Four failed motherboard swaps in one day made me question everything

Last Tuesday I had four computers come in from the same office building, all with dead boards, and I swapped three of them before realizing the fourth one was actually a power supply issue. Took me 5 hours of head scratching and a multimeter reading to figure out I had been chasing the wrong problem the whole time. Has anyone else had a day where you kept missing the obvious fix and felt like you forgot how to do your own job?

3 comments

3 Comments

ben82716d ago

Those office building power strips are probably the real culprit nobody checks.

jade22617d ago

The power supply thing always gets you when you least expect it. That multimeter is your best friend even when you think you know what the problem is. Sometimes we get in a groove and stop checking the basics, it happens to everyone. Nothing worse than wasting hours on a swap you didn't even need to do.

robinson.paul17d ago

Oh man, you're so right about getting into that groove and skipping the basics. I've definitely been guilty of swapping out a whole component before I even thought to check if the power rail was clean (like a dummy). It's almost embarrassing how many hours I've burned just because I assumed the easy stuff was fine when it wasn't.