A tenant in an office building complained that a power spike in the building knocked out his computer and it took hours to get it going again. Previously, he lost a circuit board out of his copier and his water cooler died. He also said that another tenant had some phone equipment damaged.

It only took two weeks before I was sent to check. The tenant met me at the door and shut down his computer before I was invited to enter. He had two employees and he sent them home. It was 1:30 pm.

The computer was plugged into a new UPS with surge protection.

I recorded the voltage at the receptacle while I turned on various pieces of equipment in the office. Everything was good, but I noticed that he had a laptop plugged into another receptacle.

Since the problem seemed to be widespread, I checked the service and sub-panels. The workmanship was flawless and the panels were very lightly loaded.

I talked to the other tenant and learned that his phone equipment was damaged two years ago.

When I returned to the first tenant's office, he told me that he couldn't turn his computer on and had lost all his data. I asked how he could tell it was lost if he couldn't turn it on, and he told me that he checked from another computer in the office.

Now he says that he had a technician fix the computer and recover the data and the technician tells him that I damaged his computer when I checked the voltage. He denies that he was using a laptop, and demands that I pay for the technician.

Because I used a Fluke meter, shouldn't he take this up with them?

Tell him to talk to your lawyer .... and give him the shysters' card.

what kind of company doesn't back up there data, yeah right,, my insurance deductible is 1000 $$ per occurrence.

There is no way measuring voltage can cause his problem. Unless you were turning power off and on, tell him contact your lawyer.

Something smells of fraud here.

I fail to see how you access a computer that is not powered up, from another computer.

I think the guy is trying to take you for a ride.

Keep in mind this responce it limited to what I've seen with laptops and the settings.

First thing that comes to mind is lap tops have batteries. They could have been dead or defective. But under normal conditions if power is lost it should have switched to battery power without any loss. Windows has an option that is set up from the factory in most lap tops that does an orderly shut down when the batteries are low. If the batteries and computer was good he should have been able to unplug the power cord and still work for a few hours.

Many laptop power supplies are have a input voltage of 100-220v. The cord that goes into the external power supply is changable to different ones for other countries and voltages. So if there was a overvoltage from a loose neutral I would think it would be ok.

As said it makes no sence for them to say they checked from another computer that a dead computer has data loss.

A volt meter will not cause any problems.

I would guess the first thing to go is the power supply if there was a power surge. Too bad they did not tell you what parts were bad.

I would not pay or admit to anything. At worst they could take you to court and or bad mouth your business.

IMO either they a tring to scam you or you just happened to be there when they had a failure and the assume it must be your fault.

Ask to speak to the 'technician' so he can explain to you how just testing a circuit with a voltage tester damaged a computer. If the technician is going to make this claim he needs to back it up. It's BS, of course, but his story will change when he's speaking to you and the customer at the same time.

I'm a computer guy and this is BS. You didn't hurt his machine with a meter.

The only conceivable way, as far fetched as this sounds, for a computer to be damaged while testing with a meter, is if it crashed the computer by having the meter connected to the Hot and neutral contacts of the receptacle and the meter being incorrectly set to measure current and not voltage.

I've seen this happen once before and it took out the whole circuit.

I don't however think that this is what has occured in this case though.

This scenario just sounds rotten to the core.

Tell him you NEED everything in writing. Tell him to write down exactly what happened, when it happened, how it happened, what he did in response to it happening. Tell him you need this on original company letterhead complete with an original signature. Including a business card. Then tell him you need the techs name, business name, address, telephone number and email address. Then tell him you will be contacting the tech for his statement on his original company letterhead complete with original signature and business card.
When he asks why tell him your lawyers ( plural as in not one)
will need all this information to pursue the case in conjunction with your insurance carriers lawyers. This because they hate fraud and go after those who use file false claims.
He is scamming you!!!!

I'm another computer guy and I totally agree. If something was wrong with the meter, you'd have seen the flash, heard the boom, and smelled the smoke, in that order.

