Hello,

I need some help. I work for a company that repairs computers for large manufactures. We get a cross section of failures that we get a lot re-repairs from "no boot", "no video", to "freezes". Here is the problem - we fix the problem, but yet the customer complains that we did not repair the unit - same failure mode. Sometimes we get the unit back and there is an underlying problem that we "can now find", or the unit is okay once we get it back.

How is it that we can repair a computer - works, and we do run the piss out it before sending it back - and it still fails? What are some ways to catch these failures before they come back.

Also, if you know the answer you might not want to tell me, because everyone in the industry would pay big money for this knowledge.

Thanks for any and all suggestions, experiences.

In my company, we always made of point of cleaning machines with compressed air and then checking all connections before sending them back out - either by disconnecting and reconnecting or in more complex cases, simply applying pressure and or rocking to ensure a good conenction. We did this to all cables, connectors, boards and memory chips.

This had the affect of reducing resubmit for service requests.

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- It's not rocket science...unless of course you are working on rockets, then it is. -

Thanks for the excellent suggestion - we have seen hard drives that appear that they cannot communicate but after reseating the cables - all is good. I have wondered about humidity - as well as shock and vibration.

Another idea is putting desicant in with the unit when we ship back. Though, I have heard the short duration of time between shipped and received - there is not much build up of condensation.