@SwiftOnSecurity you can speed up the process by shorting the disconnected mobo's +5 & +12 lines to gnd at the board's power connector.

@SwiftOnSecurity Static electricity is another weird one, I worked on a solar powered research device years ago that would slowly build up static charge until the whole thing just stopped working. We ended up installing a ground connection that fixed the issue but before that we'd just have to let the thing kind of sit for a while to discharge between tests.

@SwiftOnSecurity Some washing machines have issues with flux residue on some solder pads. If you see obvious residue, clean it :)

@SwiftOnSecurity This worked on a broken AM/FM/CD player combo.. at least for a few months.

Ultimately, after looking online, others reported it being a common flaw with a power supply capacitor, and at $1 a pop (for the ultra-premium version), swapping that part out made it work just fine.

If powering something off doesn't work, it's worth looking online in case it's easier (relative) to do.

@SwiftOnSecurity over the years I've "fixed" a small but quite significant number of computers & computer parts by leaving them unpowered for days/weeks, it definitely happens

@SwiftOnSecurity And if the falls, give the caps the what for by shorting a screwdriver across a few of them.

@SwiftOnSecurity Once fixed bizarre Wii problems by leaving it fully unplugged for 5 DAYS. Nothing else did the trick.

Kids were happy, and I didn't have to buy a replacement…

@SwiftOnSecurity Tantalum, #AmIRight ?

Best known for intermittent shorts when used as power supply bypass.

@SwiftOnSecurity 100% agree this works for electronic devices. Having no luck using this approach with English Bulldogs however:

@SwiftOnSecurity There's this story about a Thinkpad support hotline procedure that's introduced as "You might think I'm crazy, but please bear with me" and then proceeds to instruct to first remove battery and power source and then to press the "on" button repeatedly, long and short presses.

Apparently it's the fast way to make sure that the Embedded Controller really *really* runs out of power and goes into reset, fixing a surprising number of sporadic issues.

@SwiftOnSecurity or what I call, teaching it who's the boss

@SwiftOnSecurity

For most consumer electronics, after unplugging, I hold the power switch down for 10-30 seconds. That frequently drains pesky problem-causing capacitors

@SwiftOnSecurity
I prefer the "spicy" of discharging capacitors: put your fingers on top of them

@SwiftOnSecurity The first time I tried to install Linux I messed it up very badly. To the point where the PC wouldn't post.

2 months later it booted straight back into DOS like nothing had ever happened.

@SwiftOnSecurity some months ago, just after we had moved into our house, the dishwasher wouldn't start. Every other button worked but the start button. After trying everything else, I switched off the breaker, waited a minute, and turned it back on and it worked.

It has capacitive touch buttons, so I guess that's why.

@SwiftOnSecurity my work laptop is fine except for the thing where it will randomly BSOD and once that happens, the bios cannot even find the hard drive to boot from until I leave the device cold for a while. yeah, must be a cursed capacitor…

@SwiftOnSecurity Place the broken items on the "Healing Bench" :https://avedictionary.com/healing-bench/

@SwiftOnSecurity I had a tv that kept failing to power on successfully. Unplugged it for a month and it’s been working fine since.

@SwiftOnSecurity oh, i thought that was common knowledge: unplug, press and hold the power button for ~30s to unload the capacitors

@SwiftOnSecurity

I work with servers that slot into massive 12V busbars (thousands of amps). These servers have massive capacitors on their power distribution boards, and I can't even tell you the number of times I've had to tell folks on the factory floor "No, I need you to /actually/ power cycle it. How long did you wait?" Usually the answer is "I pulled it out and immediately reseated it." That... doesn't work.

@SwiftOnSecurity Capacitors ... remind me again what DRAM is made of?

I've lost count of the number of times people have tried to assure me that "a power cycle will reset the DRAM"...

@SwiftOnSecurity I left a crashing Apple Watch on the charger for two weeks after Apple couldn’t isolate the issue. It healed itself and has been error free for a year.

