Dustiest PC Ever?

[Steve]

[H] reader Jeremy says that his “friend” Phil has recently worked on one of the dustiest PCs in existence. We were a bit skeptical at first, that is until we saw this picture (http://www.hardocp.com/news.html?news=MjMxNTMsLCxobmV3cywsLDE=).

[Steve]

If you have pictures like this, post them..we really want to see them!

[PePsiCoKe]

Wow, and I thought I had seen some dusty PC's...I did however find a dead bird on a beam inside an office building while running some CAT5...

[macksomerville]

Boy when I was in High School I ran the Computer Recycling program... some of the older 486 servers and workstations that were donated by IBM and Intel were crazy... The worst stuff was the bank workstations! OMGz

I saw some stuff that puts that one to shame!

[QuakerOatz]

Thats sick! NO fans LOL

You could peel that layer off and use it as a scarf.

[dekard]

Wow, surprising value in the ram sticking straight up and the cooler on the processor. Surprising those two were still getting some cooling.

[xX326Xx]

Man I wish I had a picture of this one I had to clean out several months back. This brought back memories of it. Just as bad if not worse... Server came from a concrete company and the dust was just everywhere. I had to take it outside and use two cans of air to clean it.

This can be a serious problem overheating and electrical fires can easily occur.

Great pics, thanks for bringing back those memories. Its was a dirty job but was worth talking about for some time.

This is a really good way to show people that having a clean/cool environment is important, the reason people have server rooms.

[moetop]

That's pretty bad, but I have seen one that was worse.

In 1990 I worked for a company (Express Micro Mart) that built PC's and did some consulting. A company interested in buying some upgrades for their current PC called and asked what it would cost. Since they had no idea what type of computer they had, they sent me out to crack the lid and find out what we could do. It was a lawyer’s office, a place you would expect to be clean, and outwardly it looked clean. I was trying to be quiet, because there were about 4 lawyer’s discussing whatever. When I opened the case I could not help but say "wow" out loud. The image is still etched in my mind. It looked like the surface of the moon. It was a solid 1/2 inch of dust across the whole thing. You couldn’t even see the chips on the motherboard. I could barely make out how many ISA slots the thing had. I wish I had a digital camera back then.

[Mohonri]

At first, I thought the two shots on the left were of the bare case with no components. This is worse than any case I've seen--at least all the computer's I've cleaned out had recognizable components before I cleaned them.

A few months back there was a case posted somewhere that was practically filled with (IIRC) cat hair. Ewwww....

[Dataman]

I opened a 286 PC that had been running for 10 years and it had dust inside that filled the case. I threw the thing out (1997). Amazing it still worked just fine (print server on Novell Network).

Floppy only (no HD). No CPU Fan. Network card and video card (green screen).

I imagine it would still be doing it's job except I retired it into the trash

DM

[nodle]

I've seen worse.

[Eulogy]

I've seen much worse. We have quarries that have trucks driving past on dirt paths constantly to scale houses. We've had routers that fans got literally just "stuck in the dust". Even with filters and these "PC bags" we have. You can literally turn them and dump a decent amount out of them.

[TheRapture]

I have a friend I sold a nice little Shuttle 865 based rig, a little over 2 years ago. He has not cleaned it since, and I was over at his house and looked at it, the Radeon 9700Pro fan was stuck solid with hair (he has 2 dogs) and dust buildup! I have seen worse, but he was wondering why he was having video "anomalies" :)

[jmackay]

I've seen a few bad ones while working as a tech. Worst one that I can remember though was when I was doing tech work for the high schools. I opened up their woodshop computer and omg... that thing was caked with dirt/sawdust, I'm surprised the fans in it ran at all.

[jstnomega]

What'd that thing fall off a pick up truck in a sand storm?

[BlueMeanie]

Just like xX326Xx I have also visited a Cement Works and found a PC much worse than the photos. This PC was barely two years old. Case was vertical, not a desktop like the photos above. When I cracked the side off, I found every horizontal surface was covered in a thick layer of cement dust. The dust was about 3/4 inch deep!! Heatsink was thick full of this cement dust.

What worried me the most was the effect this was having on the hard disk.... there must of been some particles that were sneaking in through that breath hole.... :eek:

Second best was a print shop. PC near one of the main printers was full of paper dust and toner.

I often point out to people working in these kinds of offices.... if the PC is this bad, what must their lungs be like? Ouch!!


I am based in Brighton, England. Almost without fail, every PC I open up is full of chalk dust from the chalky local hills..... :cool:

[ark_keeper]

Some from friends at work.
http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/3965/dirtydell4ts0.jpg

http://img458.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image00004ms2.jpg


http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/4532/055lg2.jpg
Actual dirt on the keyboard.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94751417@N00/195322711/

www.rogina.net/DirtyPCft.jpg
www.rogina.net/dirtyPC.jpg

Too large to post...

