What's the dumbest thing you've ever done to your computer?

Thermite Paste said:
the dumbest thing ive ever done was probably this:

when i was building a pc, i accidentally got a screw stuck in the power supply (have no clue how it got in there) and when i turned it on, a bigass spark flew out of the back, and all of the electricity in my upper level just shut off. i had to go buy a new power supply, and a dissection of the old one revealed what had happened.
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you probably picked up the case and it slid in. I know I always have screws sliding around my case
 
Back when I got my first comp, which was a Quantex 233mhz, I decided that Prodigy was just too good an ISP. So, what did I do? Talked my dad into going with AOL... Needless to say, it was horrible. I don't know what their software did, I was computer illiterate at the time, but the top half of web pages were duplicated all the way down the page. Quickly went back to Prodigy and the problem was fixed.

Second stupidest thing I've ever done was, on the same Quantex comp, I switched to the Netscape browser. I liked it a lot better than IE, and so I decided to uninstall IE. Windows didn't like that at all. After that, I couldn't log onto the internet. Thus, after a long talk with MS Tech Support, me and my dad discovered my mishap and had them ship a new IE CD to us. After reinstalling it, everything was fine. Never tried to uninstall IE since.

I'm sure there's plenty more stupid things I've done, but one of the coolest/stupiest things is last semester, a guy down the hall from me in the dorm pissed me off, bad. So, the next time he came in the room, I threw a 120mm Delta at him. It was the closest and heaviest thing in reach. If he wouldn't have closed the door, he'd been knocked out. It shattered into pieces and left a nice sized dent in the door. Unfortunately, I lost my 150cfm of goodness... But, I can sleep at night now. :p
 
i got mad at my laptop for it being slow and stupid. so i proceeded to grab the side of it and slung it into the side of the wall as hard as i can.

it was entirely demolished. then i went into school and they replaced the shattered screen, dented harddrive, and smoking motherboard..........for free ;)

and then i felt stupid and laughed
 
not plug the power connector for my floppy drive in properly (misaligned connector)


smoke came pouring out floppy drive. i did this yesterday on my amd 64 system (i was thinking omfg nooooo). anyways the power supply made a loud crack when it happened. i disconnected the floppy drive and powered on the system. it worked! w00t. i have to go to fedex today to pick up my ocz 520watt powerstream they have on hold for me :p

this antec true430 isnt cutting it anymore plus i want to avoid any future problems from that loud crack, has to of blown something.
 
Dumbest things I ever did...

Dumbest:
Copied all my programs off my RAID0 array (C: ) to my backup drive (D: ) so I could repartition, format and reinstall Windows on my RAID array. When I got to the part on the XP setup program where it shows your current drives and partition information and asks where you want to install, I told it to wipe the C: drive partition. As soon as I pressed "L" to verify I wanted to delete all info from that partition I went "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!". I was in a hurry, wasn't paying close attention, and forgot that my RAID0 array always shows up as my D: drive in the Setup program due to Windows considering the drive on the IDE controller to be C. I realized my mistake 1 second too late.

I lost 20GB of data off the backup drive plus the half hour I'd spent searching and moving newer files from the RAID array.

Dumber:
Creating a RAID0 array using 2 IBM Deathstars. That was pretty dumb. After the replacement for one of the originals died, (both originals died on seperate occasions plus the replacement for one of them) I'd had enough of that. When the 3rd one died it still had a warranty on it, but I was so mad I just opened it up and mangled it instead of getting a 4th POS Deathstar. Replaced them with 2 WD 80GBers 3 years ago and both are still working great.

Dumb:
Then there was the time back in the day when I built my new computer and plugged the AT power connectors in backwards (not black-to-black like it was supposed to be) and fried the motherboard when I turned on the power :( That sucked.
 
I honestly haven't let the smoke out of any of my own equipment in the 5 odd years I've been building my own. My old roommate on the other hand...
 
Two stupid things i did over the last years :

1- I dunno why but i yanked out the ATX power connector while the computer is still running. List of burned things : CDRW (700$ when this happened), PSU, motherboard and CPU :-/

2- When i'm in the process of moving out components in a new case (the current one in my sig), the AGP card jumped out when i started it due to a fitting problem and it didn't work. At the moment, i thought it was the card who are burned so i borrowed a spare one from work to test and it didn't work either. I thought the motherboard is burned so i decided to buy a new mobo/cpu/memory set in a hurry.