@SwiftOnSecurity I fixed our washing machine like this earlier this year. When it started misbehaving again (months later) I had a support tech come over and fix it properly. He replaced a heating element that was so dusty it had started to short-circuit (and consequently take sustained heat damage) which sent weird electrical signals through the circuits and confused the machine... 😅😳

@SwiftOnSecurity sometimes electronic equipment just wants a proper rest! :D

@SwiftOnSecurity My TV likes to occasionally not display any image for about 30 mins when waking up from standby. Now I turn it, it's sound bar, and Xbox off via a smart plug.

Oddly enough the TV works perfectly every time now. This is after me replacing its main board THREE TIMES that "fixed" the issue for a few months at most.

@SwiftOnSecurity "ChatGPT, draw me Taylor Swift defeating a capacitor in armed combat "

@SwiftOnSecurity Ah, yes. The power supply for my home made amplifier (which didn't survive a lightning strike on the fishpond a number of years ago) was very crude and basically relied on a pair of 20,000uF capacitors (which was big in those days).

Yes I put some bleed resistors across them (yes with a high power rating) but it was still a good idea to leave that power supply switched off for an hour or so before doing anything to its insides.

@SwiftOnSecurity When I was a technician at a TV station, I was told by engineers that 80% of the problems were solved by recycling power (unplugging/plugging back in). Works like a charm.

@SwiftOnSecurity My basement has fixed a TV and a battery operated vaccum cleaner. Both refused to turn on at all till I left them in the basement for over a year. Voilà! Both have worked for year since the magic of my basement fixed them.

@SwiftOnSecurity It's one of the measures I used to defeat a virus in the 1990s.

@SwiftOnSecurity I had this on a ThinkPad X31 many many moons ago.. It stopped booting right and then I tried to fix it, opened it, and to do so I had to remove the battery. Fast forward a few weeks of not having time, and I figured that whatever supercaps were in there must be emptied by now so why not just try..

Booted right up.

When friends and family have weird issues, I default to removing power cables and batteries for at least 20 minutes, over night if they have the time. It works.

@SwiftOnSecurity Also, for some reason slapping things works really well most of the time :blobcatthink:.

@SwiftOnSecurity hardware side has been moved so low that top posts are now about "discharge capacitors" cut that'll fix it. I grew up with "discharge capacitors" cut they'll literally kill you. Got a box of soup for my family sized capacitors.

@SwiftOnSecurity People too

@SwiftOnSecurity This also work on yourself...

You can't fix shit tired, go sleep!

@SwiftOnSecurity My iphone sorta did something similar, but i think it was a watchdog timer that finally woke it up. It acted bricked when i woke up in the morning and went into the apple store that afternoon and while i was sitting there waiting for the guy it spontaneously booted itself up. He said it was a known issue with the new (at the time) model and there would be an update in a day or two to permanently fix it.

@SwiftOnSecurity I can only use my toaster once after plugging in. Waiting on the replacement to arrive but at minimum 15 minutes before second toast is every time.

@SwiftOnSecurity Sure. Sometimes it could reform the electrolyte layer on the caps.

@SwiftOnSecurity Turns out, turning something off and on again really does wonders at times

@SwiftOnSecurity This is true, fixed countless computers, power supplies, etc. this way.

@SwiftOnSecurity works on my water heater. It fails about once every year. Turning it off and on again doesn't work. Only works when I turn it off and leave it off over night. Even 4 hours is not enough. Seems to want 8+ hours.

@SwiftOnSecurity@infosec.exchange

Ah the wonders of DC.

ALL my electronics get unplugged at night; and if i'm up all night get at least one 2ish hour Time Out via Shutdown not restart.

@SwiftOnSecurity Works with my clothes dryer

@SwiftOnSecurity my experience is that this tactic also works for humans

@SwiftOnSecurity removing the battery of a remote control not working well, pushing buttons to empty residual energy and putting back the battery works more often that one would think !

@SwiftOnSecurity You know what? I needed this reminder. Thank you.

@SwiftOnSecurity
Works on my Smart car, too.

ps: Now it makes sense why Mercedes Benz workshop manuals say disconnect the battery and wait 5-10 minutes before unplugging an air bag.

