The Filthy, Rotten, Nasty, Helpdesk-Nightmare picture clubhouse

[Edwired]

A tad cleaner now, with an able assistant.
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View attachment 351185

Is that fluff or what is it I never seen it gathered that much in one localised area. Don't eat it if you think it candy floss haha

 

[silentbogo]

Wasup! I've been slacking for the past few months, but it doesn't mean I haven't collected any "gems" from my workshop.
First one is my least favorite type of repair: when you get good stuff abused at construction sites and auto repair shops.
This one wasn't really that filthy, but had no sound (not muffled, but fully absent). At first I thought the audio codec was dead, but then I found out the real reason....

Few careful minutes with a powerful neodymium magnet and it came back to its original state with "full range of sound", or at least as much as those puny Dell latitude speakers can muster.


And the next one is definitely the worst. Combines two things that I whole-heartedly hate - stupidity and lies.
My buddy's nephew sent over his Pixel 5a. Said "it was working fine, but all of a sudden rebooted and never came back to life". Looking at it, I immediately suspected water damage because the lens cover was foggy. Called him to ask some clarifying questions - and as far as I've gotten is "maybe I walked in the rain with it". Then I opened the poor little bastard to see if maybe it's just a faulty charging port or charge controller, and to my surprise I saw this:


Everything was soaked and dead. Not even a single part can be reused as donor. Come to find out he jumped in the lake with it.
Still don't understand why people almost always lie when it comes to liquid damage.... Either they don't want to look stupid, or maybe they think that if they believe it hard enough - the damage will go away somehow. Seen and heard this on many occasions, both with phones and beer-soaked laptops. Only had a few customers(regulars) that weren't ashamed to admit they made a whoopsie, which saved both my time and their time.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Wasup! I've been slacking for the past few months, but it doesn't mean I haven't collected any "gems" from my workshop.
First one is my least favorite type of repair: when you get good stuff abused at construction sites and auto repair shops.
This one wasn't really that filthy, but had no sound (not muffled, but fully absent). At first I thought the audio codec was dead, but then I found out the real reason....
View attachment 351599
Few careful minutes with a powerful neodymium magnet and it came back to its original state with "full range of sound", or at least as much as those puny Dell latitude speakers can muster.
View attachment 351600

And the next one is definitely the worst. Combines two things that I whole-heartedly hate - stupidity and lies.
My buddy's nephew sent over his Pixel 5a. Said "it was working fine, but all of a sudden rebooted and never came back to life". Looking at it, I immediately suspected water damage because the lens cover was foggy. Called him to ask some clarifying questions - and as far as I've gotten is "maybe I walked in the rain with it". Then I opened the poor little bastard to see if maybe it's just a faulty charging port or charge controller, and to my surprise I saw this:
View attachment 351601View attachment 351602View attachment 351603

Everything was soaked and dead. Not even a single part can be reused as donor. Come to find out he jumped in the lake with it.
Still don't understand why people almost always lie when it comes to liquid damage.... Either they don't want to look stupid, or maybe they think that if they believe it hard enough - the damage will go away somehow. Seen and heard this on many occasions, both with phones and beer-soaked laptops. Only had a few customers(regulars) that weren't ashamed to admit they made a whoopsie, which saved both my time and their time.

Lol. I had a device die to water damage - but I would have explained it the same way, because I dried it out and it worked fine for a week.

It wasn't a phone though.

 

[silentbogo]

No filth in 2025? Something ain't right, fellas

Ok. Let me be the first this year.
Recently I sold my spare Raspberry Pi's on local fleebay, and one of my customers decided to make a return "cuz dat Pi Zero 2 don't work". I bundled a free 3d printed case with each Pi Zero, 'cause I'm a nice guy.
Told him to send it in. Long story short - he put it in the case, and then pried that little pi out with a screwdriver on the edge, instead of pushing it out from below with something blunt, like I told him before. The end result is grim:


I've already fixed it, gonna send it back to him 'cuz I'm a nice guy.
Even made a video for him. Let that ugly yellow jumpwire remind him of this $%^up every time he looks at it

Yep, some of my repairs/projects make no sense at all

TBH, I got so good at fixing Pi's recently that I've decided to buy a boxful of them. Some dude selling slightly modded Pi4's (probably some industrial application) for less than $8/ea. Figured, why not. Already bought one for $10, fixed it in 30min and put it up for sale for $50 as a kit. So, probably more nasty stuff coming soon?...

