Unpopular opinion: swapping CMOS batteries before testing anything saved me a 2 hour bench job
Had a Dell tower come in last Tuesday that wouldn't keep its clock or boot past the splash screen, and my first move was to pull the board and start checking for bad caps. A tech down the street told me to just drop a new CR2032 in and see what happens, so I did, and it booted clean in about 20 seconds. I spent 40 minutes on the teardown for nothing when a $2 battery was the fix. Now I check the cheap stuff first, but I keep wondering how many of us still jump straight to the worst case. What's the simplest thing you've seen get skipped on a bench ticket?