News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:A Google Cloud support engineer solves a tough DNS case by frogpelt on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @10:53PM (#23242848)
I was troubleshooting a computer once that would randomly shut off during boot and, one component at a time, I replaced everything on it including the motherboard to no avail.

Finally I took all the parts out of the original computer and put them in a different chassis and it worked! Put them back in the old chassis and back to the old problem.

Eventually I noticed that there was an extra stand-off in the first computer case and it was shorting out the motherboard.

It was literally the chassis causing the problem.

Re:A Google Cloud support engineer solves a tough DNS case by rswail on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @03:44AM (#23244338)
Back in the 90s we had a faulty DELL server that someone decided needed to have its BIOS upgraded. They didn't read the specs and upgraded to a BIOS not supported by the CPU.

Motherboard is bricked. Ring DELL for support. After going through the rigmarole of explaining what had happened and that we had a bricked motherboard, the person on the phone said "Have you tried taking out the CPU and rebooting?"

To avoid further delay in getting a replacement sent (we had 4 hour on-site at the time), we went through the motions. Not surprisingly, the motherboard was substantially bricked without a CPU.

The DELL engineer that came on-site was suitably amused.

Re:A Google Cloud support engineer solves a tough DNS case by Corrado on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @01:43PM (#23249648)
My neighbour's computer stopped working after a lightning storm and asked me to take a look at it. It wouldn't boot so I started taking things out of it (hard drive, video card, modem, etc.) and trying again.

Nothing worked. Finally, I removed the processor from the motherboard, looked at it, and reinstalled it. The computer booted right up and never had another problem. Weird.

Re:A Google Cloud support engineer solves a tough DNS case by ocdtrekkie on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @12:46AM (#23243370)
Put in an extra standoff on my very first PC build, and it wouldn't boot until I found and removed it.