@SwiftOnSecurity sending it to bed without dinner also seems to help sometimes.

@SwiftOnSecurity another thing that takes more than a second to settle after unplugging is a PTC resettable fuse -- basically a resistor that is low resistance, until it overheats and "blows," but letting it cool down will reset it.

@SwiftOnSecurity "turn off the breaker and leave it off for 20 minutes" is the official, documented reset procedure for my dishwasher.

@SwiftOnSecurity true, true...

@SwiftOnSecurity I'll try this tomorrow. If this finally fixes my weird motherboard behavior I owe you.

@SwiftOnSecurity

and never pop out a CR-2032 battery without having the device unplugged for a *while* unless you wanna see a super-slow motion metal tiddly wink land in A-Very-Bad-Place(tm) as you watch in horror. #PuffOfSmoke

@SwiftOnSecurity Hidden state is the root of most bugs, and state is encoded as stored charge and hides in capacitors

(Also computers have a LOT of capacitors. Every little MOSFET!)

@SwiftOnSecurity - A machine has a soul. And souls need rest. Just let the machine rest.

@SwiftOnSecurity On occasion I have to do that with my car since the silly souls at Nissan decided to computerise the engine.

@SwiftOnSecurity This needs to work for people, too.

@SwiftOnSecurity everyone and everything needs down time, literally.

@SwiftOnSecurity don’t talk about me like that it’s rude *plugs herself back in*

@SwiftOnSecurity The discrete component capacitors that you can see, the capacitors that exist due to the design of the circuit itself, the "surprise!" capacitors like mosfets and such that you often don't have to think about, the *mystery* capacitors created by conditions between transistors on a chip's die substrate and layers that *shouldn't* exist but sometimes when a strange current meets another strange current ...

@SwiftOnSecurity FACTS

@SwiftOnSecurity Had this happen with a washing machine. Nothing could make it work again. Bought a new one. After the new arrived a few days later, gave the old one a final attempt before unplugging for the last time, and hey presto, all good! Was a bit annoyed, but it was quite old and my sister was in need of one so cut my loses and passed it along. She’s still using it! 🤣

@SwiftOnSecurity I have first-hand experience here... Thanks to a bluetooth speaker...

@SwiftOnSecurity Works for people too sometimes!

@SwiftOnSecurity A stratospheric nuclear explosion can have a similar effect.

@SwiftOnSecurity I nearly got killed repairing a solenoid on an ancient 1950s washing machine, back in the 90s. I had crawled inside it and was soldering and my fiance, bless her cotton socks decided to plug it in and see if worked yet. I got very very zapped and ended up waking up from being knocked clean unconscious to my screaming gf freaking out that "OH GOD I KILLED MY BOYFRIEND". It was hard to be angry at her, she meant well, but I probably needed to have a safety talk with her.

@SwiftOnSecurity leaving things running can also fix capacitors, just to be fun

@SwiftOnSecurity @lisamelton My Brother laser printer is like that. After turning it off I have to unplug it or it won’t turn back on. Common problem for my model but easy to live with.

@SwiftOnSecurity as a software engineer, I've learned to expect the computer to do whatever I tell it to do and if something isn't working, then it's my fault. So hearing this is shocking because it showed me how out of touch software engineer brain is with the physical world

@SwiftOnSecurity besides the obvious magic smoke release damage when something happens, the change in capacitors is one of the primary reasons our gadgets fail. Usually switching power supply caps dry out from heat.
Turning it off and then on can sometimes have the same effect as the time out as the cap slowly discharges.

@SwiftOnSecurity
Is it necessary to scold the item?

@SwiftOnSecurity I have a dual monitor setup connected via DP. When Windows stopped recognizing the secondary one, I tried everything that I could think of, but nothing worked, so I thought that the DP port was gone.

The HDMI port worked, so I swapped it and when I connected the “broken” monitor, I, by habit used the DP port and it worked perfectly fine!

The only explanation I have is that it stayed unplugged for quite some time while I was switching the monitors.

@SwiftOnSecurity

> … just leaving shit unplugged for hours does fix things…. capacitors are everywhere and you have to defeat them.

