It may comfort some to know that this doesn’t only happen to end users:
Last week one of our users’ machines would not come on; we suspected a bad power supply. We gave her a loaner and brought hers back to the workroom for diagnostics and abusive language, for the purpose of verifying a kaput power supply (and general stress relief). Shipped the dead power supply back to the manufacturer and got a replacement. All good.
I swapped out the old power supply for the new one, plugged it in to everything, and fired it up.
Non-system disk or disk error.
Replace and press any key when ready.
Checked the floppy drive, checked the controller cable to the hard drive and to the motherboard. Tried again.
Non-system disk or disk error.
Replace and press any key when ready.
Stuck in a bootable floppy and tried to dir c:.
Huh?
So it couldn’t see the hard drive at all. Perhaps whatever had futzed the power supply had futzed the hard drive, or the power supply had decided to take an escort to hardware hell, or something.
Later an Alpha Geek was handy, so I told him about the problem. He told me to boot it up and we’d have a look.
You guessed it—the damn thing booted up just fine. It just confirms my suspicion that Alpha Geeks radiate an aura that machines respond to with subservience. That’s why they’re the Alpha Geeks.
One Response to “D’oh”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
You know, I have a Champions character who has
this as one of his powers. Machines, especially
complex, electronic ones, just work better when
he’s nearby.
And, of course, the problem you describe is
just another facet of the “your car is making a
funny noise, but stops doing it when you take it to the mechanic” phenomenon.