It ended out to be a defective PSU which stopped working the exact moment the AGP card yanked out and it was a new PSU. Plugging my old one made it work then i proceed to test each componed i "remplaced" just to see all is in good condition :eek: I'm now struck with 2 working computers but the good thing is that i was able to upgrade with the approval of my wife (she doesn't approve it until it is proven to be defective).
 
Xilikon said:
Two stupid things i did over the last years :

1- I dunno why but i yanked out the ATX power connector while the computer is still running. List of burned things : CDRW (700$ when this happened), PSU, motherboard and CPU :-/
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and why did you feal the ned to do that?
any way myn is..
...1: i put in the ide cables and none of the drives work so i got new cables did the same thing(the cables didn't have the gide thing). and thay didn't work so at this point i'm getting pi$$e. so i look at the drives then the mobo and the ide cables were cross up.

2: ok just the other day working on my puter and i had there power cables setting out. and i had 1 plug in the wall 2 in the wall but 3 just on the flour. now i plug one in the crt and one in the puter. click the button puter didn't come on. so i'm thinking and i put the power cable on the puter on the crt and then the crt didn't come on so i go look at the wall. two were in the wall but the one i had in my crt was on the flour. so the point is don't have there power cables so close lol.
 
I'm pretty sure it was for something i wanted to do but don't remember the exact reason. This has happened at around 1998, which is a long way.
 
Hoooboy do I have a long list but I'll post my personal favorites

1. Was trying to get a Creative 5631 to work in Windows and couldn't get it to detect. (Background: At the shop there were as many as 10 connected at once to a KVM and almost always had similar cases, components, etc). Unscrewed the modem, took it out and put the new modem in and screwed it in. Only then I realized the computer was still on. Modem worked though. :)

2. Back in my early days I was wiring a new fan to help cool my processor (486 DX2 BABY!!!) and decided to connect the positive to the power supply and run the negative directly to the case ground sending AC through the board. Made some nice sparks and caused me to have to replace the BIOS battery every month and install 95 every week.

3. Decided to run the Defrag utility built in to my 386 motherboard but canceled it because it was taking too long.

4. To back up the same computer, Zipped everything to a single file but forgot to include folder names.

5. Installed Windows ME
 
I've done some pretty stupid things, my favourite one is just after I built my opty rig, I stuck my finger into one of the fans and broke a blade, aswell as taking a huge chunk outta my skin. I kept the fan running and since it wasn't weighted right (7000 rpm fan, with ball bearings and all), it shook the whole case, producing 150+ Db.
Since I really really really wanted to run my new computer, I put up with the noise for the next three days while a replacement fan came, lol after that I was deafened, and I even had neighbours complaining about the noise :D .
 
I was moving my components to a different case. The new case had drive rails. I had put the rails on the CD-ROM and slid it into one of the bays, but I never heard the "Click" that meant it was secured. Of course I thought it was fine at the time. So I'm trying to connect the IDE cable to the CD-ROM, pushing it in from the back.

My CD-ROM suddenly decides to do a Superman impression and flys out of the bay and onto the floor. Unfortunately I was working on a table, and the case was uprgight, so it flew about 4 feet to the floor.

Needless to say, a perfectly good Sony 32x CD-ROM died that day. I would still be using it to this day if not for that unfortunate event.
 
I built one.

Now all I do is sit on the pc. Gaining wieght. Social life? Its only getting worse. My money and all my time. My pc cause problems with my gf, screws me up in school :mad:

But damn I love her ( the pc )

:D
 
Zxcs said:
I've done some pretty stupid things, my favourite one is just after I built my opty rig, I stuck my finger into one of the fans and broke a blade, aswell as taking a huge chunk outta my skin. I kept the fan running and since it wasn't weighted right (7000 rpm fan, with ball bearings and all), it shook the whole case, producing 150+ Db.
Since I really really really wanted to run my new computer, I put up with the noise for the next three days while a replacement fan came, lol after that I was deafened, and I even had neighbours complaining about the noise :D .
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and your finger?
 
pandora's box said:
and your finger?
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It took half of my index finger's nail off, was bleeding like crazy for first 10min and it hurt bad.... but I couldn't stop thinking about the computer :eek:
 
MaMMa said:
I built one.

