HORROR STORIES: What is the NASTIEST thing you've ever cleaned out of a WORKING computer?

Okay - here it is. Your chance to regale us all with the things you think were the nastiest stuff ever to come out of a computer; don't bore us with stuff like COKE in the CDROM or dust kitties turned dust LIONS you had to tame with a whip & chair; I mean tell us some REALLY nasty SH!7!!!

My only rule is it has to be a computer that was in use until it came to you, dead or otherwise. Just not something dug up out of a dump or curbside after 3 days rain...

For me it was a tossup between one that had been KILLED BY ****ROACHES... LITERALLY... and a Point Of Sale unitized module from a restaurant that had food juices (meat and otherwise) all through it.

The Mata Cucaracha (or is it Cucaracha Del Muerte?) was from this woman in a tiny little apartment on the bad side of town... it was in disrepair, but very tidy. I had no IDEA what i was about to find when I got into it... there were literally dozens of bodies of grown roaches in it, and it was crawling with babies (there were egg casings inside the cabinet) and it was plastered with roach feces. My first reaction was to drop it & run; but when I saw how mortified she was when she saw it, I had mercy on her and took it outside and attacked with a garden hose. After that, inspection revealed that a roach had gotten killed by the fan on the power supply and its body jammed up the fan, killing the Power Supply (Cue Joe's Apartment guys squeaking "You kill me? HAH! I Kill YOU TOO!!!") . I blew everything clean & dry with my air tank, then set it to dry for several days in the sunniest window she had while I waited for her new PSU to be delivered. That fixed it, but I put the cover on with a thumbscrew & showed her how to clean it before I left. She was thrilled of course; but I tried to avoid service calls in that apartment complex from then on...

OKAY! YOUR TURN!!!

mnem
RAID... WD-40... RAID...WD-40... AHHH! WD-40 and a LIGHTER... THAT'S THE TICKET!

 

This was a super old (1980's) TV I had in the living room. One day I decided to open it up to clean it, and living inside it were white mice...

 

It's been a tossup. I've had live roaches in one unit, dead roaches in another, tons of toenail clippings in one. A huge colony of live ants in one. I frequently see ones from a cattle company with cow blood/urine in and on the unit. One I saw was a 28 that had been in a fire and was half melted with the plastic trash bag it was sent in partly melted to it. The entire thing was melty, reeked, and was physically difficult to do anything with. The worst one by far was one that had still liquid cat urine in it. Not once from this customer but twice.

 

the baby powder that my kids dumped into my pcs just don't compare to what you all have had to clean out. But it is how i decided to get my first toughbooks, for them first and then for me. So it turned out ok to have had that problem.

 

I used to be a third party Apple tech, so my old job was to work on Apple's all day long.

I've seen spiderwebs and all that, but I think the nastiest thing was this old woman that smoked, and years of buildup layered the inside of her computer with a tar and dust combo. It was at least a quarter inch thick of this yellow thick sludgy dust (Even worse by the fans).

It was very rare for me to have to go outside and clean a computer out, but three cans of canned air later and me wishing I didn't do it, there was a massive pile of this yellow-ish dust next to the dumpster.

Kept "crashing for some reason". I wonder if that stuff was a good heat insulation

 

In my line of work repairing ATM's and other banking equipment I've seen just about every animal nesting in every nook and cranny.

The worst by far was a mouse whom made his home in an ATM money dispenser, who found out the hard way that belts and gears are a poor place to rest.

I had to clean out mouse bits for hours to make the thing work properly.. and just to make it clear, the brains of an ATM is just a PC so this story counts.

 

Worst I've seen, tho doesn't compare to some-

When I worked in a microbiology laboratory, one PC was located in the room where agar was weighed and poured. Imagine fine grained dry jello poured over the electronics. This powder had been sucked in by the power supply fan and settled over the boards over a year or so. The powder was very hygroscopic, so it would absorb the moisture from the air and gradually bake onto the surfaces. This left a thick, brownish, gummy residue over everything.

 

I should say, that the ATM was working fine, just handing out red-smeared money....

 

Mine isnt nearly as good as some of these but I found live silverfish inside a laptop...Along with what looked to be a hairball though it looked like human hair...Seemed to have been collecting hair inside the case...Not as crazy as red-smeared money but for some reason, wads or human hair that arent mine gross me out...

 

Mmmmhmmm... that one with cow blood/pee reminds me again of the POS unit from that restaurant I spoke of earlier. It was located on the counter right by the pass-through to the kitchen, the waitstaff actually used it WHILE assembling the customer's meals to itemize the bill. Not only did it have the usual several years' worth of grease film aspirated from the deep fryers; it also had everything you can imagine spilled in it; including I'm sure milk and blood from meat products handled nearby.
The end result was a pool of green/brown scum in the bottom of the case; the stench when I opened the cover was similar to rotting meat and had a puddle by one of the air vents with live/dead wrigglies in it. I don't get queasy over much; I grew up on a farm and I've helped slaughter the animals we put on our dinner table. This unit had my stomach doing flipflops until I was able to get it disassembled enough to attack with a garden hose. This was a more involved fix; the sludged had eaten/electrolyzed away traces on the MB and memory sockets; but that just gave more shipping time to dry it out after gettin' medieval on its arse with alcohol/scrubbrush/garden hose. Amazing enough the power supply was in good shape even though it was right next to the wrigglies; I guess the rest of the unit sucked up all the scudge before it got to it.

mnem
Marcus, don't feed the computer milk & cookies...

 

That one beats me Mnementh! I crown you winner of the thread.

I call foulplay though being you started the thread.

 

LOL:laugh:

I can't believe there isn't anyone here with a story at least as nasty as this one... and actually, the one with the roaches bothered me worse and longer.
I kept feeling things crawling up my legs & arms all the while I was there & I was so afraid I'd infest my own home I dumped my toolbag out twice before I dared bring it inside.
I stripped out of my clothes in the laundry room straight into the washer before I actually came "in the house" straight to the shower.
Worse yet, I kept looking around the cab of my Dakota for days afterwards; I was always seeing little crawlies just out the corner of my eye...

mnem
Ooooogledy boooogledy woooogeldy boooogeldy!:confused2:

 

:laugh: Visions of big bronze dragon climbing up flagppole to escape hordes of roaches


<can never find a good vein of firestone when you need it>

 

Heh... you should see mnem do a poledance in IRC chat... that's how we met my wife... it is... spectacular.

mnem
*Shake yo' groove thing, shake yo' groove thing... UH HUH!!!*

 

I imagine that anyone that could survive that experience with their sanity intact would be a keeper. :twitcy:

 

and to think I complained to the guy that brought me a computer last week full of mouse feces and trash. The trash was situated in such a way to suggest that the mice did it I've never seen a PC so rusty that was still working, either. Must have been sitting outside for a LONG time! I should have taken pictures. And to think that I had to convince the guy to give me a cleaner case to put all the parts in!

 

Ummm... the rust was prolly caused by the rodent feces/pee...

mnem
Ewwwwww! Yucky-putz!

 

Indeed.

mnem<~~~ Luckiest little Dwagon-Geek on the planet*

 

one time during a re-install the user was reporting glitchy behavior out of the computer.

Before re-installing, I decided to give a good ol' canned air treatment of the machine. It was motherboard to side filled with dust. as in, multiple fistfuls.

Also, I have to clean out a server with some caked on brownish goo stuck to the insides.

I guess it doesn't beat the mouse.

winner hands down, by far