[hity645]

Ive seen worse too, a wood shop computer that was never off and the only two fans were facing the wrong way so instead of blowing air out, it sucked it in. We took pictures but I don't know where they are. :confused:

[yang88she]

wow, that is disgusting...

reminds me of when I took apart my g/f's computer...it was bad...but not as bad as the OP's picture

[Steve]

My neighbor is always bringing his busted ass computers over asking me to fix them…and they ALWAYS look like this:

http://www.hypothermia.us/dirty_pc.jpg

I got a few more of the various PCs he’s brought me in the last few years. I’ll post them too if I find them.

[Mister Natural]

...and remember folks, if your computer is really dusty like that, just stick your face near the case and blow really hard. :p

[jmackay]

Ive seen worse too, a wood shop computer that was never off and the only two fans were facing the wrong way so instead of blowing air out, it sucked it in. We took pictures but I don't know where they are. :confused:


Lol I think that would beat my woodshop computer story since at least those fans tried to blow out!

[BlueMeanie]

Re: ark_keeper's photo of a Dell. This is the standard condition I find most Dell's in. Great attractor of muck.

Worst houses I visit are Smokers, with a Fluffy Cat/Dog, and a Shiny Wooden Floor (which allows dust to be drawn from furthest distance). I removed a "cat carpet" from the front panel of a Dell once. Was a solid matt of hair, half an inch thick and about 6 inch x 8 inch in size. Big enough to be used as a Doll's Duvet.

[Chas]

Nah. I worked on an old Packard Hell*COUGHCOUGH*Bell for a co-worker once.

This thing had been down in her son's basement bedroom for four or five years at this point. And it's air intakes were right next to the dryer exhaust.

The inside of the case was divided by a daughterboard.

The lower 2/3 of the case were just dusty and nasty. Probably at least as bad as what you see here.

The upper 1/3 was just plain awful. The thing was full, up to the top of the chassis with dust, lint, hair, you name it. We're talking a good 4-6 inches of it at least. The entire PSU was encased in this nasty fluff.

[Rabid Badger]

I worked on a machine for a guy that spent 300 days a year in a trailer going from one drilling rig to another and brought his gaming machine along.

The machine wasn't very old, as this was a year ago and it had a 3700+ and an nVidia 5950 Ultra, but this machine was so coated with greasy dust that we unloaded our 25 gallon air compressor on it and it still wasn't clean. We ended up soaking the components in 95% pure isopropyl alchohol overnight, letting it dry and then blowing it our again.

The PSU was a lost cause.

[jigglesone]

Ahhh..thats where dust bunnies come from?

[FinalStar]

You know what machines are really dirty.

Target Register Machines. I worked for the company that replaced the Mobos out of them. And OMG! it was like the machine from the original post, but the dust was even thicker. When i took a screw driver to take the screws out, it would start to wrap itself around the screw driver as i turned it....it was terrible.

[thesilentuno]

I should of taken pictures, i was working at a small repair shop and this was a HP computer and the inside was like cover in dust and get of load of this , when i opened it, it was like doom all over again , bunch of cockroaches came out. I was scarred for life. :(

[General Crespin]

To all of you that didn't post pics: PICS OR SHENS

:D :p

[MOC]

I Just Sneezed sooo Hard . thanx great stuff.

[[BRO]Alaskan]

I saw pic of a snake in a powersupply. http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-snake-pc.htm

[LoneWolf]

That's pretty bad, but I have seen worse.

For one woodworking/furniture shop, I had to clear a quarter inch thick layer of sawdust out of a case, and every peripheral inside it.

That wasn't as bad as the legacy machine a small auto-parts manufacturer had though. The machine was connected to a tool that produced prototypes of plastic parts. The tool actually carved the resin plastic into what they needed, and it sprayed shavings all over. When they started having issues with the machine, they called us, and upon disassembling it, I found its boards completely buried in resin dust and shavings. Fortunately (unlike a few machine shops I heard of from fellow techs) in both of these cases, the residue was non-conductive.

[Stoly]

gotta start taking pics

I've opened cases with live bugs, clips, steel rulers, coins, staples, you name it.

[Vapor03]

nasty !!

[SharpieFiend]

I do tech for a few nightclubs. When smoking was allowed, I visited a malfunctoning PC to find it *packed* with black dust - cigarette smoke. The smell almost made be retch, but after cleaning it all out the PC worked perfectly again.

