Negative reviews?

Dusty Ol' Bones

Dusty Ol' Bones

Full of green dust
So today I had a bad experience trying to hire a computer repair guy to service my DAW desktop machine. A little background: I called him a couple of weeks ago because after years in storage, my DAW came out of hibernation. Upon boot up I got a message saying my CMOS battery was dead. Apparently the CMOS battery can go dead after a few years and needs to be swapped out. I dug through online google reviews and found a shop with lots of good things said about it. When we spoke he insisted on describing to me how to make the repair myself, for free, rather than bringing it into his shop. Since this required removing the outside case of the CPU, I noticed a lot of dust on the motherboard. Of course I thanked him profusely for assisting me with the battery change and I got a quote from him and told him I'd contact him in a week or two in order to schedule the service for cleaning it out.

Today I made that call to schedule service for Monday. I had previously told him my computer was a little old (2008) and runs Windows XP. Despite the age, it is built like a tank and has served me well over the years as a machine built specifically as a DAW for music production including dual hard drives, firewire ports, and an insulated case to keep the internal fan quiet. Well when I asked him about Monday, he told me outright that the $80 charge for cleaning it was more than what the machine was worth. This response was completely unexpected, so much so that I had to ask him to repeat himself because I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He again told me the computer wasn't worth the fee to clean it and he wasn't going to waste his time with the job. He also mentioned that he doesn't service XP machines. I said first, the value of my computer is simply a matter of opinion as there is nothing wrong with it and it functions completely to my satisfaction. Second, I told him I wasn't asking him to service the OS or even to turn it on, I just needed him to open it up and clean it out. He firmly told me he wasn't going to do it and I was like fine, I'll find somebody else to take the money I throw at them.

After this awful conversation, I wrote up a review for google but decided not to send it. I have seen other reviews by Karens who make insane demands like showing up after a store is closed and leaving a bad review that management didn't unlock the door and let them in. What do y'all think? Was his behavior was egregious enough to warrant a scathing review or should I just let it go and forget about it?
 
First thing is that you have unreasonable expectations of how business works. My local computer dealer I know quite well. He told me this story. He agreed to put a new video card in an XP computer. He couldn’t get it to work, and the customer took him to small claims court, saying it was a simple job, and the computer had been fine, and apart from the dodgy video card, perfect. The court actually found for him, and described the XP computer as antique and unrepairable.

he probably took one look at it and decided it was too high a risk to even try replacing the battery, and the 80 dollars best to walk away from. You want to leave a bad review for NOT doing work? That is madness, and to be honest. Totally out of order.

let’s be honest. After years of storage, it’s not just the machine running, it’s the software. None of your browsers will run ordinary websites till you install new ones. Some will refuse to run on your machine. Windows might refuse to start because it cannot authenticate. Your audio software will be out of date and updates not available for XP. Those enthusiasts who still run it are expert and shortcuts to get around problems. Current software is out for you. Drivers long gone. You’ve showed you cannot do things yourself, and need help. The operating system was before many computer people were born. If you turned up at your local car service depot in a vintage car, would it be luggable into their diagnostic computer? Of course not.

your expectations are high, far too high. You are angry a computer shop doesn’t want to look at your computer. Apple told me my two year old MacBook is now legacy, and uneconomic to repair.

my accountant writes a computer off after two years.

please don’t think I am having a go at you, I really am not, but I’m thousands of miles away in the UK and exactly the same thing happens here. Old computers are a real risk to even go near. They’re for enthusiasts, not local computer shops. If he put the battery in, and it lit up, that would not be the end of it, even if it worked. Little things would not work, and you’d ask him to do that. Then you’d maybe need a new monitor with hdmi or digital connections that require a new video card, that wont work on XP, without patches, and patches them need new drivers, new drivers need a new OS. Your dealer probably suddenly saw him being busy for weeks on a pointless project.

computers are not built like tanks, the cases might be, but not the innards.

how can you even think it’s his fault? You want him to do something he doesn’t want to do. With XP, the rule is that you’re into enthusiast computing where you do everything yourself. Computer shops are out for XP really.


sorry for the bad news.
 
