Solo Technology

Struck out twice in the last few days for two clients. Man… humbling, to be sure.

First one wasn’t all that surprising. In fact, I cautioned them that I’d probably not get too far. The issue? A laptop with a very loud cooling fan. Typically, when you start getting fan noise you pull the fan out, carefully remove the little sticker that covers the bearing and drop in a bit of 3-in-1 oil. Put the sticker back on and the fan is as good as new. Now, this fan is in the bottom of a laptop which truly complicated things! I can see it through the vent holes, but I can’t seem to get to it.

Again, I warned ‘em when I took it home that there wasn’t much hope, but I’d try…

I took the battery out and then removed every screw from the bottom of the case. This one doesn’t seem to have any of the “normal” screws on top (like often cleverly hidden under the edges of the keyboard) which is odd. A few screws along the back, yanked them too. But can’t seem to “crack” open the case. And that’s where I chickened out as the next screws I was eye-balling were associated with the hinges. Not being an HP certified guy, that seemed like a good spot to admit defeat. Sprayed in some WD-40 to see if that would penetrate… helped a bit at low fan speeds, but she still howls at high speed. Drat. Anyone have any bright ideas on opening up a Pavilion laptop? IBM’s and Toshibas are a lot easier, that’s for sure.

Second one was this afternoon. Client has a new wifi card and an old access point. Card is a Linksys 54g PCMCIA model and the access point is a 802.11b built into an older Netgear router. Shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Heh. I blew an hour before finally suggesting she take the card back and get a different brand… WEP, no WEP — both failed. Card would see the AP but just wouldn’t associate. Used the Linksys “client tool” and then tried with it disabled using windows zero-config thingy. Nope. Nada. Other machines in the house are still working fine on wifi, just not this one.

Humbled.

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