The deck is stacked against us

Now I am really not trying to brag on myself with some comments later in this post.  I’m sure I’ve missed things in the past and I’m just really happy with this most recent “catch.”  I do not know everything and I am not the perfect tech.

In our jobs as computer techs there are some fundamental skills that make us good.  I have always felt that troubleshooting skills tops my list.  Then of course you need knowledge and experience.  I have argued many times that people right out of college or a certification have that knowledge now but if they have no troubleshooting skills or experience they are almost useless.  If you’ve ever taken your computer to geek squad, Staples, or similar then you know what I’m talking about!  I guess you have to have people skills too but if you are just working in the back of a shop then that isn’t as important.  If you want to start a business or have to interact with customers then it is important.

I am rather proud of a recent experience but it makes me realize that “the deck is stacked against us.”  Working on laptops can be troublesome to many shops.  There are so many different setups and proprietary configurations that it is hard to figure out what is really wrong with a laptop.  Case in point is a laptop I received Monday afternoon for a DC jack repair.  I always go through some checks and testing before I start tearing apart a laptop.  In the past I have received several that really didn’t have DC jack problems, just a bad charger.  In all honesty that is a bit frustrating for me because I look forward to that chance to make that money.  Oh well, at least I can normally make a couple of dollars on one of the universal laptop chargers I sell.

So through testing I found that the DC jack was fine and the unit powered on a couple of times for me.  However the LED light stopped working and then it eventually would not power on??  I knew it was getting juice but it just refused to turn on.  Luckily for me I had another working DV6000 sitting around in my home office so I had some spare parts to test with.  Now I will admit one of my downfalls here and luckily it doesn’t happen too much.  When I am thrown a “curve ball” I do not always react right.  I honestly get a little frustrated and normally just step back and think for a few hours or day.  It was getting late Monday night so I figured I needed to think about it and get back to it when I had more energy.  To me the logical part to go bad would be the little circuit board that has the power button and LED on it.  So that was the first thing I tried, no luck.  So I pulled other hardware and inspected connections just to get an idea of what was going on.  Finally I thought I would try the ribbon cable.  On these models there is a 6-8″ ribbon cable from that little circuit board that runs to the motherboard.  I replaced it and magically the computer started up!!!

Now I mention all of this just so you can marvel at my superior troubleshooting skills.  So you can pray to your God that he grant you my awesome powers!!  Also so you can realize how much better I am than you!  No seriously, I’m sorry for that.  Like I mentioned above, I know I’ve probably missed stuff on past systems.  I am just so happy that this laptop even powered on a few times at the beginning.  If it would not have then I honestly probably would not have figured out what was wrong with it.  Since almost all laptops are different how are we seriously supposed to be able to fix them?  Fortunately most of us have decent troubleshooting skills so we can figure it out and then we even luck out sometimes by having parts on hand to test with.  It makes me wonder how HP would have fixed it?  Do they have some type of miracle tester that just hooks up to it and tells the tech what is wrong?  This type of repair is quite satisfying though.  Especially when another shop said that it was the DC jack and the repair would cost $400!!  With proper troubleshooting though, it really ended up being a $6 ribbon cable!!