Hmm. Gonna try this with my always-on Roku that’s become really temperamental in the last few months.

@SwiftOnSecurity I recently fixed a $2k laptop this way. Everyone thought it was totally dead, but it started right up after I removed the CMOS battery for half an hour.

@SwiftOnSecurity Ahh, advanced IT. Turn it off, take a nap, and turn it on again.

@SwiftOnSecurity

You remind me many moons ago of trying to debug code on a TI MSP-430 microcontroller.

Very power efficient core… and if you happened to get it in a bad state… you'd have to power cycle it.

The core could run down to 0Hz and could power itself on mere microamps… which meant unplugging power wasn't enough, it'd just run from decoupling caps.

I had to short the power rails on the sod to *discharge* the capacitance. Then it'd finally reset!

@SwiftOnSecurity ran IT in the 90's that was the best answer 🥳

@SwiftOnSecurity Yeah. Then there are devices that are completely sealed with a battery inside -.-

@SwiftOnSecurity @blueberry This kind of applies to life as well

@SwiftOnSecurity

@SwiftOnSecurity @Ash_Crow I can confirm this. Fixed my parents PC like this after searching the reason to an erratic boot problem for hours. It works like a charm since early November now.

@SwiftOnSecurity Instructions unclear, just unplugged prod and now boss is yelling.

@SwiftOnSecurity you're not wrong, there's no simpler fix than just unplugging stuff for a long period of time.

But eventually the users rise up and demand that you plug it all back in again, and you're right back at square one.

@SwiftOnSecurity I just love when the stars align to help troubleshoot problems. About an hour after I read this, I heard rustling behind me of my family having issues with the washing machine. I don’t know if this will actually solve l the problem, but it gave me a starting place to research

@SwiftOnSecurity @chrissie_artist Hahaha yeah, isn’t that the truth. Give them all a time out. :-)

@SwiftOnSecurity This. I once had networking issues because I swapped DHCP servers and the gateway's IP. Some devices kept having issues, until I actively removed power from anything and everything in the network, gave it some time to think, then gradually brought everything back online.

@SwiftOnSecurity I wonder if this would fix my Apple Homepod. I specifically bought it to play relaxing music and sounds from my phone.

I ended up spending 15-20 minutes every night trying to connect to the phone before giving up.

It has been sitting, unplugged, on the night stand for the last three months.

@SwiftOnSecurity Every time I use our less than 5 year old oven I then "fix" it by then turning off the breaker overnight so it doesn't start beeping with an error code at 4:00 AM. It works, but actually replacing the motherboard would be a more lasting fix.

@SwiftOnSecurity this is why I often shut deveryhting down and turn off the power strips for days especially when I lezave and travel.

@SwiftOnSecurity The naughty step! 😂👏👏

@SwiftOnSecurity When I got my 144Hz monitor it didn't want to display anything, read about doing a power cycle. so turned it off for about 15 minutes and after that it just work.

@SwiftOnSecurity @earthchild Creepy disabled android device that pairs up with the heart-rate monitor I’m wearing, suddenly not pairing, despite repeating emergency re-pair exercise. Sits quietly for 10 minutes: everything is, really and truly, fine (and paired).

@SwiftOnSecurity here's an interesting one. We are working on a factory test for #tinytapeout . Many of the stateful designs don't have a reset (unlike all industry chips). I was finding that post reset or power cycle the test results were changing - the flops inside were retaining state. It took 10 minutes for the flops to lose state!

@SwiftOnSecurity 💯​This is my go-to fix for weird networking problems. Network cards are notorious for saving dumb settings forever. 🔌​Unplug and count to 10.👍​

@SwiftOnSecurity@infosec.exchange this happened with a monitor I used to have

@SwiftOnSecurity it's not just for electronics!

🧠

@SwiftOnSecurity i know this is tangential but describing it as "putting things in the time-out corner" brought me back to when as a kid i would threaten my computer with turning it off whenever it wouldn't load content quickly enough. id get my face an inch away from the screen and just whisper threats until stuff started working