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No one thought to look here.
We have all had those days where our computer was doing something funny and we spent hours fixing it, well here is mine I thought I should share. (I was kind of board, and had nothing else better to do so) heh...
My friends computer a Dimension 4550 has been broken for quite sometime (About 5 months). Once it broke he had some of his friends (so called computer experts) look at his computer. They couldn't figure out the problem.
So I went to the forums on dell and tried to find my own solution
(http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_other&message.id=223927#M223927)
It was of no help (thx to those who tried).
So he brought it to CompUSA to look at it. After testing it they gave him the diagnoses that he needed a new motherboard. So after several more opinions he calls up Dell and talks to a foreigner who can't speak English.
2 Hours go by and after 3 hang ups (by the people at dell) he calls it quits and tires again the next day.
So he calls again and gets yet another foreigner, an hour goes by and he managed to get a replacement motherboard sent.
A month goes by. (Guarantied 2 week shipping...uh no!)
The hassle he went through was staggering but finally he called me up and said it's here lets put it in. I came to his house and cleaned out his case to get it ready to install the new motherboard. Disconnecting everything was easy, until I got to the CPU.
Taking out the heat sink was a little more difficult than I expected but after reading the manual I unhooked the retainers and began to pull. The Heat sink came up .... with the CPU.
The CPU was stuck to the heat sink.
It was stuck.
We tried pulling; tried heating it up (with a hair dryer) but we couldn’t get it off so we put the heat sink as is into the new motherboard hoping the CPU would fit. 2 of the CPU pins bent and the motherboard was useless anyways because after an hour of working.. turns out it was the wrong type. This motherboard did not have the intergraded sound he needed. He spent another week or two trying to ship this motherboard back to refund his money and after a good 5 hours and 2 weeks he did it.
Dell made him make his own return sticker which should have already been included in the shipment of his motherboard. It took them hours just to tell them he needed to do that.
So months pass and he just leaves his problem alone... playing games on low quality on his parents computer.
Slowly but surely all his friends who knew stuff about computers started to careless and less to help him because they didn't know what to do.
This subject stayed quiet for months
Until one day he began talking to me about custom building a new computer. He spent hours online customizing a cheap inexpensive computer. After showing me what he had made he was disappointed because most of his items weren't compatible with one another, so he did it again and it was still wrong. I decided to help him do this but before I did I told him that he could save money by using his own CPU (which had bent pins, and was glued completely onto the heat sink, and yes we tried several methods to get it off and nothing worked).
I went on the forums on dell.com
(http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_upghw&message.id=55739#M55739)
They recommended I use a rubber knife. I don't know what that is so I left it alone.
I took the CPU and stuck heat sink to CompUSA to ask their advice. After looking at me like I was dumb the man who worked there took the heat sink and began to pull on the CPU. ........ Nothing happened. Yes I told the guy what I had already tried and he goes and does the EXACT same stuff I do. Finally he goes to me after 10 minutes of failed trials and says "Try using a plastic spatula (The flipper people use to flip hamburgers on a grill). I said ok then walked out wondering why he didn't just try it right then.
A couple weeks go by and I am hanging out with my friend when we all the sudden get board. So for no reason he starts talking to me about custom building again and I agree to help him out but tell him that it would save him a bunch of money if we could somehow unbend the pins on his fix his CPU.
I take some empty mechanical pencil's and try to nudge it onto the pins and bend them back but I can't get them in there on account of how they are bent.
Getting extremely frustrated I reassure my friend with comfort that if this pin breaks, his CPU is busted.
Having no luck with this I decide to try the advice from the worker at Comp USA.
My friend gets a spatula and we place it under the CPU and press down.
No luck.
We try again and nothing.
Then I just get mad and do it again and nothing.
So we keep trying for 5 minutes and finally It gets through from the heat sink into the air and falls on my pants which is like a pillow so we were lucky.
10 minutes later he grabs a compass (The device used to draw perfect circles) and uses the end pin to unbind the CPU.
I started to puts with his old motherboard and the CPU fits (with some moving around).
For some crazy idea we decide to put the computer back together and just see that if overtime the computer would work again.
I only put in the minimal stuff because I wasn't expecting much and I wanted
De-assembly to be easy.
I press power and... I hear beeps
The computer is BEEPING. Probably because of no mouse, keyboard, no ram, or monitor but beeps.
Not only that, but the diagnostic lights are on.
When the computer broke there was nothing but now beeps. I plug the monitor in and Windows is loading! For no reason the computer is all the sudden working when I start to wonder why. Computers that are broken stay broken, it's just that simple.
