A couple of annoying hardware failures happened to me over the weekend. First of all I got a call from my wife to say that her car had broken down, it was completely dead and not responding to anything. I drove over to where she was and attempted to diagnose the problem, it was a bit baffling with no apparent reason for a complete electrical failure after a full morning of pottering around town just fine.
I checked a few things, leads, battery, key-battery, hazard lights (which worked?) nothing seemed out of place but I did have an uneasy "feeling" that having changed the main battery in the last few weeks, that was probably something to do with it. Having failed to find anything obvious I did what all real-men abhor, I called the AA man. When he arrived, he took one look at it and said, "I bet Halfords fitted this battery didn't they?" He was right, the fitting was shoddy, a loose connection hidden under a plastic cover (my original gut feeling was correct) why I didn't just lift the plastic cover and discover this for myself was annoying.
Later that evening we decided to watch a film and I turned to my trusty Bose speaker to add a bit of bass and volume to the crappy TV speakers. It's a sleek unit that sits under the TV, it has no buttons only a remote, it was totally unresponsive. I immediately suspected the battery in the remote, the unit has had the same one for over 5 years. I tried all the usual tricks for rejuvenating a flagging battery but no luck, our film was watched with tinny sound. Next day I popped out and bought a new battery, plopped it in the unit, still no response! What could the problem be? Just for kicks I decided to check the mains lead into the unit itself, hidden away behind all the various gadget boxes, after much rummaging I found that it was hanging out of the socket... problem solved.
Moral of the story, always check the most obvious things first!
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