Well, I figured you were the only people I know who would get what kind of frustration I'm dealing with on this. Here's the deal. A co-worker asked me to do him a favor and upgrade his hard drive for him. I figure, OK, I do him a favor. I get his machine home, crack it open and install the new drive. He is running a PII-400 with an 8Gb drive. Problem one is that it's so farking slow I spend 2 hours cleaning all the spyware/useless crap he's installed over the last 3 years he's had the machine. I finally get Partition Magic installed and set it to copy the primary partition to the brand new 60Gb drive. All seems well until 1.5 hours into the process the thing stops because of a disk inconsistency. Grrr... Ok, no problem. reboot his POS computer back into windoze and run a scandisk. It finds problems and fixes them. I run Partition Magic again. It fails... again. I boot back into windoze and run a thorough scan. 2 hours later I run PM again and this time it works. Takes 3 hours, but it worked. Cool, making headway. I remove the old drive from the machine, set the new drive as single, and reboot. Primary Hard Disk fail. Grrrr... OK, get a new cable. No go. Move it to secondary, No go. Put it back like it was including the old drive. No go. Schitt. Now what? It seems the bios will no longer recognize his hard drive at all. OK, unhook his computer, hook mine back up, look up the bios flash binary, shut my machine back down, power his up, and start upgrading his bios. Halfway through the BIOS update process (you know, after it erased his old bios and before it writes the new one) his machine hangs. Hard. I wait 15 minutes to be damn sure. Yip. You guessed it. His machine is now a very big paperweight.

I guess that'll teach me to help people out. Now I feel responsible. So I call him up, explained that I killed his MoBo, and tell him that I'm really sorry. If he'll buy a P4 power supply, I'll throw this spare MoBo I have here into his machine. Now, instead of just upgrading his hard disk I've just bought him a new MoBo, 512M of ram, and a P4 - 1.4G processor. Then he has the gall to ask me when I would have it ready to pick up. If I could I would have reached out and throttled him over the phone.

Oh well. I'm going to go play a game now. I need to blow something up.

I think its part of Murphy's law. You can build/upgrade your own computer, but never a friends. Something will always happen to their machine. Yet I still help my friends...

I have been telling people now that I don't give a warranty but if I fried someone's pc I would probably do the samething you did.

I buy them all Dells now. It's just easier that way.

I'd explain to him that He should be paying for the new gear anyway. If he'd taken the computer to a shop, they'd charge for the time too. It's not *your fault* his POS died in your arms. You didn't cajole him into upgrading his hard drive and you were doing the right thing by offering to help.
If he has any decency he'll offer to pay for the parts anyway. if he doesn't, just hand if back and appologise that he should have taken it to a shop if he wanted things done for free.
I don't mean to be offensive, but you aren't profiting from this and he's actually getting a good deal.

I am sure i read a way of getting a computer going with a dead bios.

It was along the lines of changing over eproms while the machine is running, i think you booted with one eprom and then changed to dead one and then flashed that one.

That'll only work if the BIOS is in a socket allowing it to be removed without resoldering. some do, some dont.
add another 1/4 geek points

Yep, I have a nice paperweight that I put together for a friend and then it died six months later for no reason. She's been pretty cool about it, but I feel totally guilty about it. I don't do favors any more with computer stuff, I just send them to the store.

You need one of these.

So true. Thanks all, I feel better. You know, I know better than to get involved in other peoples hardware issues. I should have learned that lesson a LONG time ago. You know, the more I think about it, I don't like him enough to give him the $700-$800 I would have charged had it been by the hour. So why do I even bother?

Just last night a friend of mine, with whom I'm already exasperated with his constant requests for helping him with his computer, offered my services to one of his friends. He wanted me to call her in order to solve some problem with installing Windows98 on some ancient POS she got at a state auction.

I told him that I'd go over there with him to deal with it, but he's going to get a real talking to before and after that happens.

Ain't that a bitch. They're his parts that he'll be using that you paid for. Make sure he understands that. I don't think there should be any implied warantee on free service. If he doesn't offer to pay for his own goods, then he's not a friend and not worth your time and effort.

That's why I'm putting together a brand new computer for my roommate. Sure, I can still screw it up, but hopefully not as much. I'll just make sure to order double sets of IDE cables

I can empathize...just last week, our preacher casually mentioned from the pulpit that I'm a computer genious (I'm not) and that the church always gives me a call when their computers aren't working and I fix them up.

I've already had two people ask me to fix their computers and I'm sure more are coming...

BTW...I already have the above linked T-shirt...perhaps I should wear it next sunday night...

That just goes to show....

No good deed goes unpunished!

In reply to:

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just last week, our preacher casually mentioned from the pulpit that I'm a computer genious (I'm not)

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Genious is relative. So in that context you are very much a genious.

Genious is relative.

However, it doesn't take a genius to know that's not how it's spelled.

Doh... I thought that looked wrong, but I trusted meatballman....

Well, I was going to let it slide, but when there got to be four occurrances in two posts (one quoted), I thought it was time to step in.

Please don't reveal my secret identity.

ack...Bitted! Believe it or not...it was a typo....I kin spel at leest that wel

Practicing your pidgin Dutch?

-Zeke

LOL. Time to print some business cards - make sure that they include your rate and the disclaimer.

HMMMM... It appears you're from the mountains in the Southeastern US.

Well, I was going to let it slide, but when there got to be four occurrances in two posts (one quoted), I thought it was time to step in.

occurrances or occurrences ?

Way to bitt... oh, wait...

occurrances or occurrences ?

Ah, nuts.

HMMMM... It appears you're from the mountains in the Southeastern US

Pretty close. Mid-South Carolina. Only 3 hours from said mountains.

I swear I have become a heartless bastard in my old age. People ask me all the time for stuff, help making a web page, fixing a computer, that kind of thing, and unless they are close family or romantic interest, they get a flat out out no.

The best part is, that after doing that for a while I do not even feel guilty anymore. Being a jerk is easier than I thought, it just takes practice.

I've got a friend in Chicago that was going to box up his P-II 300 and send it to me to fix because "I'm an expert." Why is it that people that work in the computer field are allegedly experts in building/repairing PCs? I push polygons for crying out loud, not build PCs! My PC works because I pay attention to what I put on it! Actually last night he called and asked me what video card he can upgarde to, then reminded me I looked up awhile ago, I told him to go to google and look up his model number of the IBM branded PC. He asked if he can't I just go to the IBM site and do it. I said, "Hey you've got a clue, go work with it!" I bet he calls me in a few weeks askign the same question again. It didn't take too long the first time, but the annoying thing is he never wrote it down, bookmarked it or anything.
It's not that hard to be an ass, really, and it saves time in the long run.

The worst thing in my experience (besides f*cking up the person's computer), is having to tell them:

"You cannot do this, you need a new computer"

People hate hearing that. They assume they can slap that Radeon 9800 in their P200 and everything will be fine. "But it has MMX! It's a good computer!"

My roommate last year had a P120 or something like that. It was in such bad shape. Eventually I had to tell him he couldn't really do anything with it anymore, and that he could 2 generations behind current and still come off with 4 times the PC. He didn't understand a word I said.