

The ones that come from cigarette users are the worst.

We have an enclosed tech bench that we put computers in so they are out of the way and not at risk of being stolen. It has holes on the sides for the computers get some fresh air. When I walked anywhere near the bench I would smell the cigarettes. When I opened the bench, the long trapped hot cigarette air slammed me in the face.

I am not a smoker you and would feel like throwing up all over their disgusting case

I hate when I have to work on a heavy smoker's computer. Stinks up the whole area.

[killergamer]

You do this because your a kind guy. Its worth it or at least I would say so. So what may be he will end up helping you in some way in the future. I really hope kindness comes back to some people because of lately Ive been feeling that it doesn't to me.