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Good morning everyone, are you sitting comfortably? Allow me tell you a little story.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away (well, Bristol UK), there was a user with a HP 5330m who was complaining to the noble IT support person that it wouldn’t boot.

Interesting, thought the IT person.

He was expecting the HDD to have failed as most of his evil users walked around with their laptops on, usually holding them by their screens and swinging them around like a janitor shakes his keys, causing the IT person to breathe fire and brimstone upon the evil users.

Alas no, the HDD worked just fine but simply wasn’t connected! The 5330m seems to have a little trough on the side of the HDD to allow it space to slide in and as it isn’t screwed in (there is no cage for it like on other models) it simply worked its way loose as you can see:

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So, our intrepid IT hero needed something to plug the gap to stop it happening again. He was gnawing at his pen when the idea hit him:

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So I ask you creative and interesting IT folk of the world, what bizarre fixes have you applied?

Happy Friday btw!

92 Spice ups
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Nice quickfix!

My only consern is heat in your case…

8 Spice ups
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Using duct tape to keep a SATA cable on a hard drive with a broken connector.

Using a needle to keep a hard drive into his slot.

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22 Spice ups
4

I’m pretty sure there should be a cage with two grub screws in that particular model. Are you sure nobody else has visited said problem before you oh mighty IT person? Somebody who’s not so mighty and would consider throwing a cage for a quick fix?

7 Spice ups
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Haha, yeah the laptop has been around for a couple of years before I started so someone else may have just been a little lazy.

I thought about the pen melting but then most of the case is plastic and the CPU is at the opposite side of the board so I figured its worth a risk :slight_smile:

Duct tape is a genius idea, why didn’t i think of that?!?! I bow to your innovation.

7 Spice ups
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My most unusual fix was this

http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/post/2363781

( Taken from Fun / Interesting fixes that you have done over the years )

Also from that thread, someone solved a similar problem to the OP by cutting a bit of an eraser to fill the gap… :smiley:

3 Spice ups
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Being short of SATA power inside a PC so improvising by making a USB to Sata power cable using some scissors, twiddly fingers and duct tape

9 Spice ups
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Some nice fixes here, I think Huw3481 might be winning.

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What a great story! Yeah I agree Huw3481 has a very unusual approach.

1 Spice up
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Not an IT fix, but I have managed to bodge a door key for my friends car. Friday night picking up another friend from the train station. The battery went and we couldn’t get back into the car. The only shop nearby only sold CR2015 and we needed a CR2032. Had to use 2 * 10p pieces to get the battery to the right height and it somehow managed to work. Drove to our office and gave him one of 2032’s I’d bought the day before!

7 Spice ups
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a software fix here With the Education MIS system SIMS (the bane of every tech support in education i’m sure)

it complained it wouldn’t install because the time date format was wrong (it wasn’t) I set it to a random country applied the changes then changed it back to UK and applied the changes and the install worked. This seems to happen on all new installs of SIMS.

6 Spice ups
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This is not an extreme problem, and not very expensive: it required a good deal of unconsciousness, but it turned out to be very convenient in the long run.

In the company we have dozens of computers in the workshop, with users often use gloves stained and dusty environments.

I had finished the new keyboards, and another problem of the purchasing department, which employs nearly a month to get anything.

I spotted some in the pile of dirty keyboards in good condition.

With a brush, a good degreaser for household and so much water I solved the problem.

http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/2665-how-to-wash-and-disinfect-a-standard-keyboard

To date I have restored at least a hundred keyboards that way, both at work and in volunteer work, without ever coming to terms with the budget to the bone.

Try it to believe it, but first disconnect the keyboard from the computer!

3 Spice ups
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I’ll take that as a compliment… I think :smiley:

2 Spice ups
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This is my best:

http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/359528-fun-interesting-fixes-that-you-have-done-over-the-years?page=1#entry-2365462

1 Spice up
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Best I have done was to apply some sticky tape over a Bios battery where the clips had failed. :frowning:

You guys are awesome… :smiley:

2 Spice ups
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Were upgrading Exchange that required 64 bit… so had to totally reinstall our Server OS… Our SAN Qlogic drivers for our IBM SAN were just not working… nothing we did could get this thing going…

Being a bit green at the job, but realizing the same thing over nad over wasnt working, I decided to try the DeLL drviers on an IBM Server/SAN… and boom… up it all came…

My boss had some very stern words to our IBM rep after that… and some props for me

2 Spice ups
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Sounds good to me, a fix is a fix! :slight_smile:

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Looks like it still has its cage to me (one of the type that’s more like a bent piece of aluminium foil), as I recall there should have been some plastic vanes on the inside of the cover to keep it tight in the socket but these are easily damaged.

I’ve used high temperature silicon tape to fix a similar breakage in the past but I think the OP’s way is probably better!

1 Spice up
19

Just standing around the users is my special and unusual fix.

10 Spice ups
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Using a paperclip to trip a PSU to keep some fans running without an on/off button.

2 Spice ups