Now all I do is sit on the pc. Gaining wieght. Social life? Its only getting worse. My money and all my time. My pc cause problems with my gf, screws me up in school :mad:

But damn I love her ( the pc )

:D
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Haha, ah...I think that describes all of us to a certain extent...
 
MaMMa said:
I built one.

Now all I do is sit on the pc. Gaining wieght. Social life? Its only getting worse. My money and all my time. My pc cause problems with my gf, screws me up in school :mad:

But damn I love her ( the pc )

:D
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Looking at your specs, it should be a crime to leave that thing alone.
 
EGGO said:
Looking at your specs, it should be a crime to leave that thing alone.
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Thanks :D She's a jealous bitch she is! I've got 2 other somewhat like her. Time to get nasty :eek:
 
I was plugging a fan header into my computer at the time. Which was a really expensive machine

Dual Pentium Pro 200MHz processors.
Intel Providence PR440FX Mainboard
192MB EDO DIMMs
Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 4MB PCI video card.
Diamond Monster 3D
2.0 Ultra SCSI HDD
2x4.0G EIDE HDD's.
Adaptec 2940U SCSI Controller
Sound Blaster AWE32 w/16MB of ram. (In 30 pin simms)
USR ISA Fax Modem
I forget what optical drives were in it.

Anyway I was working on it and I was testing something and I noticed I hadn't plugged in my intake fan. So I thought I would connect it. Well I must have bumped something because I shorted something out and the system died. It wouldn't come back on at all for about 30 seconds or so and then everything was fine.

Scared the crap out of me. That system cost alot of money.

I still have the motherboard and processors. They still work. Don't have any of the rest of it though.
 
Zxcs said:
It took half of my index finger's nail off, was bleeding like crazy for first 10min and it hurt bad.... but I couldn't stop thinking about the computer :eek:
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lol. atleast you have your priorities straight heh.
 
Dumbest thing I've ever done is use my computer during a really really close thunderstorm without any kind of surge protection. Evidently a bolt hit a power line (or whatever) and the surge caused every led in my comp to flare up (like the fing sun) and the computer just shut off. Luckily I was able to get it running again without any issues.
 
I fried a motherboard about an hour ago. It was in a cardboard box till I found a suitable case. One of the fans I had blowing on it got loose and I went to adjust it. I accidently pulled the power buttun connector off the pins and everything went black. Took everything apart and put in a new graphics card because I thought I had shorted the video card that was in there. I didn't notice the new card was half out of the agp slot till a few minutes later. I tried clearing CMOS and everything, all to no avail.

This is the first time I've shorted a motherboard, and boy does it suck. I'm back to my 800MHz P3 till I can scrape some cash together to get a new motherboard and processor.:(
 
Second stupidest thing I've done - Managed to get a HSF on backwards.

Most stupid thing I've done - Jab the mobo with the screwdriver while trying to undo the second stupidest thing I've done. :eek: That put a nice dent right over the top of the tracers that run to the RAM slots. Dead mobo...on my server. :eek:

Lucky for my, I was able to get the same mobo off ebay for $25, so it was just more of a hasstle than anything.
 
the dummest thing i did TODAY to my old compaq presario 7360 pc with a amd k6 500mhz

i took off the heatsink, boot it up, took of the ram so it wouldnt go to the screen and load anything, and then i waited till the cpu got really heated up, i got a idea and i took a plastic bag and put it on the cpu and it melted. oh shit...it was funn..
anything i could find plastic, gone...
it was soo funn
then i touched the cpu and i burned my finger....shit hurts like a motherfucker.
and the cpu still works...
i dunno how and why :rolleyes:
 
I'm not sure this was the dumbest, but setting 2 partitions active with PartitionMagic is not a good idea! I had 60gb worth of data that could only be accessed through PartitionMagic, I couldn't even get a directory listing from the prompt, and at first I thought I had lost everything. I was able to copy the files off the partition to a new one I had just created for the purpose, which had to be done manually and took days. This is why I am leery of NTFS because I'm not sure I would have been able to do this with it.
 
The dumbest thing was when I but a stick of ram in backwards in my old epox 8hka+. Killed the board and the ram. Funny thing is, it was not hard to do it, I did not lay the case down, I did it blind man style and it popped right in w/o a fight, so, I figured it was in the right way, nope. Ah well, shit happens.
 
Don't ask why the cpu fan was around my face but I cut up my tongue on the cpu fan at 7000rpm. Not a whole lot of fun.
 
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