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

Stuck my finger in the cpu fan. OUCH it hurt and the fan broke 4 of its 7 blades....dammit
 
you know the best used passwords are
love, secret, sex,password,god
they said this in hackers :) :D
 
When the Thunderbirds finally came out I went and bought me a brand new MB, Proc, and ram. Got home from the computer show where I bought it and sat down on the floor next to me desk and started putting in the new parts. Put in the MB took the proc out and set it on the floor so I could move the case closer. Then put in the proc and ram turned it on and got 1 beep and a restart and It never started again...it was a 1.33 T-Bird. took it back the next day and got it replaced got home and did it again....(set the proc on the carpet). Same reaction 1 beep and a restart never worked again. By the time I got back to the computer show they were all packed up and gone so there was 200 bucks nicely shot. turned around and bought another one from some where else and it didn't work either. So I returned it and got a 1.2 and still have it running to this day.

3 x 1.33 T-Birds Dead. I will never own one of these that actually works...

My best friend (R.I.P.) was cutting a case a part and grabbed the drummel and set it on his lap plugged it in and realized it was ON and running @ 35000 rpmsas it fell off his leg he reached down to grab it out of a reaction and cut his finger down to the bone nerves and all. He grabbed some epoxy and glued his finger back together and went back to cutting the case. What a dumbass....and after something like that to have his cousin kill him years later is just sad.....
 
Erland said:
When the Thunderbirds finally came out I went and bought me a brand new MB, Proc, and ram. Got home from the computer show where I bought it and sat down on the floor next to me desk and started putting in the new parts. Put in the MB took the proc out and set it on the floor so I could move the case closer. Then put in the proc and ram turned it on and got 1 beep and a restart and It never started again...it was a 1.33 T-Bird. took it back the next day and got it replaced got home and did it again....(set the proc on the carpet). Same reaction 1 beep and a restart never worked again. By the time I got back to the computer show they were all packed up and gone so there was 200 bucks nicely shot. turned around and bought another one from some where else and it didn't work either. So I returned it and got a 1.2 and still have it running to this day.

3 x 1.33 T-Birds Dead. I will never own one of these that actually works...

My best friend (R.I.P.) was cutting a case a part and grabbed the drummel and set it on his lap plugged it in and realized it was ON and running @ 35000 rpmsas it fell off his leg he reached down to grab it out of a reaction and cut his finger down to the bone nerves and all. He grabbed some epoxy and glued his finger back together and went back to cutting the case. What a dumbass....and after something like that to have his cousin kill him years later is just sad.....
Click to expand...

Dude, you don't put a processor on a carpeted floor.

Wait, were you being sarcastic?
 
TheScott2K said:
Dude, you don't put a processor on a carpeted floor.

Wait, were you being sarcastic?
Click to expand...

i built my whole computer on a carpeted floor :)
 
GeForceX said:
Epoxy his finger back? WTF? Sarcasm at it's worse.

-J.
Click to expand...


i dunno man, i've had some bad deep cuts where i pushed the skin together and put some crazy glue on it. it really works. did you know that crazy glue was originally invented in WW2 as a liquid bandage to hold a soldier's would shut until they could see a surgeon?
 
Hahaha, did you see a surgeon yet? LOL. Wait-- I thought you died. Shit, I must be high.

-J.
 
"Those cuts are one of the main reasons I bought this case (Antec Soho). It's got a LOT of room to maneuver around in"

My problem was I was used to working in full-tower cases (I'm not in the biz, just a hobby) and my Mom had a mid-tower when I cut my finger on that Panaflo 92mm. So, I probably should have been more careful. I definitely will next time..........unless I get in a hurry or forget again. :D ;)
 
I was having trouble getting my Athlon Xp 1800 to seat properly, so before putting on the heatsink, and finding otu that it wasn't seated properly and having to redo my thermal paste etc etc, I thought "hey, I'll just turn it on for 2 seconds and see if it can boot, then turn it right back off and put on the heatsink."

0.5 seconds later, I had to buy me a new CPU hehe. God, I'm such a dumbass.
 
i dont know what happened, but my sister came up stairs the other day complaing that the computer i built for her turned off on its own, and everytime she tried to start it, it would only run for about 3 seconds, then turn off again.

i went downstairs and opened up the case, and somehow the cpu fan just fell off, and was sitting at the bottom of the case. i instantly thought oh shit, time for a new cpu, but i put that heatsink and fan back on and thank goodness it still worked. the system is a 2500+ barton, 512mb of ram and a pc chips motherboard.

i have no idea how the stock amd HSF managed to just fall off, but it did. thank god for the hardware thermal protection that automatically shut the computer down when the hsf fell off :)




another story is when i accidently installed a stick of ram backwards, the thing instantly smoked when i turned it on, and that ram was toast, but the motherboard and ram slot were still fine :) i was even able to rma the ram even though some of the gold contacts at the bottom were burnt off of it, so i got a nice new stick of pc2700 and made sure that both clips were fully closed this time :)
 
2 stupid things, one I have done and one I read about...

