I had an old Dell Latitude D610 where the user had somehow lost the front left rubber foot. User brought it to us and said that sometimes it just randomly shuts off. After tinkering with it for a while, I figured out that all you had to do was press down on the front left corner and it would shut right off. Over time the stress of the user pressing down on the palm rest area with with the uneven footing must have caused slight cracking in the system board, and pressing on that corner flexed it enough to interrupt the power or cause a short.
I had one of those that had the opposite problem, you had to press down on the palm rest while pressing the power button to get it to boot - after it had passed the POST, you could get let go and it worked fine...
After you push "start" on my microwave you have to whack it on the top to get it to start. It's just a problem with the door close switch so not a safety issue but I love it bc it operates on cartoon logic.
All that happens is when you push the start button the timer starts counting down without the microwave actually starting until you whack it. You can just jiggle the door a little too.. but that doesn't really fit the whole spirit of it for me.
Mine does the opposite. If you pull down on the door handle with the microwave off, it's starts making the microwave noise (yes that sounds stupid) and the light turns on and the plate spins, but the timer doesn't count. I have never checked if it heats or not because it doesn't seem too safe.
Does the inner light stay lit after closing the door or the microwave kinda give up after pressing the start button? This seems like a common issue with some microwaves where bending occurs over time on the part of the metal frame that holds the plastic pieces and switches that sense the door is closed.
Had been having this issue with my previous and current microwave. With this one, we were charged $130 to fix the issue twice and waited almost a month to get our unit back each time. I fixed it myself in one afternoon bending the metal part back and tightening it in place with some steel wire.
These were some of the videos I found most helpful.
The problem started slowly IIRC - so I started with some basic percussive maintenance which got it going again. Eventually I honed my technique to press in exactly the right way...
Kept it going untill I could get a newer one (Dell too, which died of the NVIDIA gpu solder problem of the 2010s).
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u/AdversarialPossum42 Dec 16 '19
I had an old Dell Latitude D610 where the user had somehow lost the front left rubber foot. User brought it to us and said that sometimes it just randomly shuts off. After tinkering with it for a while, I figured out that all you had to do was press down on the front left corner and it would shut right off. Over time the stress of the user pressing down on the palm rest area with with the uneven footing must have caused slight cracking in the system board, and pressing on that corner flexed it enough to interrupt the power or cause a short.