Today we received a PC in for investigation from a new customer, who we shall call ‘Tom’….

When dropping the machine off we were given the following information:

• The fan goes round and round but the PC doesn’t run
• It’s quite old and might not have many bytes
• Sometimes the mouse makes a strange squeaking noise

When we took the lid off it was quickly apparent what was wrong….

• The fan was being used as a fun wheel for its resident, who we’ve named ‘Jerry’
• It had quite a few ‘bytes’ – unfortunately they were in the IDE cables
• We couldn’t hear the sqeaking noise (as we didnt have the mouse) but we had a good idea what was causing the problem

Conclusion:

A mouse had been getting in through the back and had chewed through some of the cables, it had piddled on the DVD drive and left lots of droppings all over the inside of the case.  Our conclusion was that a dirty mouse was to blame for the broken computer.