Screwed!

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

It's very good advice to those who don't already know that doing tech support for your family is a bad idea(tm). I do it anyway because we have a luser in our family that 1) doesn't know what he's doing, 2) yells at everyone for doing it wrong anyway, and 3) will jump at the opportunity to try to fix computer problems if given half a chance. The personal suffering I take is moderate in comparison to how he can screw things up that I'll just have to fix anyway.

Rewind to last week. MIL calls me cause she's got a registry file failure. Simple enough, I walk her through the Recovery Console, warning her this is going to take a while. Admin password lockout. Shit, was installed as SP1. Need to crack it, so take a trip out this last weekend to do the job.

Crack works successfully, but it fails a chkdsk after getting in. Advise new hard drive (and some memory while we're at it). Being she has faith in me, she obliges, as well as the external hard drive for backups she needs to keep (said other party has screamed at her to do this and has these elaborately convoluted schemes for doing them - literally, there are thousands of floppy disks strewn across his house as well as the last 20 years of several computer magazines, and yet he STILL sucks). It's late, so we decide we'll continue the next day.

Ok. Start disassembling the laptop for parts install. Get the drive caddy out, and realize that Dell fuckin' TORQUED the screws in! Somebody has to have an eyeglass screwdriver on a DeWalt or something to get them in that tight. Got three of them out with a pair of vise grips and said screwdriver. Fourth one... no go. It stripped.

Drive's already toast and the computer's OOW. But I need this damn caddy to mount the new drive. We search the garage for anything that might do the job. This is what we find:

1) A chisel
2) A hammer
3) A C-clamp

For shits and giggles I'm going to see if the drive survived this, but I'm really not betting on it. I did get through the screw and the caddy survived intact. I was able to mount the new drive and get on with life and reinstalling the computer. I was rather scared because the memory door was torqued in just as bad and only supported by plastic, but managed to get in.

Oh, remember said luser who always finds what you did to be wrong? Sure, I was wrong. I didn't send it to Dell for an OOW replacement.

Comments

[jecook]

Yes, actually. The assembly factory has a power screwdriver with that tiny tiny torx bit on it.

I've had to de-torque a few drives myself... pain in the ass to do, but I manage.

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

Back when I was at Sensormatic, I was on a team developing a new product, a storage system in a 1U "pizza box" case. I received one of the alpha production units and needed to take it apart for some reason.

Apparently the production department was using power screwdrivers for everything because of the dozen or so tiny screws holding the cover on, about 3/4 had their threads stripped off!

It's kind of hard to unscrew something when there's no screw left!

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Approach 1: cut a slot with a dremel. Remove screw.
Approach 2: cut head off screw. Drill out rest of screw with undersize bit. Remove remaining screw metal as appropriate (thread tap sets work well for this).

Make sure to use lots of canned air to blow away filings.

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

When it gets to that point, i break out my box of lefthanded drill bits.

[jasoncrowley.livejournal.com]

This is why I own a micro drill out set, a 3/8" Impact Driver, a 5lbs sledge hammer, an assortment of drill bits, a var.speed impact drill, and a large assorted medium-to-high impact driver bits set.

OEMs have been using torx and security bits for eons. Keeps the aftermarket techs on their toes.

You should be able to find a reasonably priced tool bag and assorted tools set at many a vendor if it ever comes up again. From the sounds of it, it is most likely. I grabbed mine at a local harbor freight tool shoppe with everything from T-5 through T-30 Torx bits up to the various security bits used around the globe.

Another trick they like to use is a liquid sealant in the threads. Unfortunate to have to resort to solvents to remove/replace said parts. It can make the most interesting patterns on magnetic platters and assorted chips (usually to their untimely demise.)

[jasoncrowley.livejournal.com]

Oh, and good job thinking on your feet. Chisel H.D.D. from retaining mount, clearly better than removing the drive with a well placed steel-toed boot! ;)

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

You mean better than removing the luser with said boot? ;)