I have an XP machine too that I use for some of the same reasons - supports Firewire, I have software that works on it.

He might be a dipwad but also try to look at it from his perspective. Since he does computer service all the time he's probably learned to have Spidey Sense about certain situations. You bring him what's considered an antique by computer standards that's been in mothballs for a long time - yes, it probably isn't worth much - look on eBay at machines similar to yours.

A lot has changed with PCs - once upon a time a 2 gig hard drive was considered big - computers now with current operating systems need way more *RAM* than that just to run and even more to do system-intensive things like gaming, photo and video work. - drives are in the hundreds of gigs or even terrabytes and solid state drives are replacing hard disk drives - your system won't even recognize all the available space on larger modern drives and isn't capable of correct drive management on an SSD.

He does the cleaning, you take it home and after putting in a new battery it won't start or doesn't run right. Now that he's had his hands on it, someone who isn't even computer savvy enough to do two really basic tasks might blame him for the problems which might have nothing to do with him at all. There are a lot of things that can go wrong with time, age and use - the RAM might have gone bad, some component on the motherboard might be bad, you might have blown something because you didn't know to wear a ground strap when changing the battery. For him to dig around, try to diagnose the problem to see if it's hardware, an OS, registry or BIOS problem could take a fair amount of time. Is he supposed to do it for free? Are you going to be willing to pay a repair bill of hundreds on a machine that isn't worth half that on the open market? If you're mad about it then he gets a bad review anyway after having spent time on what he knew was likely to become a problem. By telling you "no thanks" he's at least avoided the headache.

Find someone who's willing to do it or better yet learn to work on it yourself. Whether you should give him a bad review when he's never actually done any work for you to judge him on is a call only you can make.
 
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I see Rob who posted his response as I was working on my original response gave you very similar feedback - he also used the word "antique". 😁
 
Dusty, even with the battery dead, you should still be able to boot up the machine. You'll just need to set the time and date. It should find the hard drive if it's a 2008 era machine.

The CMOS battery is just a little CR2032 lithium coin battery, very easy to replace. It would be better to find a friend who fools with computers for fun and have them open it up, replace the battery, take a vacuum to the dust and fire it up. There's a good chance that it would work, although the hard drive might have an issue with stiction. Sometimes it requires a light tap to get it working again. Some old motherboards had problems with capacitors, so there's also a possibility that it won't fire up.

I recently resurrected an old computer that a friend gave me. I put XP on it, and it doesn't go on the internet. But it will run a bunch of programs that I have, like my Lotus Smartsuite, Photoshop, and games that aren't supported by Win10. With 2.5 GB and an SSD, it runs faster than ever! The whole machine cost me $40, and that was for the SSD and a memory stick.

If the machine runs, you could also stick Linux on it, if you just need to get on the internet. It might mean that you actually need to LEARN a bit about computers rather than just hitting the power switch and typing. I put Linux on another old machine and it would let me browse and get email if I didn't have other computers.

I don't think I would trash the shop. He's looking at it in a practical manner. The machine is probably worth $50 at a yard sale. I see people putting working machines in the recycle bin because it doesn't have Windows 11 and run the latest games. What a shame!
 
Dusty Ol' Bones said:
After this awful conversation, I wrote up a review for google but decided not to send it. I have seen other reviews by Karens who make insane demands like showing up after a store is closed and leaving a bad review that management didn't unlock the door and let them in. What do y'all think? Was his behavior was egregious enough to warrant a scathing review or should I just let it go and forget about it?
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I wouldn't leave any review - it's his right to refuse to work on anything - that aside the things you want to do - replace a CMOS battery and clean out the machine - you should do it yourself - the CMOS battery is a common one - CR2032 lithium - you just open up the machine and you will see it on the Motherboard - as for clean a Vacuum and Air Sprayer will take care of that - it is really simple stuff that won't take you an Hour to complete - and then the machine is stallion your house.
 
Ironically, I powered up an old computer here and the battery was gone - I got warning, and I simply reset the date and time and it's fine. If yours doesn't power up, then if lights come on so the power supply is OK, then the drive probably seized.
 
