"Oh, god, it's everywhere. Oh, it's in my raccoon wounds..." -Peter Griffin

I work at a computer store somewhere in the area of Pittsburgh, where we essentially sell refurbished computers. Just yesterday (11/05/2007) a customer came in with a broken up PC, asking if we did repairs. I informed her that we did not, unless the computer was bought at the store. She was quick to say that she did, indeed, buy the computer at the store. Yet there was no serial or system number (note: we assign system numbers to every system we sell so we can track it in our database quickly and easily), so therefore there was no easy way to track it down.

Needless to say, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. I took the computer to a station and tried to power it on. Nothing. I found a power-supply tester, opened up the computer and did a test on the power supply, finding that surprisingly it worked. Maybe it was the lighting, but I didn't yet notice what was on the board. I told the customer the motherboard had gone bad, and at that point she should probably get a new computer, as the expense is about the same. (I know, I know, for the techies it may not be, but overall you have to buy a bunch of new parts, generally)

So I looked inside to see if I could see anything on the board. This time, I did notice this white, crusty substance. And it was everywhere. My co-worker came over and determined that it was rock salt.

Longer story short, the customer bought another computer. I later found that the computer really had been purchased at the store and the tech neglected to write a number on it. It was out of warranty anyway, though, it couldn't even have been exchanged.

Now, the mystery is how there got to be so much rock salt in it. It was everywhere.

Some were just flecks...

But there were clumps in places like the hinges...

And the bottom of the board...

And yes, it did get into motherboard components.

It had to have been submerged in a snow bank or something. You just never know with some people.