blair_davis50•9d agoProlific Poster

The old IT guy told me to check the cables first, still kicking myself

Started a new contract gig at a law firm downtown, 14 workstations down, and the senior tech there, Dave, kept saying 'cables before components, kid.' I figured he was just old school, so I ignored him and swapped two power supplies and a motherboard over three visits. Turns out the whole issue was a bad patch panel in the server closet, one loose RJ45 on port 7 was killing the network for half the floor. Dave came in on his day off, reseated it in 5 minutes, and everything lit up. I spent about 6 hours and 120 bucks on parts that were fine. Has anyone else had a veteran tech give advice that sounded too simple, and it bit you when you skipped it? Or is my experience just a one off?

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skyler_craig6d ago

Did Dave ever tell you WHY he was so sure it was the patch panel, or did he just keep repeating the same line? I'm curious if he had a specific tell he was looking for, like error logs or a pattern in which stations were dropping. Because there's a big difference between a guy who's just stubborn and one who's already seen this exact meltdown at three other places. I've been burned by skipping the boring checks too, but usually the old timer at least gives me a hint so I feel stupid twice.