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Posted on 05/09/2025 12:42:05 PM PDT by nickcarraway
PC repair chap turned pet detective to diagnose the defective
On Call The unconditional love of a pet is often a solace, and perhaps never more so than at the end of a busy working week. Which is when The Register competes with the animal kingdom for your affection by delivering a new edition of On Call, our Friday column in which we share your stories of scratching out a living delivering tech support.
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Walt" who fixes computers.
"One day a client came in and complained that her laptop would not turn on."
Walt opened the laptop, examined it for a minute, saw that various blinkenlights were all the right color but the display appeared dead.
"Do you own a cat?" he asked.
"Yes," his astonished customer replied. "How did you know?"
Techie diagnosed hardware fault by checking customer's coffee Need a Linux admin? Ask a hair stylist to introduce you to a worried mother Users hated a new app – maybe so much they filed a fake support call How do you explain what magnetic fields do to monitors to people wearing bowling shoes? At this point, Walt told us he pointed to "a tiny, nearly imperceptible chip in the very corner of the screen," which he identified as a cat bite.
On Call has no idea how he identified that tiny indentation as a cat bite, rather than the imprint of another creature's teeth, or the result of some other pointed object meeting a laptop display.
The Register trusts its readers' diagnoses of all problems and the customer seemed satisfied by the explanation.
Walt was able to show her the PC still worked by plugging it into an external monitor.
"We can fix the screen, but it'll be expensive," he told the customer, without telling us if they purred at that prospect or hissed with anger.
Have you been asked to fix hardware after animal encounters? Be a good reader, such a good reader, and click here to send On Call an email so we can all purr with delight when The Register tells your tail on a future Friday. ®
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Thank you very much and God bless you.
The easiest way is to pour a drink into it. I’ve done that twice.
Cats rule, dogs drool.
The worst thing Daisy does ro my computer is sit on my keyboard while I’m online. She only scratches and bites me. B@tchy kitty.
I had a black kitty that liked to chew on monitors. Wendy managed to break a 22” monitor. Poor kitty got brain cancer and died at 3.
I use a cloth. Like for wiping.
Or I send it to Debbie Blabbermouth Shultz’s IT department.
The thunderstorm fried my answering machine also.
I was rather displeased by it all. This happened over 20 years ago.
I’m still somewhat ticked off about it, however.
My cats like to go behind my computer and pull out the cables. They complain that I’m cuddling with my computer instead of them.
Invest in a surge protector or two if you are in bad weather country.
I have been using surge protectors ever since.
St*pid cat.
I’ve opened many PC’s and found a CPU cooler/fan clogged with animal hair.
I didn’t realize how much dirty power is on my local grid until I got a solar system for the home. It produces an error report when it detects dirty power. Also, my small devices (like phone chargers and other DC power adapters) last longer than they did when I depended entirely on grid power.
I saw a somewhat similar video once where a cat is watching a TV showing an automobile race. As cars would go off the left edge of the screen, the cat would look on that side of the TV—must have thought that the cars were mice and wanted to catch them.
I had a cat that liked to lay on my 27 in CRT monitor because it was warm.
One day she decided to throw up and was to lazy to jump down. Went right in the vent holes and destroyed the monitor.
The wife barely was able to stop me from making the cat an outside kitty.
Male cats marking their territory can kill LCD/LED monitors.
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