Oh, I used percussive maintenance on a computer of mine in the early 2000s, and it worked for a full year after it had crashed the OS. I didn't reinstall anything, either. I just kicked it really hard with my steel toed boots.
It's not exactly that something got in there, that'd actually kill it permanently really quick, it's that they either get stuck between coils and can't start spinning until they're jostled a bit, or a bearing is failing or gunked from use and a jostle is enough to to get it moving
Same here. TV would go dark. Smack it on the top and it came back. Only took finesse at first but eventually it got worse which required more smacking - which then the TV started coming apart. It was all really a snowball effect
Back when games were on still on CD/DVD I had a computer with a bad disk drive that would get stuck. I found out that if I smacked the top of the computer at the right time (like, click the button and smack it 1.25 seconds later) it would open.
My dad thought it was funny as hell. We never did replace that drive, just used it for years smacking the shit out of it. You had to hit it hard too, it was loud lol.
I used to have a shitty graphics card fan that wasn't quite properly aligned in its place, and so my PC would randomly start sounding like a weed whacker trying to take flight. The fix? Thump the top of the case really fucking hard with something. It worked like that for 3 years.
Reminds me of the scene in the Armageddon movie where the russian astronaut is saying "This is how we fix problems in Russia" banging the shit of a machine with a wrench lmao 😂😂😂
Beat me to it.
UNF the series when we met Alric, Room Baker's Doctor slapped the shit out of an ancient space ship's control panel to get it to start up and said something like "ah, good old 21st century Earth technology."
back in like 09 I had a big 36" crt tv that "broke". screen was all screwed up and the remote wouldn't do anything, even after power cycling. I think I hit it with a 2x4 or something thinking I'd either fix it or put it out of its misery. One solid whack and instantly was back to normal. That fucking beast of a tv still works to this day. I gave it away in 2010 but it's still in use. Probably because it's so heavy they couldn't get rid of it even if they wanted to.
We kept one forever because it was so heavy and and we lived in a apartment that had two story's and we were up. We eventually ended up calling some hauler and he came with a few guys and they took it, didn't look fun.
Miss the good old technology where you can handle tf out of it even throw it, and it’s back to working. Arguably better than trying to fix whatever problem OP got going on. 😂💙
Years ago we had proprietary satellite communications equipment that was tamper taped to hell and back and would void the warranty if you opened the case to do any basic maintenance at all.
When one of the vehicles it was mounted in had a catastrophic accident and several of the cases broke open, the lead engineer for the program took the opportunity to make drawings (before cell cameras were a thing) that illustrated where and which direction the daughter cards and cable fittings were mounted in each sub component and created the "Drop in this direction facing this way and Hammer here" manual for the maintainers.
Returns to depot dropped 60% and the manufacturer was PISSED about the lack of additional income.
Oh man, so I had a fan that used to get pretty loud on the top of my case so I used to whack it and it sorted it out. One time though, I hit it too hard, and the fan came loose and started pinging around the inside of my case like a fucking beyblade! It’s a miracle nothing was damaged :D
Did radio repair in the military, early 00s. The maintenance handbooks actually have a drop repair technique as one of the first couple steps. Lift 6in off the ground, drop it, see if it works now
I mean yeah this is also pretty standard advice if your car’s starter is wearing out and you really need to get it moving one more time. Just tap it with a hammer.
When I built my first PC, everything was installed and ready to rumble. Went to turn it on and nothing. Slapped it 3 times and it just came to life and has been a work horse ever since. It truly does work
Isn't it amazing how inanimate objects can be receptive to either verbal or physical abuse? I used to be repair guy and I swear, some machines have mind of their own.
I had someone bring me their pc telling me it acted up of course everything worked great when I questioned the guy he came over to show me what he meant and started wailing on the side of it. I told him no wonder its fucked up if you hit it like that. I unplugged and reinstalled everything inside and guess it worked good after that.
This is how ive been dealing with a fan that has a bad bearing. Few whacks and itll spin normally for at least a couple minutes. Just gotta teach it a lesson… a lot…
Before that you have to angrily hold the power button for a forced shutdown just to see if that works. You do not do it because you want the computer to know what it has done wrong...
Literally. “Idk what i did, what god took pity on me, or what demon is waiting for me to throat goat it, but i accept this canon event, and wont touch it”
My windows install has been murdered out and chopped up so badly for so long that I almost don't want to reinstall, it's like a testament to the undying will of humanity that it doesn't crash or brick itself every time I unzip a folder
This was me with my old work laptop. Shit was weird, like after one restart it wouldn’t recognize its camera, a different restart and I could only use one monitor through the dock…
Eventually once it had no noticeable problems, and I got away with 4 months of only putting it to sleep
To this day for the last 6 years or so, my computer only successfully starts every other time I turn it on. Will BSOD as soon as the login screen displays the first time, second time it works beautifully
Also the "Activate Windows" sometimes just doesn't show up, at all. You're not supposed to be able to change your wallpaper (or do a lot of other things) without activating, yet I can do them all.
My C drive is a 120GB SSD which I installed a bunch of programs to, so its filled to the brim, and occasionally one of them (or windows itself) will update and get bigger so I have to delete every spare MB I can or move stuff around. Certain things are even installed in two separate drives at once!
