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[statiatech]

A little background:

I work on PC's on an Island in the Caribbean. Everything computer we get is shipped from the USA. We have about 200 computers on site. The past order of computers I got in was from a new vendor. They did somthing I have never seen before...they hot glued everything to everything.

My problems:

The main board is Asus with an ATI graphic card, Linksys LAN....
The first system I started to configure seemed fine. I then went to set it up to run on the network. After the Win98 reboot I tried to get on the Web. Nothing. Looked at the back to make sure my connection was good and found that there were no lights on the LAN card. After trying the cable in anohter system I figured it was the card itself. I opened the box and thats when I found the hot glue. I wanted to check the card to be sure it was in the PCI port. The glue was on the card and the port which was about 1 inch long. The glue was on a few contacts. Any how...after pulling the card and putting it back in the computer did not want to boot. I go power but no post. I figured I would get back to it later and walked away for a few hours. Came back and everything seemed to work fine. Never could really figure out what was up with that. Now a few days later I got a call from the person the computer belongs to now....no network connection. Went to check it out and found that the lights on the card just blink at the same time every second or so. The hub does not detect that the computer is connected to it. I am going to work with this problem today or Monday.

Next problem...I know this is really long....

Another computer out of the box....after it was setup and running fine 4 days later the graphics card goes. When you turn on the computer every letter and number you would have seen is now symbles and when the Win98 splash screen kicks in all you see is a rainbow of colors and symbles. The hot glue on this card goes the length of the AGP port. What a pain to get the card out of the port...I think I scratched it trying to get the glue to give. There goes sending the card back to get it exchanged...

I have had a few other strange problems with anohter system but I will not touch on that here.

This has all been with just 3 computers. I have 12 more to open.

Do any of you think the glue may be the problem that is killing boards and other problems? I would think the glue should not conduct electricity. Any suggestions on how to remove parts that have been glued to the board? Any other ideas on this? To me the screw should have been fine to hold parts in...glue is not needed. Every computer up till now has come without glue and without problem.

Thanks for you time...I know this is a long one :)

statiatech

[muchmark]

Hi statiatech,
I use to work for a PC manufacturer in Canada and it was a common practice to secure connectors with hot glue on some of our overseas shipment. This was done to prevent connectors and cards movement and should not be a problem the glue doesn’t do any harm as you say it is nonconductive
Mark

[rangeral]

Personally I wouldn't order this way to begin with, since your buying in quantity you'll get a good business price wholesale and avoid this glue thing altogether just buying the parts and assembling at your place if your worried about defective parts you can buy a few extra parts to cover bad parts if your selling your machines locally with the wholesale price. At this point you wouldn't have to worry about any parts getting loose since there not traveling far plus buying the parts won't incur damage along the way compared to whole machines coming apart over great distances. Thus the customer won't be returning the machine as much but you can also make wise decisions on the generic parts you do buy giving you a little control over the product you sell.