I have run Windows 98, NT, 2000, and XP (normally I do Linux most of the time), on computers with no power protection. They have many times been powered off without a clean shutdown. No data was ever lost, except the ongoing activity at the time of one incident. If the data was on the hard drive when it booted up, and was not written over during the run, it will still be there when the power is suddenly cut off. That is, unless the hard drive itself physically dies.

More likely, this guy's computer was either infected by two or more competing viruses, or the filesystem was so horribly fragmented it would never get done writing stuff to the disk. Or he was running a defrag when he powered it off to make sure people didn't see his porn collection.

You did nothing wrong. Forget about it. If it comes back at you, then deal with it.

twh;

After reading your post, I have to make a few comments!



ANY Networked Computer that is shut down will appear as "gone", when trying to read its drive from another Computer on the same Network (physical LAN + Work group).
It's "simple logic" If the Machine is not there, it's not there!!!

Did the Client give an answer regarding a restart of the "affected" Machine, or simply / conveniently change the subject?



This claim requires accurate, credible documentation.

Ask to see the reports from the Tech.
Verify the claims on the reports with the Tech, in the presence of the Client.

Ask the Tech if it is possible to damage the Power Supply of the Machine, by connecting another Peripheral Device to the same Circuit, while that Machine was powered down!
Any answer other than "No" is 100% Bull Poop!

More likely what the Tech worked on was another Machine, with a failed SMPS, and the failure was unrelated to your scenario.
Another possibility is the "Dead" Machine was always dead - long before you arrived.




That would be the best line of red tape to send Him towards, but the Fluke people will first likely respond with a disclaimer, placing the liability on you.

In my opinion, this guy may be over analyzing the way things fail (Best-Case Scenario), and is simply over reacting due to his ignorance of technical things.
If this is the case, reasoning may bring this Person back to reality.

Unfortunately, I would have to predict this Client is the Worst-Case Scenario type: looking for someone to blame + pay for any failed piece of Equipment.

pdh:



LOL to the Porn collection!!!

Seriously, this is a valid point; if the guy powered down a Machine during a Defragmentation routine, this would affect the data in some method.
Depending on what was being "shuttled around the tracks" at the time, it may lose simple user data (like documents, etc.), or the loss could be a driver.
Definitely would not lose MBRs, as these are marked "Unmovable" and are not included in the defrag actions.

I will end here.
Any responses to the information I have posted here are welcome.

Let us know what has taken place so far.

Scott

Getting away from the technical side of things, I'd be very surprised if your insurance would cover this sort of loss.

"Losses" are broken down into different types: direct, indirect, and consequential.

To illustrate the difference, imagine a restaurant catches fire, and is shut for a few weeks as repairs are made. The repairs are 'direct' losses; the lost income is an 'indirect' lodd, and the failure of customers to return when it re-opens is a consequential loss.

Nearly all liability policies are limited to covering direct losses. Sometimes you can get a rider for lost income. There is no way the measure, and thus insure. consequential losses.

So, what is the value of the lost data? That's a pretty tough thing to measure, and thus would be outside the scope of any insurance policy.

On the plus side, it's equally difficult for the claimant to prove such a claim in court.

Not much new has happened. I reported to the property manager that the electrical installation was not the cause of any problems. The property manager, who the tenant was trying to tag for the previous down-time, wrote the tenant a really nasty letter. Then, my employer, wrote the tenant and asked that he get a written statement from the computer guy and have everyone sign it who wanted to get sued.

If it comes up again I'm going to use the porn site idea. As to the value of lost data, I have insurance for that, my hard drive is backed up.

OK, let me get this straight.

Between your arrival at about 1:30 PM and whenever you returned to his office from the other tenant's unit he suddenly had a catastrophic computer failure.

It was working fine just before you arrived but for some reason he didn't let you actually see that for yourself first.

He could somehow, by using another machine in the office while not observed by yourself, determined that the data on a non-spinning drive could not be accessed.


???


Sounds like he had a drive go belly up with data on it that he needed and knew how much it costs to retrieve it and wanted someone else to pay for it.

He needs to be spanked.