What's the stupidist problem you've fixed for someone?

I had two of these issues pop up lately.. One guy couldn't find the "any key", and the other was responding to a client who said his desktop wouldn't turn on. I went there thinking his power supply crapped out, but it turns out he kept hitting the Dell logo thinking it was the power button. The poor guy was so old and clueless I didn't have it in my heart to charge him anything, even after a 20 minute drive..

 

A tech called me for support once to troubleshoot a printer.

It wasn't plugged in. Note I said tech.

Had a customer call me once with a virus infection. She put her HDD in the freezer to slow down the infection.

 

Lounge??

 

Had a client contact me her Dell would not boot. It would make it about 3/4 of the bar on the BIOS splash screen before locking up.

Went throught the BIOS, twice. Unplugged every bit of hardware including the mouse and keyboard (followed the wires and gently pulled them out), and still had the issue. Annoyed, and not really wanting to crack open the tower, I crammed my head against the wall to look behind the desk, and vaguely saw something white hanging from the back of the PC.

Pulled out the tower, then lo and behold there the trouble was.

Defective USB hub, connected to NOTHING. :mad

It now resides in my "box of shame", and shall stay there until if and when the day comes I recycle the "souvenir collection".

 

Well, I have many, some computer related, some not. A computer related one by a family member: I got a call at 11 pm for a laptop that wouldn't boot, the daughter needed it working to print out a project or something or other. I tried to talk them both through some basic troubleshooting but finally gave up and just drove the 20 minutes out there. So I get there with a USB drive of my normal utilities. When I walk into the den the laptop is setting there beeping and stuck in the bios. Well I now made it clear to them that it won't boot while a key is continually being pressed by some clothes that was piled upon it.

 

My favorite dates back to the mid-1990s when I was a sales manager at an electronics store.

A stupid redneck brought his computer tower in, saying his "cup holder" had broken and demanding a replacement PC. I was scratching my head thinking "WTF?" until he pointed to the broken CD-ROM drive.

When I explained that it was not a "cup holder" and would not be covered under warranty, he started screaming that he was "going to unload a can of whip a**" on me.

The cashier started calling 911 while I informed him that I would gladly take a punch in the nose in exchange for suing him for every last penny he had. He stormed out with his PC before the police showed up and (thankfully) never came back.

(OK...technically I didn't "fix" the problem, but you get the idea. )