[w1retap]

meh, at work, I had a worse one. It was a DVE in our TV studio from the 80's that had never been opened. I opened it up one day, and there was literally 3 inches of dust in it. I just about filled up our shop vac with dust. :p Before I cleaned it, you could see no components whatsoever. It was like the Sahara desert of dust.

[LoneWolf]

I do tech for a few nightclubs. When smoking was allowed, I visited a malfunctoning PC to find it *packed* with black dust - cigarette smoke. The smell almost made be retch, but after cleaning it all out the PC worked perfectly again.You reminded me one I had all but forgotten. Some guy brought in a Compaq tower for his grandson at another place I worked. I've always hated machines from chain-smokers, they're the worst to clean, and this one looked bad even on the outisde.

When I opened it up, we found out (the smell was obvious) that it wasn't regular cigarettes that the grandson liked to chain-smoke. I've never gotten a worse headache from cleaning a machine in my life, nor have I seen a nastier, sticker, more foul-smelling mess inside a computer. I think if I'd put all of the piles of sticky, clumped dust from that machine on my work table and lit it on fire, I could have gotten the entire office high.

[w1retap]

^-- just imagine their lungs. :D

[n1ce_hat]

I Just Sneezed sooo Hard . thanx great stuff.
You know what, I just went on a sneezing rampage a minute or two ago.. You know those seemingly never-ending sneeze-a-thons.. Honestly, I like sneezing, I wish I could do it on command.

[n1ce_hat]

Oh has anyone had a RUSTY computer before? I bought a Pentium II at a garage sale for $5 a few years ago that I was just going to use for the cd-rom drive and junk like that, but when I opened up the case the entire sidepanel had a layer of surface rust. I assume it was kept in a humid area (probably in the basement on the ground or something) but has anyone else had a really rusty computer before? Everything on the computer worked fine, just maybe a little slow :D

[DuoDreamer]

I know all too well about dusty machines. I am the Network/Systems Administrator for an asphalt company in southern california. We have dozens of PC's at our rock-processing facility. The rock crusher control room has it really bad. There is a layer of rock dust on everything, all the time. I recently upgraded a PC out there and when I opened it up, it had an inch-thich layer of rock dust inside of it. The CPU fan was barely moving. I WISH I had taken pictures now :) Maybe I'll just wait a week and go back. ;-)

[jmroberts70]

Some pics from a post I did last year:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=950115

The guy smoked and had a couple of cats. Shortly after I posted these pics, he quit. The tar from the smokes managed to hold all that cat hair together quite well!

http://www.unofficial3d.com/files/cathairpc01.jpg

http://www.unofficial3d.com/files/cathairpc05.jpg

[dotHectate]

I think I'm going to retch...

[Devnull]

Is that disgusting blob actually touching your skin in that pic? Did your arm fall off? If I came across that shit I would have given the comp a viking funeral for the guy and called it even.

[[BRO]Alaskan]

If I were the Systems Admin for some place that was dirty (like a rock crusher plant or any place that produces lots of floating dirt/dust/debris) I would make sure every PC had positive ventilation (more air being blown in than sucked out) with easy to clean/ acess filters to keep the shit out of the computers. I do this on every dirty enviroment computer I build. I cut a 120mm hole in the side panel and mount a fan blowing in with a filter on it.

[Lazybones]

Yep, smokers PCs are the worst.. The film that gets behind will hold dust and hair. Not to mention some of the chemicals start to eat away at components.

Another bad one is auto body shops, a friend was telling me that the front desk PCs at one shop where always going dead after a few months of use.. Turns out the fine paint dust was conductive and was getting into the office from the paint bay.

Makes you think hard about what you are breathing in.

[n1ce_hat]

I know all too well about dusty machines. I am the Network/Systems Administrator for an asphalt company in southern california. We have dozens of PC's at our rock-processing facility. The rock crusher control room has it really bad. There is a layer of rock dust on everything, all the time. I recently upgraded a PC out there and when I opened it up, it had an inch-thich layer of rock dust inside of it. The CPU fan was barely moving. I WISH I had taken pictures now :) Maybe I'll just wait a week and go back. ;-)
and if that turned to concrete somehow, that would be awesome.

[BuBBa]

....has anyone had a RUSTY computer before? ....

oh yes... there was much rust...

My boss had just moved back to Canada from Brazil around 3 months before I started working for him... anyways, the Mac IT drone in our office asked me to go take a look at their home computer because he was (and is) terrible with PC's... So I go on over and fire up the system, and notice quite a bit of fan noise, so I popped the side panel, and EVERY inch of metal was covered in rust...

Apparently, they lived right beside the ocean in Rio, so the air was a little moist and salty...

I'll see we kept onto the box after the new year and get some pics of it, because it's freeking priceless.... I mean, I kept picturing it as what you'd find out on the front lawn of a red neck computer geek...

