Someone purchased a (refurbished) laptop from a (reputable, unnamed) company. The customer put it in a drawer for a month or two. And now the laptop is covered in insect debris.
A customer's refurbished laptop malfunctioned after storage, revealing insect debris inside
This is a cool reminder that buying used electronics has a lot of hidden downsides. You never know what people are storing things in or what their quality control is like during refurbishment. And things can get infested with bugs that destroy the inner workings of your electronics.
You really need to pay attention to any returned electronics you buy. And be on the lookout for hidden infestations that can lead to failures that have no external symptoms.
This particular failure happened after the laptop was left in storage (dark warm drawer for a short amount of time). When they opened it up to try and figure out what happened, they found the motherboard, cooling fan, memory, and wireless card covered in insect debris. No wonder this hardware didn't work after it sat there for such a short time.
u/mace1191 from reddit posted this over on the techsupportgore subreddit. So there's visual evidence of the infestation.
According to the source of this post, it's likely that this infestation happened while the laptop was in storage, not when it was bought. That's important to note. Because that makes a difference in where you assign fault – with the refurbisher or with storage conditions.
This is a good warning to anyone buying refurbished hardware. Even if you're buying from a reputable source, there's no guarantee that things were properly stored while they were sitting around (returned or pre-owned). It's important to realize that internal parts are susceptible to various conditions, even when you're not actively using a device.
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