We start to connect everything to the computer when for some odd reason I turn to my friend and say
"I wonder if it was the ram?"
No one had thought to look there before so we tried it.
My friend has 2 sticks of ram so we go grab the ram plug them in, plug in the computer! ...nothing, it's broken like it was before. I take out one stick of ram and it works! So my friend and I are now extremely happy having figured out the problem with his computer. A faulty stick of ram but this doesn’t make since because the stick of ram that was supposedly broken was newer and has been working fine for months. I switch out the ram and the computer still works. I plug them both in and nothing.
It turns out that the 2nd "ram slot" is bad. You plug any stick of ram into there and the computer won't boot.
So we left one stick in there set up the entire computer, keyboard, mouse everything and press power.
Nothing!
THE COMPUTER DIDN'T START.
The modem card I had just plugged in cuased the computer to not work so I am guessing it's a bad PCI slot as well. I took it out and his computer works fine again. Maybe, I think to myself a motherboard bios update might fix this. I spend an hour sifting through his ad ware and low cost of ram, and trying to get the internet to work just to get to the dell site and upload the newest bios update A08. Nothing. The install didn't help at all.
I spent another hour or two at his house helping him get rid of useless programs and spyware but he's happy to have his computer again.
He is now being forced to go spend out almost a hundred bucks for a stick of 512 ram to replace his existing 256 because he only has one slot that works. As for the other PCI slots I am not sure of because we had no other cards to test them.
Through this entire experience Dell has made both our lives a living H3LL!
His computer shouldn’t have died in the first place and the fact dell tech support knows nothing about solving his problem or even helping him get a replacement motherboard is horrible.
I am extremely shocked at CompUSA and their lack of experience on this because I am sure this has happened to hundreds of people who do not know the solution.
I would shun my friends as well but let’s face it, they don't know anything.
The purpose of this story was to go through and discuss the different steps of actions I went through to solve a problem. Ironically through all that time and effort it was a guess.
A FRIGGIN GUESS that got it working.
If your computer stops working please check your ram.
Please for the sake of months of effort and time
I own a Dell myself and have so far had a good run but after going through this I relized that this could have happend to me. If you can't get something replaced or a decent diagnosis of your problem what is the point of technical support, or service.
If you cheated and came straight to the bottom of this page you are missing some very vital info that the story can only offer. No... Seriously! It's not just the RAM.
My friends computer a Dimension 4550 has been broken for quite sometime (About 5 months). Once it broke he had some of his friends (so called computer experts) look at his computer. They couldn't figure out the problem.
So I went to the forums on dell and tried to find my own solution
(http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_other&message.id=223927#M223927)
It was of no help (thx to those who tried).
So he brought it to CompUSA to look at it. After testing it they gave him the diagnoses that he needed a new motherboard. So after several more opinions he calls up Dell and talks to a foreigner who can't speak English.
2 Hours go by and after 3 hang ups (by the people at dell) he calls it quits and tires again the next day.
So he calls again and gets yet another foreigner, an hour goes by and he managed to get a replacement motherboard sent.
A month goes by. (Guarantied 2 week shipping...uh no!)
The hassle he went through was staggering but finally he called me up and said it's here lets put it in. I came to his house and cleaned out his case to get it ready to install the new motherboard. Disconnecting everything was easy, until I got to the CPU.
Taking out the heat sink was a little more difficult than I expected but after reading the manual I unhooked the retainers and began to pull. The Heat sink came up .... with the CPU.
The CPU was stuck to the heat sink.
It was stuck.
We tried pulling; tried heating it up (with a hair dryer) but we couldn’t get it off so we put the heat sink as is into the new motherboard hoping the CPU would fit. 2 of the CPU pins bent and the motherboard was useless anyways because after an hour of working.. turns out it was the wrong type. This motherboard did not have the intergraded sound he needed. He spent another week or two trying to ship this motherboard back to refund his money and after a good 5 hours and 2 weeks he did it.
Dell made him make his own return sticker which should have already been included in the shipment of his motherboard. It took them hours just to tell them he needed to do that.
So months pass and he just leaves his problem alone... playing games on low quality on his parents computer.
Slowly but surely all his friends who knew stuff about computers started to careless and less to help him because they didn't know what to do.
This subject stayed quiet for months
Until one day he began talking to me about custom building a new computer. He spent hours online customizing a cheap inexpensive computer. After showing me what he had made he was disappointed because most of his items weren't compatible with one another, so he did it again and it was still wrong. I decided to help him do this but before I did I told him that he could save money by using his own CPU (which had bent pins, and was glued completely onto the heat sink, and yes we tried several methods to get it off and nothing worked).
