Question what do you all computer technicians fear the most ?

[-RockMan-]

Well I wanted to ask this because I know everybody is a afraid of some type of pc technical problem wether doing it on site a job or inside your home business office.
Also don't give me that conan fears nothing type crap, any technical person fears something...........

I was reading mike myers book over my vacation, he said the most thing that strikes fear into technicians is a red x found in device manager, stating the hardware is offline or ****ed up and there might be a chance of fixing it if the hardware has failed to boot up.

I understand completely what mike myers is saying about device maanger components having that dreaded red x by a device by it.

To me that means nothing to me, what really terrorizes me is DOA computer, sure it maybe something as simple as a hardware preventing a computer from booting on and turning on the VGA port, but what if it's not the cpu,ram or vga.
Instead it's a multi-tood of problems the mobo throws at you and the problems get to where it's too complicated and you are on a customers strict time-limit to fix it.

My fear is a almost lifeless computer that I can't fix and having to explain to a customer or future boss wtf happened when it got on my desk, and I have to bare the blame for something I did not do to cause it.....

 

[PP Mguire]

Either of the 3 hard drives that store my main data dieing. I have a 200gb 2.5" that i keep in an external enclosure that has all my music, pictures, and any other kind of document type stuff that dates back to about 1999 for me. THe other 2 are the storage drives on my server. If my 1TB dies i lose about 850GB of games. If my 2TB dies i lose about 1.75TB of movies pretty much all bluray. The thing under that i guess would be my SSD dieing. I dont think i could live on a regular drive anymore.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

The problem I hate the most is when a core service fails on one of the servers. If I can't get it repaired by stopping/starting the service or reinstalling the actual files associated with that service it means backing up about 500GB of data wiping the drive and reinstalling. And while all this is happening a massive backlog of jobs which would have been sent to the server is building up.
If I don't get it fixed quick enough, they'll be delayed till the next day. Which means the clients don't have to pay anymore. Which means the company looses thousands. Which means I'm in a LOT of trouble...

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

My fear, is when working on a server for a customer, it literally starts to fail, causing me to have to shut it down and explain to them I have to bring in another drive to back everything up, then fix what ever is broken.... I have had enough customers "loose" data because they refuse to buy a back up hard drive and run daily or weekly backups of there data.

I now personally carry 5 1TB hard drives in enclosures for things like this, I almost got sued because a RAID controller failed and I couldn't locate another controller that was compatible and the customer had refused in the past to purchase a second card or at least a standard external storage solution to back data up to another drive, they saw it as useless, till this happened.



My next fear, ****ing a customer off, to the point where they start spreading rumors that can cost me business. I had an incident where a PSU failed while I was trying to diagnose a piece of hardware, well, that PSU took out EVERYTHING, about $2000 worth of hardware, the most costly being the motherboard and processor. They then had a second "tech" come, which was apparently a 14 year old, being the owners son, that tried to say I shorted the PSU out to the co-processor. I sat there going, wtf??? I ended up having to call around for a few other techies that ended up convincing the owner his child was young and didn't know what he was talking about, but that still cost me a few service calls as rumors had spread around that week that I purposefully destroyed a customers server.


Last fear, when working on hardware, in a non-air conditioned building, and sweating like a pig, that sweat will fall off my forehead onto the motherboard or something rather expensive, or I just happen to sneeze while poking around the computer trying to find out where an abnormal sound is coming from. -.-

 

[Slaymate]

I fear nothing

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

When it comes to servicing a customers rig, I bet you fear a lot. -.-

 

[S0ULphIRE]

^indeed
The extra pressure of working on a $5,000 server with a time limit is just nerve wracking. Luckily, I'm pro and don't mess up

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

But you probably also work in an environment where things are around as needed, or the client understands that he needs a proper backup procedure, half the time it is customers not wanting to have regular preventative maintenance done to help prolong a computer/servers life span.


A computer is like a car, the air is the oil, the dust is the carbon build up, once in awhile, the build up needs to be removed, in the car, you change the oil, in the PC, you clean it out, and perform regular tasks to help keep it performing at its peak.

I actually tried to explain that to a customer once, he got the hint and calls once a year or so for regular maintenance and advice.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I suppose the thing I fear most is a urgent problem on an off site system that doesn't have internet access. Trying to talk users with no technical knowledge through fixes for a system you have never seen isn't fun.

 

[Oreo]

Well i don't really fear much as i only fix and sort out PC problems for family and friends. Friends i do for free, but my grandparents pay me $30 for a job unless it takes longer than an hour then they pay me even more, how sweet is that and the fact that they're elderley means they screw something up atleast once every two weeks. I tell them not to pay me, but they don't listen. So it's a big win for me.

Although i do fear one thing and that is somehow damaging my grandparents HDD, as it's got tens of thousands of photo's on from all the holidays they've been on in the past few years, which they like to look at often - they wouldn't be happy if i ballsed that up for them.