Thursday 21 October 2010

The "Low Velocity High Impact Reset"

So, my Office PC just went off to the IT Department for upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7... yay...

But, not yay, after 3 minutes my phone rang:

"What have you done to this machine?"
"Nothing", was my immediate reply
"Well, it doesn't turn on"

Silence

More Silence

"What do you want me to do about this?"  Was my tentative question.
"Nothing, I'm just trying to work out what you've done?"
"Well, I turned it on at 6:30am worked on it until about 11am and then shut it down unplugged all the cables and hefted it on my man boobs over to you."
"Right, well the man boobs have killed it"
"I'll be over in two minutes" and I set off back over to sort this out.

Interior IT Office, much applause.

I wave a cursory greeting and go stand over my now open, sad looking PC.

I earth myself, pull the power and press all the RAM, Graphics, CPU and connectors generally in view into place.

I try to power it back up, nothing... the IT chap is looking happily smug my doing this did nothing...

So I have an idea... "Have you tried a low velocity high impact reset?"  I asked...

"No, wha..."

And before the chap could question me further I hefted the case about 2 inches off the desk and dropped it.

It immediately powered on.

As the shock and awe slipped from his face, I looked at his smooth cheeks, his still shining eyes, un-dulled by the march of time... and I ask...

"You're too young to have had an 8 or 16 bit Computer, am I right?"

"I'm 21, I had a Windows 95 PC" he said defensively.

"Yes, but Windows 95 would have been what, on your 486 CPU?.. you never had a dodgy Apple II or Atari ST where you had to reseat the chip set every so often... that's what I just did... Something was out of socket and now it's in... I just hope I've not got any dry joints"  I eagerly await some retort, and I'm not let down by the classic...

"What have your knees to do with anything?"

2 comments:

  1. That made me laugh - that 21 year old reminded me of when I first worked in IT many years ago.
    The "oldies" used to tell me all about the fun they had with the punch cards and how lucky I was to be able to just copy a file and not have to load a program that then allowed you to copy a file (mainframes).."These modern OSs like MS-DOS, you really have it easy"

    I am guessing the 21 year old just ordered you a new PC and didn't take a trip to Maplin in his lunch break ?

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  2. I think he thought I'd used the force, Obi Wan style.

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