Dusty, Dusty, Dusty... You've received a LOT of good advice so far. Your nickname suggests you're an old fart, like me (I'm 72). But unlike me, you don't seem to know much about computers. I worked in IT >30 years and do all my own work, so please trust that my agreement with everyone else is not spiteful.

Depending on your age, background and motivation, it might be too late in the game for you to learn enough to do your own IT work. So listen to good advice from people who know what they are doing and avoid being a Karen (your word).
Peace...
 
I dug out an old computer from the closet because a newer computer's operating system or whatever no longer authenticated a game code, certificate, or whatever you call it. I attempted to fire it up. After the little circle thing quit doing the circle thing, huge letters popped up on the screen saying, "Have you checked the price of kerosene lately? Get a new computer, loser!". And with a wisp of smoke it promptly totally shut down. I can't locate the little siphon bulb thing for the K can anyway, so I suppose it's all for the best. Medal of Honor was an awesome game while it lasted.
 
Thanks everyone! Despite my fear of blowing the dust out myself, I'm glad I trusted my initial instinct to not post that review. I see this forum doesn't allow the multi-quote so I'll just touch on a few points:

First, I don't even plug this computer into the internet. Ever. I choose not to run anti-virus software because it runs in the background and can cause glitches during recording. For the same reason, I read somewhere that with a dead CMOS battery, in addition to merely having to update the date/time, it can also cause glitches and shut down programs randomly. Not good when recording. As for the OS, I know that XP doesn't need updates, another reason I don't need internet. I am not constantly adding and subtracting games or anything else other than music files. And yes, even though I was apprehensive about doing some of the work myself, I do consider myself somewhere between serious hobbyist and enthusiast when it comes to writing songs, playing guitar, singing, and when I have time, recording myself. I got laid off during the pandemic and had a rough couple of years, which is why I wasn't using the computer until recently. I have other computers with newer Windows systems, I have itunes on one of my PCs, I look at facebook like everyone else. I'm not a 100% computer ignoramus, I just normally swap them out when they fail rather than repair them (kinda like kids and their cars these days). Except for this computer. I even had CR2032 batteries on-hand that I keep in stock for other electronic devices like guitar tuners and such. I admitted to the repair guy when I thanked him earlier that swapping out the CMOS battery was easier than I thought it would be. I know, I know, vacuuming and blowing the dust out is probably just as easy.

Thanks again y'all. Like I said, I'm glad I didn't actually send the review. That would have been a Karen move. I was just a little frustrated that the guy agreed to do the work a couple of weeks ago then backed out when it came time to do it.
 
Computers don't mind being dusty.
Most of them use replaceable coin cells, but some had soldered-in batteries.
It seems you don't have much to loose. Take the risk, and get a vacuum hose on it, and swap out that coin cell.
If it dies, get yourself a multiple-core pc with oodles of ram, and an up to date wizz-bang daw.

My previous music PC suffered a dead battery, and somehow it wouldn't then recognise the password. It wouldn't boot up. I couldn't recover it.
The operating system license was effectively lost, along with the daw license.
Out with the old, in with the new.
 
Dusty, the CMOS won't affect the way things run, it simply holds the configurations for things like hard drives, date, memory setup and other startup BIOS options. Unless you have enabled abnormal options or have special memory settings, it won't effect the performance. In the VERY old days, you would have to confirm the hard drives,and confirm memory but those days are long gone (like the Windows 3.1 days).

FIre that puppy up and hit the record button!
 
TalismanRich said:
Dusty, the CMOS won't affect the way things run, it simply holds the configurations for things like hard drives, date, memory setup and other startup BIOS options. Unless you have enabled abnormal options or have special memory settings, it won't effect the performance. In the VERY old days, you would have to confirm the hard drives,and confirm memory but those days are long gone (like the Windows 3.1 days).
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It's been so long, I think I did a set and forget on the options. I know I turned off screensavers and set it to never auto-sleep due to inactivity. No A/V or firewall since I don't plug in to the internet. I think I pretty much turned off or expunged any non-essentials that run in the background.
TalismanRich said:
FIre that puppy up and hit the record button!
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Did and done! 🤘👽
 
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