Thread: Computers what kind of idiots assemble them (i mean the shops)

I bought a second hand computer from a friend. He swears that he has never touched the inside of the comp.
Yesterday i formatted the hard disk. Today i want to install an OS and things just wont work.... when booting up it always locks up at Verifying DMI pool data.

So im trying to get this to work for 3 hours by now. And i opened the case everything looked fine at first sight ( + an Os win98 was installed on it be4). So normally things would work as they are supposed to. Now ive just seen that the hard disk supply cable was (split up) and also connected to the floppy drive.
out of experience i know that that can give trouble so i fixed that and now everything works perfect.
The same story counts for a friend of me who did his comp to the shop to repair something and he got him back also with the hard disk supply cable messed up with the drive floppy.

Im just wondering do the ppl at the computer store know what they are doing ???
IMO (what ive seen so far of them) they can only cash money. And service is always "very good", so they say.
Dont know if you guys ever met such "shop-dorks" who dont know how a comp works.

::If there is anyone that works in a comp-store, dont be offended, i only know shop-keepers from here in belgium and what ive learned about them, is that if theres something wrong with a comp dont bring it to the store coz they will solve your prob but create another one.::
::wooooot long post::

i work as a computer tech, and i honestly will say that i agree with you. we regularly make fun of other computer shops that tend to create problems that customers then bring to us to solve. they are good for our business and reputation

building a computer is a fairly simple thing, but the amount of things that can go wrong are endless...

>Now ive just seen that the hard disk supply cable was (split up) and also connected to the floppy drive.

i certainly hope you dont mean the IDE cable that supplies the hard drive... if so, i dont see how that can even work, since first off they use seperate types of cable, and second they both plug into seperate ports on the motherboard. if you just mean the power cable, then there is no problem with that.

>>i certainly hope you dont mean the IDE cable that supplies the hard drive...
No its the power supply.
>>. if you just mean the power cable, then there is no problem with that.
I've got 4 comps by now. (that i assembled from scrap that ppl give me for free...)
Anyhow on every comp this thing caused a problem. By now ive seen 5 comps where the power supply of the Hard disk has been split up so that Hard disk and floppy drive take power from 1 power supply cable. They all didnt worked properly.
On 2 of them the floppy wasnt working or there was an I/O failure.
On the other 3 the comp wouldnt even boot. (but if there was an OS installed already then the comp would work fine) .... so right now i could put the power supply cables in my comp as it was be4 because the OS is installed on it...

Mayb its Mobo or power supply dependant... i dont know but to make sure it works i just put them on a seperate power supply..

hmm.. thats odd...

most power supplies that ive seen already have the power cable split from normal to floppy plugs and i have never once seen that cause a problem.

I/O error is usually caused by the floppy cable plugged in wrong, and floppy cables are really picky. first of all, the little twist in the cable has to be in the end plugged directly into the floppy drive. second, the pinkish line going down the edge of the cable has to be facing the power input on the floppy.

and the computer not booting could be a thousand and one different things, especially on a newly built computer. most of the time i dont even figure out whats wrong, i just fiddle with things and suddenly it starts working

*shrugs*