I went on the forums on dell.com
(http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_upghw&message.id=55739#M55739)
They recommended I use a rubber knife. I don't know what that is so I left it alone.
I took the CPU and stuck heat sink to CompUSA to ask their advice. After looking at me like I was dumb the man who worked there took the heat sink and began to pull on the CPU. ........ Nothing happened. Yes I told the guy what I had already tried and he goes and does the EXACT same stuff I do. Finally he goes to me after 10 minutes of failed trials and says "Try using a plastic spatula (The flipper people use to flip hamburgers on a grill). I said ok then walked out wondering why he didn't just try it right then.
A couple weeks go by and I am hanging out with my friend when we all the sudden get board. So for no reason he starts talking to me about custom building again and I agree to help him out but tell him that it would save him a bunch of money if we could somehow unbend the pins on his fix his CPU.
I take some empty mechanical pencil's and try to nudge it onto the pins and bend them back but I can't get them in there on account of how they are bent.
Getting extremely frustrated I reassure my friend with comfort that if this pin breaks, his CPU is busted.
Having no luck with this I decide to try the advice from the worker at Comp USA.
My friend gets a spatula and we place it under the CPU and press down.
No luck.
We try again and nothing.
Then I just get mad and do it again and nothing.
So we keep trying for 5 minutes and finally It gets through from the heat sink into the air and falls on my pants which is like a pillow so we were lucky.
10 minutes later he grabs a compass (The device used to draw perfect circles) and uses the end pin to unbind the CPU.
I started to puts with his old motherboard and the CPU fits (with some moving around).
For some crazy idea we decide to put the computer back together and just see that if overtime the computer would work again.
I only put in the minimal stuff because I wasn't expecting much and I wanted
De-assembly to be easy.
I press power and... I hear beeps
The computer is BEEPING. Probably because of no mouse, keyboard, no ram, or monitor but beeps.
Not only that, but the diagnostic lights are on.
When the computer broke there was nothing but now beeps. I plug the monitor in and Windows is loading! For no reason the computer is all the sudden working when I start to wonder why. Computers that are broken stay broken, it's just that simple.
We start to connect everything to the computer when for some odd reason I turn to my friend and say
"I wonder if it was the ram?"
No one had thought to look there before so we tried it.
My friend has 2 sticks of ram so we go grab the ram plug them in, plug in the computer! ...nothing, it's broken like it was before. I take out one stick of ram and it works! So my friend and I are now extremely happy having figured out the problem with his computer. A faulty stick of ram but this doesn’t make since because the stick of ram that was supposedly broken was newer and has been working fine for months. I switch out the ram and the computer still works. I plug them both in and nothing.
It turns out that the 2nd "ram slot" is bad. You plug any stick of ram into there and the computer won't boot.
So we left one stick in there set up the entire computer, keyboard, mouse everything and press power.
Nothing!
THE COMPUTER DIDN'T START.
The modem card I had just plugged in cuased the computer to not work so I am guessing it's a bad PCI slot as well. I took it out and his computer works fine again. Maybe, I think to myself a motherboard bios update might fix this. I spend an hour sifting through his ad ware and low cost of ram, and trying to get the internet to work just to get to the dell site and upload the newest bios update A08. Nothing. The install didn't help at all.
I spent another hour or two at his house helping him get rid of useless programs and spyware but he's happy to have his computer again.
He is now being forced to go spend out almost a hundred bucks for a stick of 512 ram to replace his existing 256 because he only has one slot that works. As for the other PCI slots I am not sure of because we had no other cards to test them.
Through this entire experience Dell has made both our lives a living H3LL!
His computer shouldn’t have died in the first place and the fact dell tech support knows nothing about solving his problem or even helping him get a replacement motherboard is horrible.
I am extremely shocked at CompUSA and their lack of experience on this because I am sure this has happened to hundreds of people who do not know the solution.
I would shun my friends as well but let’s face it, they don't know anything.
The purpose of this story was to go through and discuss the different steps of actions I went through to solve a problem. Ironically through all that time and effort it was a guess.
A FRIGGIN GUESS that got it working.
If your computer stops working please check your ram.
Please for the sake of months of effort and time
I own a Dell myself and have so far had a good run but after going through this I relized that this could have happend to me. If you can't get something replaced or a decent diagnosis of your problem what is the point of technical support, or service.
If you cheated and came straight to the bottom of this page you are missing some very vital info that the story can only offer. No... Seriously! It's not just the RAM.
Message Edited by dewmaster07 on 06-04-2005 09:52 PM
Message Edited by dewmaster07 on 06-04-2005 09:53 PM