[whrswoldo]

oh yes... there was much rust...

My boss had just moved back to Canada from Brazil around 3 months before I started working for him... anyways, the Mac IT drone in our office asked me to go take a look at their home computer because he was (and is) terrible with PC's... So I go on over and fire up the system, and notice quite a bit of fan noise, so I popped the side panel, and EVERY inch of metal was covered in rust...

Apparently, they lived right beside the ocean in Rio, so the air was a little moist and salty...

I'll see we kept onto the box after the new year and get some pics of it, because it's freeking priceless.... I mean, I kept picturing it as what you'd find out on the front lawn of a red neck computer geek...

Haha nice. I have a friend from Galveston (beach town) whose computer had some rust, but not quite to that extent. ;)

[salvationpcs]

Not to long ago a person i work with her computer just up and stopped running. It was the power supply and at the time i said i would look at it, it was a old gateway. I opened it up the dust on the inside was bad but it wasn't to horrid for being a windows 98 computer and never been cleaned before. Then after a little bit i started to smell something funky. It just wouldn't go away so after searching my room to find what was making the awful smell i decided to open the psu. The psu was completely packed with mold. I mean u couldn't see anything but mold it was so sick and it smelled so badly.

[djBon2112]

Where was that thing, a dust factory!? :p

[Chevelle]

Thats nothing compared to this PC.

Dirty PC !! (http://webpages.charter.net/dbz/pc.jpg)

There must have been at least an inch of dust in it.

[Lazarey]

Not to long ago a person i work with her computer just up and stopped running. It was the power supply and at the time i said i would look at it, it was a old gateway. I opened it up the dust on the inside was bad but it wasn't to horrid for being a windows 98 computer and never been cleaned before. Then after a little bit i started to smell something funky. It just wouldn't go away so after searching my room to find what was making the awful smell i decided to open the psu. The psu was completely packed with mold. I mean u couldn't see anything but mold it was so sick and it smelled so badly.

How on earth does a PSU get MOLD growing in it?!?!

[n1ce_hat]

oh yes... there was much rust...

My boss had just moved back to Canada from Brazil around 3 months before I started working for him... anyways, the Mac IT drone in our office asked me to go take a look at their home computer because he was (and is) terrible with PC's... So I go on over and fire up the system, and notice quite a bit of fan noise, so I popped the side panel, and EVERY inch of metal was covered in rust...

Apparently, they lived right beside the ocean in Rio, so the air was a little moist and salty...

I'll see we kept onto the box after the new year and get some pics of it, because it's freeking priceless.... I mean, I kept picturing it as what you'd find out on the front lawn of a red neck computer geek...
that is awesome. you should get those pics up:)

[BlueMeanie]

Thats nothing compared to this PC.

Dirty PC !! (http://webpages.charter.net/dbz/pc.jpg)

There must have been at least an inch of dust in it.
That looks just like the PC I fixed at a children's nursery just before Xmas. Though the dust was a little thicker.

In this PC I found that the dust was purple (?!?) even though there was no carpet of that colour near by. And the funniest part is that the dust lifted out as one sheet. :D

The "internal blanket" was causing the CPU Temps to rocket up to 75 plus degrees. That is Celcius BTW.....

[Falls Included]

omg, i've worked on that exact model computer... :rolleyes:

[tisb0b]

I found a dead lizard sticking out the back of my power supply once since I was wondering why the computer wouldn't boot up, took the lizard out and it booted up fine :)

[SNIP3R]

Such a good thread, it made me gag.

It definitely makes me re-think those x mas gifts I gave this year.
Next year..... cans of air for everyone. :D

[Damuman]

Lmao wow... now are u sure it was the tar from the smoke holding that hair together? Cause that makes me want to quit too.

[jmroberts70]

Lmao wow... now are u sure it was the tar from the smoke holding that hair together? Cause that makes me want to quit too.

Hell yes it was. Check out the original thread I listed in my post for more nasty pics. I've cleaned out plenty of systems that were running on the ground around cats. There may have been hair inside the box but it would just blow right away with little effort. But THIS box needed my automotive air compressor to get the junk out of the case! And cat hair doesn't just stick together like that "pad" I pulled off of the front of the fan screen!

[Lazy_Moron]

Some pics from a post I did last year:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=950115

The guy smoked and had a couple of cats. Shortly after I posted these pics, he quit. The tar from the smokes managed to hold all that cat hair together quite well!



That is one of the nastiest things I have ever seen. I cringed when I looked at those photos.

[blowjustinup]

I'm a PC tech at Staples. I've seen worse, I promise.

I had to vaccuum the thing out for about an hour and use 2 cans of air on the thing, and it STILL wasn't fully dusted. It was GROSS.