Mine: Guy brought in a PC that was in a Mac case but did not tell me it was a PC. I popped it up on the bench and plugged a Mac Monitor into the game port and powered it on. Once we got the smoke cleared, we got lucky, only fried the sound card.

Read about: Some guy living in a 6 story apartment building got pissed at his PC and blew 2 holes through the case and 3 through the monitor with a .357. oops.
 
I attached a motherboard to a case once without risers. Needless to say, there was some smoke :rolleyes: .
 
1) I have a tendancy to work on my computer while the cord is still plugged into the power supply, so I can just tap the PS to discharge any static b4 touching components. Well one day I was moving my GF4ti4200 to a different box and as I got the card half-way seated in the AGP slot the computer turned on. Freaked my the F out. I'm not sure exactly why, maybe I bumped the power switch or the power switch leads? Well, the card still works fine for 2d, but as soon as I do anything 3d, either the machine hard locks, or I get about 30-90 spf (yes, seconds per frame).
2) back in the day(486SX25) I figured I should wire the internal speaker to my brand spanking new sound blaster, well being a dumbass I just twisted bare wire ends onto the pins on the sound card. Well, a few days later they came loose and ended up resting on the video card. Everything worked fine except I got horizontal lines running across the screen. After I opened the case I figured out the problem and twisted the bare wires back onto the sound card (you would think I would learn)
3) a few days later the wires slipped off again and ended up touching each other. Well, I turn on the computer one day, and instead of the usual beep I hear *POP* Then a few seconds later I smell smoke! Thankfully the only thing hurt were the wires, which were nicely charred. No, I did NOT try to twist them back onto the soundcard.
 
Well it was back in 1993.... got got my rippin Tandy 1000RSX 25MHz/3MB Ram/Onboard Everything/107MB HDD only a year before and I installed Norton Utilities(Version 2.0 Maybe??) and one night while playing around found this 'NEAT' little util called Wipedisk... I 'THOUGHT' I selected the one that said 'Wipe all Unused Space' but I must not have :(

Anyhow... I was 14 at the time and stayed up until 3AM waiting for this thing to be done... when it finished *POP* my screen went blank and it said something about no command interpretor or something :D

Anyhow... I STILL to this day don't know how it managed to wipe EVERYTHING including itself... but it did... the HDD was completely empty...

Had to reload Dos 5.0....

QwertyJuan

P.S. I STILL have NEVER used Wipespace since... 11 years later and when I install Norton SystemWorks for people I ALWAYS uncheck it :D
 
My dumbest thing I've done to a computer was when I was putting in LED into the Molex's.
I thought I would be cool and wire all of the led's to a common ground connected to a switch so I could turn them off.
So I wired everything up and closed up the psu, my computer was not put together so I thought, 'I'll just test this on my roommate's computer.'
I plug it all in without the LED's on, boot up his computer and go 'Yea this works fine.' and shut the computer off.
I was like, 'Waitaminute......I didnt try the LED's' . So with the computer off, I pressed the switch to turn the LED's, and BAM. Massive sparks and smoke shooting out of the 3 molex plugs with the LED's.
What I had done was not connected the switch to a DC ground, I had connected it to the 110V line.
Needless to say...All black wires are not ground in a powersupply.

I actually didnt fry any components of my roommate's computer. I just fried my powersupply. Good thing it wasn't on.
 
merlin42 said:
1) I have a tendancy to work on my computer while the cord is still plugged into the power supply, so I can just tap the PS to discharge any static b4 touching components. Well one day I was moving my GF4ti4200 to a different box and as I got the card half-way seated in the AGP slot the computer turned on. Freaked my the F out. I'm not sure exactly why, maybe I bumped the power switch or the power switch leads? Well, the card still works fine for 2d, but as soon as I do anything 3d, either the machine hard locks, or I get about 30-90 spf (yes, seconds per frame)...........
Click to expand...

NEVER EVER do that... ATX machines will boot on you at the drop of a hat while seating cards in place, in my experience then ONLY machines you can do that on is the old AT's....

QwertyJuan
 
Dubest thing i have done was when i got my first modchip for the Xbox, it was back when the matrix came out in 2002. I was aligning it with the xbox on and i slipped screwdriver stabbed the MB and the chip slipped i guess bridging 2 points and smoke. Dead Motherboard, Dead Modchip. No Xbox :(

But hey i use it for parts these days, so its not all bad :)
 
So I have been building comps and networks for the better part of a decade now and I made a huge blunder just 2 days ago. I changed my brothers work laptop from a domain to a workgroup without creating any local accounts. I dont know what the admin account password is! We couldn't log in for 3 days....guest was disabled. Finally got it working. He was pissed..my face was red. Anyway....all is well now.

