What was the most difficult problem someone asked you to fix on their computer?

Danger781

I'm just curious, what was the most difficult problem you've encountered when someone asked you to repair their laptop / desktop?

I'd be interested to hear some of your stories!

_AVALANCHE_

Getting rid of this warning on startup...







I'd imagine it was nearly as hard as catching this cat moving on video

Better Forum for this.

Overheal

CCC made me reformat a computer....

The hardest one was always viruses. Both in the same household. The 2nd time, it was my Cousin Rob, he got a nasty piece of work rootkit or some such which was holding his machine hostage. Only way about it was to try to surgically nuke the file using a power-eraser tool. But I reckon it overwrote part of something important, perhaps the kernel, because that killed the OS. Or it was a false positive. Fcuk it. Either way, recovery was kind of a bitch after that.

The first was for younger liz, who downloaded all unholy manner of virus on the machine. Nothing nasty mind, but it was riddled with popups and typical raqueteering style "pay us to remove your viruses" type software running on it. And it was years old, and wasn't a top of the line PC anyway. It was dire. But I was on vacation, and what do I do on vacation but spend the weekend hanging out with the cousins and fixing an old machine. Found an XP 7-in-1 ISO online, reinstalled the right version, got it up and running with freeware security which brought it down to almost but not a crawl, and it was fine. that was after taking the thoughtful measure of backing up all the important files and putting them back in place afterward.

Not even a week later they said it was full of viruses again, and I confirmed it.

old_aussie

PICNIC, Problem In Chair Not In Computer.

I find PICNIC the hardest to fix.

Root kits are the most difficult to remove, usually a format required, very frustrating and time consuming.

Improbable

My dad managed to get what felt like every single virus, malware and spyware in existence on his computer. Couldn't back up any files, and he wouldn't let me format it. It took me a week and a half with HijackThis and the ever helpful guys at the techguy.org security section to fix it to a point where it was usable. Definitely a PEBKAC situation.

Danger781

Great stories

It's funny, I think I jinxed myself, because I got a call from my cousin this morning asking me to fix her laptop. To date this has probably been the most difficult, but not the most time consuming.

Her touch pad, keyboard, and speakers, all stopped working yesterday. Currently working on it but I think I have it back to working condition.. I'll know in about 10 minutes..

Edit: NOPE

U_Fig

loads of people with viruses...usually I just connect the Virus Ridden Drive into my Ubuntu and remove the Files needed..Then after done so i plug my external HDD into a virtual box win 7 installation see if it gets infected run a virus scan on it n reinstall windows on the original drive then copy files..best way to rid of viruses 100%.

I've replaced a few GPU's, Couple of Keyboards..Few screens some f**ked HDD's...but the worse I've encountered was a friend of my mother's laptop wouldn't turn on I took apart soldered a new power unit onto it that I got free from the recycling centre in my town..still didn't work eventually found out the motherboard was fried. He didn't fancy buying a whole new motherboard wasn't worth it bought an new laptop and gave the old one to me. I still have the laptop waiting to see if I can get an old model for cheap or free to see if I can get it working again...

Skerries

someone put a credit card style cd into a slot loading cd drive, oh how I laughed as I inspected the now destroyed Mac

I have a user who has kicked over his desktop pc twice and destroyed the hard drives both times and had to get it professionally recovered and has just killed his latest one by jamming so much **** around it that it had no ventilation and fried the motherboard and hard drive again
and has he got it backed up?

_AVALANCHE_

Skerries wrote: »

someone put a credit card style cd into a slot loading cd drive

Hmm, bejasus, never seen one of them before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootable_business_card

xsiborg

_AVALANCHE_ wrote: »

Hmm, bejasus, never seen one of them before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootable_business_card

they're around years avalanche, well, the form factor at least, as a business card for handing out PPT presentations on and so forth, i think you used be able to get them in packs of ten in easons, not cheap either and would only hold i think about 50MB.

basically i'd say nowadays and what im seeing more of is 1GB USB keys with the company logo printed on them, and actually much cheaper to produce.

back on topic- i've never had anything particularly difficult to repair, viruses nowadays are handy enough, and ten minute fatory reinstall is a godsend, but networking and broadband issues do give me headaches!

data recovery is a pain actually, well, the amount of time it takes moreso than anything, and then sorting through the breadcrunbs for bits of data here and there and piecing it back together! :mad:

_AVALANCHE_

Any ever try Chkrootkit for getting rid of Rootkits, it's bundled in with SystemRescueCd

Danger781

Thankfully I've never needed to rid anyone of rootkits.. They're a pain..