I once had a co-worker ask me to look at her PC because it was overheating, shutting off and she could smell something burning. I should have had a clue. She was the stereotypical lonely cat-hoarding lady. I’m not talking about someone who just has a lot of cats, I’m talking about someone who has dozens of cats, all feral, few of which she can even touch…
She spent the majority of her 30 year 401K getting veterinary work for tens of thousands of dollar in surgeries for said cats, even though they were unhandleable and elderly. Her house has liens from the city on it because of all the zoning violations and roaming cats. That sort of cat lady.
It was about a two year or three year old Dell. Every single fan was packed completely full of cat hair and cat dander and frozen. The IC’s on the motherboard were completely hidden. The motherboard looked like a fuzzy tan frosted cake. The aluminum CPU heatsink was solidly filled with cruft, as was the power supply, which was starting to get hot and smolder. To make things worse, The drive cages and frame were rusty and smelled of ammonia and the machine was full of fleas.
It turns out her favorite cat, a 20 something unaltered male with bladder issues, liked to sleep on the computer because it was warm, and she didn’t stop him because it would “upset him”.
I took the machine home, in the bed of my truck, blew it out, hosed down the case with simple green, and put it back together. It powered up and ran just fine. I was impressed.