M
 
just remembered another one. Around RedHat 5.x I was just learning Linux. Well, there was some program that didn't seem to be working right (don't remember what it was). I figured must be a corrupted 'dot' file. So I said 'screw it' I'll start fresh so:
rm -rf .*
15 seconds later, wow I must have a lot of those dot files.
1 minute later, why is the disk still churning?
another 30 seconds later DOH .* matches .. and I'm logged in as root!!
<ctrl>-c <ctrl>-c <ctrl>-c <ctrl>-c <ctrl>-c <ctrl>-c <ctrl>-c <ctrl>-c
.
.
.
I ended up reinstalling
 
This has happened to me and a buddy of mine several times...

Build the PC and turn it on and nothing happens, start to curse heavily for 3-5 minutes, then realize the ATX header is NOT plugged in.
 
i think i have u all beat, my hp was pissing me off, so i ripped its p4 2.2ghz out of its socket and bent all the pins. its a good way to break a previously thousand dollar system.
 
BlindedByScience said:
....once blew away the contents of C:\Windows accidently from a command window, while at work. I'd meant to type

A:
del *.*

...and forgot the A: part of the instructions...... :rolleyes:

WaHoo.....B.B.S.
Click to expand...

Logged in as root... working on a kernel upgrade. Cleaning out the old source tree.

rm -rf /*

I meant rm -rf ./*

Oops.
 
Another one, tried to install a used thermalright sp94 (hardforum special)on my p4p800. What I didn't know was the screws were a biatch to tighten and get on so I got the needle nose pliers to work Carefully screwing them in. Apparently I wasn't careful enough....broke this little tiny thing off the mobo and it was D E A D.

NEVER AGAIN!
 
Mmm....could be the time I touched the inside of my wifes (girlfriend then) comp just to "look around", and fried the video with some good old' static charge.

Or the motherboard swap (Win ME) that freaked windows out (loosing everything, and killing the hdd).

Or the first home build that cost me an extra $40 at the local computer shop because I didn't notice the ram wasnt seated fully ( even rma'd the board before this for the same reason). :D

Oh well.......trial and error.....I'll never do the same mistakes twice!
 
A friend had a Dell and the power supply went bad. He went to CompUSA to buy a new one, the connector was the same for the mobo, same voltage and everything. He turned it on and you heard a *POOF* and about 2 seconds later a cloud of black smoke came out of the back of it. I had to leave b/c i was crying from laughing so hard. He called Dell and they shipped him a replacement and said that you need Dell specific PSU....yeah well, they shipped him a dead one. He had to get another one sent and that finally worked.....until 2 months ago
 
tfarre2 said:
A friend had a Dell and the power supply went bad. He went to CompUSA to buy a new one, the connector was the same for the mobo, same voltage and everything. He turned it on and you heard a *POOF* and about 2 seconds later a cloud of black smoke came out of the back of it. I had to leave b/c i was crying from laughing so hard. He called Dell and they shipped him a replacement and said that you need Dell specific PSU....yeah well, they shipped him a dead one. He had to get another one sent and that finally worked.....until 2 months ago
Click to expand...

I almost did the same thing! I was unknowing...... and i needed a higher PSU for the new geforce4 TI4200 (needed 300watt......... my 4 year old dell had a 200watt).

Went to the local CompUSA and asked them if it would be ok............ they said "sure, it should work". Im very glad i did'nt listen to them, that could have caused me some big problems ^_^
 
My friend was using superglue for some minor mod and he cracked the tube and it squirted in his eye. He has recovered but he couldnt see with it for a week and it took like a month to heal.
 
Well....

I was gettin all drunk by myself in my room one summer after my sophomore year in college, and i decided it was a good time to check out my mobo to see how things were going.

I took the cover off (a desktop case) and then proceded to dump my rum n coke all over it. Damnit. It still ran but now 1/2 the ram slots don't work, and the ones that do are SUPER sticky. hehehe i still use the board today (as a backup/server)
 
ninethreeeleven said:
I broke my fathers old Win 3.1 machine about 20 times (How else was I supposed to learn how to work it, other than trial and error?)
Pete Rose baseball was a crappy game from what I heard, but I put those 14 disks in religously and deleted files if I couldn't fit the game (who needs this "Explorer" file anyway :eek: )

I tought myself everything I now know (quite limited compared to you guys) But I also have explained to my family that I know a fair amount, another BIG MISTAKE, I am now resident tech-support to everyone in my extended family. About 8 computers, and 38 "clients." But NO PAY!!!!
Click to expand...

