Found this nasty computer when looking at this site linked from Facebook. Whoever lived in this apartment had issues. BUT the pictures of the computer reminded me of a client I had to visit back around 2001 who was an employee at the same job I had and she heard that I was good with computers and she asked if I could check her computer out because its broken.

I knew that she smoked, but I didnt expect the house to reek like an ash tray with walls that use to be white that were yellowed and when I was walked over to the computer desk, it was covered in ash and used up cigarette butts were everywhere on the desk top, overflowing out of the ash trays in which they ( husband and her ) had 3 ash trays one on top of the computer, one on top of the CRT monitor, and one just off to the right hand side in front of the mouse pad. And they had marks on the desktop case where they used the metal surface to tap the butts to put them out vs the ash tray.

I turned the computer on and it started to boot and then it WOULD shut down after about 20 seconds or so. So  pulled out my combination screwdriver that has the different bits for torx, flat head, or philips, and removed the cover to the desktop. The inside of the computer was just as bad as the outside although it was just a blanket of cigarette ash in there no butts like on the outside.

I then said... do you have a vacuum we can use to suck up all the ash and butts and she was then embarrassed to that statement and started going into a cleaning mode of the overfilled ash trays, and i said that the reason why its shutting down is because the ash inside has clogged up and locked up the CPU Fan.

So she got a trash bag and cleaned up the mess and took the vacuum to the keyboard, monitor, inside of the computer carefully not to suck jumpers off the board, and the desktop. The fan to the CPU was fouled up still and not spinning very freely. I had another Pentium 3 computer in the trunk of my car that was given to me dead that had a socket 370 fan that was good and thermal paste in my toolbox so i was able to replace that heatsink and then the system ran without shutting down.

In the end the bill for my services was $50 for 2 hours of my time + good used heatsink/fan. I then had to go home and take a shower right away because my clothes and self smelled like an ash tray.

Hopefully no one else who services computers ever has to deal with anything that nasty or worse. This is still nastier than the laptop that was brought to me though back in 2006 that had milk spill into it. The milk was still inside and was rotten, and so almost 2 weeks went by before the laptop was brought to me in which it was starting to fester inside. When that person brought the laptop to me, I wasnt told what happened to it over the phone, but when they brought it to me and took it out of the laptop case, I said wow, what is that smell? ...  and they said oh, yeah it took a spill and a bowl of cereal spilled into it and its been about 10 days any every place we bring the laptop to refuses to service it claiming that its a total loss and you need to buy a new laptop. But I am hoping you can fix it for us since your one of the best in fixing computers. I then said, well... thank you for bringing it to me because I am good with fixing computers, but I have bad news as well. Its going to cost more to fix that laptop than its worth. But in addition to that fact, I also didnt want the smell of rotten milk and cereal in my office as well, so i wanted it to go back where it came from. And they took the laptop back home and likely threw it away. I did offer data recovery service if they wanted the files recovered, but they didn't have any important data on it.

Pictures at this site of this apartment are filthy as sin. Glad I never had to service a computer in an environment this bad!!!

http://www.mandatory.com/2014/02/10/this-is-the-most-disgusting-apartment-ever/

[recovering disk space, attachment deleted by admin]Computers used in a smoking environment are the worst - I've had machines I've had to store in the garage due to the smell!

Issue is that the smoke makes the inside of the PC sticky so dust sticks to it, then this layer of dust also gets sticky, so more sticks to it and so on making it extremely difficult to clean (you practically have to wipe it out, compressed air won't do it).

I have attached a photo of one of the worst PCs I've had - The photo was already after some cleaning.  What it doesn't get across is how HARD it was to actually get the dirt out of the case - It literally needed scraped out with kitchen roll.