 

[micropage7]

Yes, easy to clean up, but I have to do it outside.
Here's the latest with only one more to go! (There were six in all)
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something like this that i found in administration room, as long as it works nothing to worry even it has 2 inch dust inside. the key is if it works well, there's no need to worry

 

[silentbogo]

There's a first time for everything....
Just when I thought I saw every type of liquid damage imaginable, my customers still manage to surprise me. This time it's .... Pickle juice!
Little ASUS ROG Strix G17 didn't survive a drunken party, and worst of all - spent a month or two in the closet after the incident.
Unfortunately I'm not a wizard, and I won't be able to fix it.

 

[lexluthermiester]

There's a first time for everything....
Just when I thought I saw every type of liquid damage imaginable, my customers still manage to surprise me. This time it's .... Pickle juice!
Little ASUS ROG Strix G17 didn't survive a drunken party, and worst of all - spent a month or two in the closet after the incident.
Unfortunately I'm not a wizard, and I won't be able to fix it.
View attachment 388239

Holy crap is that a mess. I'd fix it though. Like any other mess, one just has to take it a step at a time.

 

[Scattergrunt]

There's a first time for everything....
Just when I thought I saw every type of liquid damage imaginable, my customers still manage to surprise me. This time it's .... Pickle juice!
Little ASUS ROG Strix G17 didn't survive a drunken party, and worst of all - spent a month or two in the closet after the incident.
Unfortunately I'm not a wizard, and I won't be able to fix it.
View attachment 388239

Skimming through your messages in this thread makes me think you're some sort of electronics repair cryptid hunter or something. Next thing you say is that you have found the bigfoot of electronic repair..
Yea no, I don't blame you for not wanting to fix this. If you even could, that is.

Everything was soaked and dead. Not even a single part can be reused as donor. Come to find out he jumped in the lake with it.
Still don't understand why people almost always lie when it comes to liquid damage.... Either they don't want to look stupid, or maybe they think that if they believe it hard enough - the damage will go away somehow. Seen and heard this on many occasions, both with phones and beer-soaked laptops. Only had a few customers(regulars) that weren't ashamed to admit they made a whoopsie, which saved both my time and their time.

Definitely the shame people feel for damaging their electronics with stuff like jumping in a lake or spilling a beer.. honestly I don't know why they worry so much because its kind of your job to fix that. Its not like your gonna judge them super heavily for it as is (or at least, not enough to warrant telling them about it).
This is particularly prevalent in more western countries, especially here in the states. The perception of societal stigma is strong here.

 

[Ruru]

Definitely the shame people feel for damaging their electronics with stuff like jumping in a lake or spilling a beer..

Yeah, like when I managed to spill a beer to my laptop over an year ago. Stupid mistake and totally my fault.

 

[silentbogo]

Holy crap is that a mess. I'd fix it though. Like any other mess, one just has to take it a step at a time.

I really wanted to fix it, but it's hopeless. Being pickled for over a month made its way throughout the PCB. There's likely a hole near charger IC, and almost half of components on that side of PCB have rotted away, and some vias are completely gone. Even if CPU and GPU are still alive, they are only good as parts for other laptops (assuming their BGA pads are intact).
Just replacing the board isn't an option. I think it's around $400-500 on Ali (none on sale locally), plus another $100 to replace the topcase, because the KB and touchpad are also dead. SSD is dead. Haven't tested the screen yet, but most likely it's fine. Overall just the parts for this repair run more than, let's say, a fully functional G15 on the used market.

Speaking of keyboard - the owner previously fixed it (also liquid damage), so he took it to some local "specialist", who decided that a good course of action would be to tear out the KB and clean it separately from palmrest, instead of trying to wash the whole assembly. He didn't use the hot air gun or soldering iron for that, he just tore it out of the topcase and afterwards just dabbed some hot snot here and there to "hold" it in place afterwards.

Next thing you say is that you have found the bigfoot of electronic repair..

I don't have to look for a bigfoot, it comes every Sunday to my office for tea and cookies

 

[Ruru]

Speaking of keyboard - the owner previously fixed it (also liquid damage), so he took it to some local "specialist", who decided that a good course of action would be to tear out the KB and clean it separately from palmrest, instead of trying to wash the whole assembly. He didn't use the hot air gun or soldering iron for that, he just tore it out of the topcase and afterwards just dabbed some hot snot here and there to "hold" it in place afterwards.

"if it boots once, it works", we call that as "backlight warranty" in Finland, if it brokes later, then it's bad luck.