Kids these days

[Aressel]

Had a customer come in over the weekend and buy a computer case from us. She mentioned that her son was going to build a computer, how he had recently gotten interested in computers, etc.

Of course, he didn't do a great job of it. Computer comes back to us on Monday, with the request that we put it together.

First thing that I notice:
There is no backing plate on the motherboard.

Second thing that I notice (After pulling off the side):
The kid has good taste in parts.

Third thing that I notice (after pulling the motherboard to bench it):
The motherboard was attached directly to the case. He didn't use any of the standoffs.

Lucky for him, it looked like he never got it to a point where he would've tried to fire it up, so he didn't fry anything, and it actually worked when I benched it.

So, I get the missing parts, build it properly and send the computer home. (Note: at this point it didn't have a hard drive or optical drive).

I get a phone call about an hour later, saying that they couldn't get it to boot. Now I had made the assumption that he was going to put in a hard drive and install Windows. Nope. He pulled the system drive out of a Vista machine, put it in this one and expected it to just work. Yeah, no. Sorry, next time ask a few questions first.

She just brought it in, we shall see how it goes.

Interesting note: I have not talked to the son at all throughout this, all my dealings have been with the mom.

[draggar]

Interesting note: I have not talked to the son at all throughout this, all my dealings have been with the mom.

I think that's a good thing...

[dreams305]

A little while ago, I was building a (mostly) new machine and had taken the hard drive out of the old one and I was confused to why it wasn't working. (blue screened)

After days of puzzlement I asked a coworker why I was having a problem and all he could explain to me was that I couldn't do that. I insisted I had done it before with no problem on the previous machine. He told me that wasn't possible etc.

Finally after some frustration and research I come to find out that it had to do with the motherboard drivers. The previous machines were the same motherboard manufacturer, same drivers.

I felt pretty stupid about that

[technical.angel]

I'm still feeling really moronic about this huge SATA ordeal. I'm going to have to detail my exploits in the Tech Help section.

[Depot Denizen]

I build my own machines, but then again I've been doing it for years. I chuckle when I see kids come in to the help center with their custom rigs - they expect us to work on them. The software techs can try, but I've seen the kids try and get us hardware jockeys to fix it.