[recovering disk space, attachment deleted by admin]Whew, that is one extremely nasty computer, DaveLembke.  I've seen some nasty keyboards, mice, and computers that are quite dirty on the inside, but I've never seen anything as bad as what you found there.  I once had to use a computer that belonged to some folks I was doing some accounting work for and they must have had a habit of eating while using the computer.  The keyboard and mouse were the dirtiest, nastiest ones I've ever encountered.  Their printer was also very dirty.  These people had a recently built home and I believe they must have had their printer sitting around while the house was under construction.  The printer was coated with a very thick layer of dust; it looked like it had been exposed to a construction site where the air would get saturated with dust from construction activity.  Not good for a printer. yeah seen some systems in industrial environments that were dusty as well as damp environments in a large food prep kitchen that is cleaned with a pressure washer that leads to problems.

The industrial environment was with automation and PLC controls etc for Procter & Gamble back when I worked for Allen-Bradley / Rockwell Automation and the systems and controllers would form deposits of diaper dust as we called it, because it was a white powder and smelled like clean diapers and baby powder. The good thing was that with compressed air and careful to avoid blowing jumpers off, with 90psi at the nozzle you could strip the dust away and make it like new.

However at the food store that I use to work at that had computers in large food prep kitchen, the problems were worse. On a daily basis to keep to food safe compliance they had to pressure wash and clean everything with a bleach/water mixture. The computers were not in direct fire of a pressure washer, but the air would smell strong of bleach and was humid at times. They had a higher than normal computer failure rate of a system lasting about 12 to 18 months before it would start to act up or completely die. Before I got hired there they would simply just replace the systems without trying to eliminate the cause. I got hired there and discovered a stack of computers that were dead or had issues. My boss told me that they all failed at this one location and he wasnt sure why. He thought maybe there was dirty power over there and added a UPS, but didnt correct the problem. He asked me to check into it. I started by looking at the prior failed systems and I found surface rust inside the computer case, and component legs to IC's were growing a green and white fuzz ( COPPER and lead oxide crystals ). In addition to this some spider webs inside the computers were not just dry webs, but were a brown oily filmy COATING to them which was either oils in the air that condensed to the webs or possibly bacteria that was living on the spider webs I then told my boss that the problem appears to be caused by too much humidity. He asked how we can fix this since they have to have a computer over there. I ended up TELLING them to build an office with a door that can be shut, and add a dehumidifier into the office and this should fix the problem. Met with the gritting of teeth at the cost of having to do that, I finally got the approval to spend $5000 to make a small office within the building to have some environmental control for the 2  computers. I told him and the accountant of the company that its either spend up to $5000 to fix this problem or spend $600-$1000 a year for a new business class desktop + the IT hours to prep the system for use. They saw it my way and realized that they really needed to cure the problem than throw costly disposable computers at it.

In addition to this the food store also owned a gas station as part of their coopertive food chain and I had to build a cabinet for the computer to be placed in that filtered air and vented out the warm air from the computer inside. With some ply wood, 2x4's, screws, tools, and a air filter used for a small furnace, and some 120VAC muffin fans,  I was able to make a small clean air box for the system to operate in. The problem they had with the system at the garage was the metal dust from grinding, cutting, and hammering on brake drums and rotors etc was getting sucked into the computer and causing a build up of iron dust which was causing the computer to act up with BSOD or as in 1 case blew a PSU when somehow a drill filing fell into the case and landed on the tower that was on its side with the air holes facing up for small bits to fall into from gravity and short the sytem. I also added a new keyboard and optical mouse vs the ball type that was acting up, and bought a keyboard model that had a thin formed to the keyboard model peel and stick vinyl covering that could be placed on top and keep junk out of getting under the keys etc and the mouse now could just be blown out at the optic eye in the bottom vs a ball that collects junk and dust covers encoder wheel eyes etc.

BTW posting this I found out that " kitchen with an s following it " has been added to the *spam* filter, so I had to use kitchen instead.  Just have a peek in the SPAM section...you'll understand right away.... Oh that's really nasty, never seen anything like that. I worked somewhere once where I tipped the keyboard upside down to clean it and a load of crumbs and fingernails fell out, gross. Quote

Just have a peek in the SPAM section...you'll understand right away....