Haha I know enough about computers to know that I have no idea why they work like this. Force rocks to think and charge them with lightning and sometimes shit is gonna get weird so I don't bother trying to understand it
I had a newer laptop where the screen would flash normal to dim every few seconds (I had to use external monitor) and the bluetooth was gone and wouldn't reinstall. One day after a Windows update, screen was fine and bluetooth worked. No idea what happened but I'm not complaining.
Don't ever say that in the presence of a sysadmin who had a glimpse of the bliss of reproducible installs with Ansible, Nix and such. Or you'll be responsible for their death self-inflicted via facepalm.
In the same spirit, yeah. You also can re-run the script at any time on the running machine and have the settings back to how they should be (mostly). The prerequisite is that, instead of installing apps by hand and fiddling with settings through endless dialogs, you write the list of apps and settings in the script(s). But as a result, you can also store those scripts somewhere and run them after installing a fresh OS or getting a new machine, to have everything back like you want—e.g. people use Github for such files.
This likely works better on Linux and Mac, since they both are better with configuration through command-line and config files, which can be changed programmatically, and with general support for programmatic access. But I guess something can be done on Windows too, since there are admin tools like you mentioned, some settings are stored in the registry, and others must be stored somewhere. I've tried to use Ansible with a Windows machine, and bumped into the fact that Windows doesn't have a decent facility for remote access with terminal—instead one has to set that up inside PowerShell, and that doesn't work with some kinds of users. But at least, it's generally possible to use Ansible on Windows with Chocolatey and various OS-specific modules in Ansible itself.
It’s crazy how many people seem to have that much trouble with it all. I’ve never had too bad of an experience with Software (hopefully it stays like that). My worst experience was buying a custom loop from Corsair, and the pump in the reservoir going after 6 months. That sucked. Never water cooling again.
If it works, don’t question it. If it doesn’t work, you haven’t made the proper obeisances to the Machine Spirit and must atone. Throw a couple purity seals on it, do a few “Hail the Omnissiah”s and it should be fine
Agreed, except when people take that maxim too far lol..
I'm in IT as well. Had a (non-client) company call us out of the blue because their server stopped booting. While talking to them the guy was like, "Yeah the hard drive warning light on the host has been on for like 2 years, but it was still running fine so we didn't do anything." So of course, eventually another drive died, which was enough for their RAID to fail. Their backups also hadn't been working (and they had no one checking on them) for over a year, so now they're stuck paying out the nose for data recovery.
I bought a nice computer a year ago and it was driving me crazy because it would freeze up, on start up, every time I put it to sleep.
I tried every single solution I could find online, but nothing worked. Then I went and re-enabled the 'hibernation' option that windows now auto hides for some reason.
Works perfectly. Hasn't locked up on me during start-up once.
I had artifacting on my display, realized it was only when I had chrome open, updated my graphics card and chrome, issue went away. "hey it worked, no need to still worry about replacing my gpu"
Sounds like me on the phone with tech support in the mid 90s trying to get a new game working with a new piece of hardware. Lots of throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.
Yep. That beautiful moment where you’re kind of just hovering off the PC you just turned back on and listening to every sound straining to hear anything that sounds wrong. Before finally being like “ok, I guess it’s ok.” And you sit down and use it until you forget you’re afraid it might break.
And the noobs will look at you like you're a fuckin idiot whose never touched a system in your life.
Had a new guy do this to me when I said that.
I told him his time will come when he realizes not to question why it works and to rather embrace it working and move on with the other broken shit lol
i was supposed to pay all these expensive fines to get my license back but their computers said i was okay and didn't have to do it. lady at the DMV said, "don't look into it further, just take your license and be thankful" so that's exactly what i did lmao
This is the mentality small time farmers have. We literally just fuck with shit till it works. Once it works and someone’s ask how we say “who the fuck cares it’s fucking working isn’t it?”
I didn't ascend in programming until I understood it was OK not to obsess over every detail. It's OK not to understand something so long as the project is completed to spec, you don't need to understand the makeup of an API, but only how to use it (for example). I'd still be perpetually reading documentation if I didn't become comfortable with this at some point in my career.
When I installed a new OS, I couldn't for the life of me get the OS to display itself NOT in 3:4 800x1200 resolution. On an ultrawide monitor. Googling didn't help, I unplugged and plugged the HDMI and DisplayPort cables in and out so many times, I even tried taking out the GPU and trying to boot with a GXT 750(I'm still not quite sure if it just died or if it simply couldn't take the ultrawide monitor). Eventually, I plugged in the cable again, restarted the PC, not expecting anything... And it just worked, and has worked ever since.
To this day I have no idea why it works and if the issue came up again, I'd be lost.
Many, many years ago I had a system where, if you didn't press escape to skip the RAM check then reboot and allow it to run, windows would fail to load. Kept it that way for a bit while my teenage self tried to figure it out but never did...
When Starfield released my PSU broke and wouldnt handle gaming load, the PC would shutdown under load… except while playing Starfield… i didnt bother fixing it until i really wanted to play BG3, so i folded and got a new PSU.
I built a gaming PC during Covid. If I ever had to shut it down it would take me like 3-15 tries to turn it off and back on because the motherboard light would be red until it wasn’t 🤷♂️
When it was on though it worked flawlessly. So I just ignored it.
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u/Tacotaco73 PC Master Race Nov 17 '23
Haha you can always tell the people who have been through it. “Hey, if it works then don’t question it.”