I can completely relate to you. We got our first 486 when I was in, I think 3rd grade? I wanted to install this set of dos pinball games I got but didnt have the space. So I started deleting. I thought who needs this HIMEM file anyway.

Big mistake. Boy did I get into trouble for that one. My Dad beat the shit outta me for that one. (don't worry it wasn't child abuse) he told me that if I was going to be on the computer, I had better be able to fix what I break.

I also made (still do unfortuantely) the mistake to telling People in know a lot about computers. Family is one thing, a dorm of about 650 people is another. Thank god I figured out how to only fix one problem at a time so I can hang out with that really hot girl down the hall every couple of days. ;)
 
QwertyJuan said:
NEVER EVER do that... ATX machines will boot on you at the drop of a hat while seating cards in place, in my experience then ONLY machines you can do that on is the old AT's....
Click to expand...

Better yet, get a halfway decent ATX power supply with a rocker on/off switch. Cuz it *is* a good idea to discharge your static.

The almost stupidest thing I ever did was yank an Adaptec 29160 (read: expensive) SCSI card out a a testing machine we had at this shop I worked at, so I could sell it. Then i touch the mouse and the CRT comes on! :eek: Amazingly, both the card and the box survived -- I didn't know win98 supported hot-swap PCI.
 
lopoetve said:
Logged in as root... working on a kernel upgrade. Cleaning out the old source tree.

rm -rf /*

I meant rm -rf ./*

Oops.
Click to expand...

Ooo, I got one similar. Was finishing working on a school programming project (coincidentally, my FINAL school project) that was due the next day, and needed to put all of my source files into a new folder. So I create the folder and start doing

mv File1 ProjectFolder
mv File2 ProjectFolder

or whatever the file names were. turns the actual name of the folder wasn't capitilized.... so I do an "ls" in the folder and.... Hey! Where's all my files?!? AAAAAAAAAGGGH!!

Thankfully I had a slightly older backup, but it took awhile to bring it back up to it's latest version. I use "cp" from now on :rolleyes:
 
Here at work, installing a new 2003 Server on a machine with dual gigabit NICs. Thought to myself, hey, wouldn't it be cool to set up the NICs in a failover configuration? Being new with 2k3 I poked around and found the option to bridge the NICs.

The worst part is, I knew exactly what I'd done as soon as I clicked the button - I'd just made this server a router and taken the whole network down.

When I realized what I'd done I didn't even try to fix it, I just powered off and waited while the entire building went into a panic over the network being down - once they settled back down I unplugged the NICs, powered back up and fixed it, whistling innocently the whole time.
 
Gambrinus5 said:
Here at work, installing a new 2003 Server on a machine with dual gigabit NICs. Thought to myself, hey, wouldn't it be cool to set up the NICs in a failover configuration? Being new with 2k3 I poked around and found the option to bridge the NICs.

The worst part is, I knew exactly what I'd done as soon as I clicked the button - I'd just made this server a router and taken the whole network down.

When I realized what I'd done I didn't even try to fix it, I just powered off and waited while the entire building went into a panic over the network being down - once they settled back down I unplugged the NICs, powered back up and fixed it, whistling innocently the whole time.
Click to expand...

Hey you told us it was a network glitch.

YOU'RE FIRED!!!
 
Haven't had a really dumb moment in several years, but here is one of my favorites.

Back in the days of 2400bps modems, BBSes, 386es and DOS, a friend and I embarked upon an adventure. We were both around 17, and decided to have a long BBS exploring, computer building, game playing weekend. Well, we started by buying a bunch of PC parts to build our new computers. He bought a 386 SX 40, and I (through an interesting chain of events,) ended up with a 486 DX 50. On about the 65th hour of being up with no sleep, we decided it would be a good idea to start building the systems. By that time, I was hearing things, and could hardly see straight. By some miracle, we managed to get all our dip-switch and jumper settings correct. The case we got for my friends SX 40 didn't have the power switch connected to the PSU, (and being AT, had plenty of voltage going to it.) We wired the switch wrong or left a lead off or something, and left the ground lead hanging in the case. We plugged it in, and with a huge spark of blue light, (and subsequently blowing the breaker for the lights in that room) we welded the ground lead to the case. :D It was completely welded and embedded in the case metal. (Which was cool after we rewired the switch.) Anyway, by about the end of the third day, we were hallucinating, and managed to have our new computers up and running.

Guess I've also had a little fun hotswapping PCI and ISA cards, but that was deliberate. :D
 
My Dumbest thing.....

Was in the middle of installing my brand new Radeon 8500 and had the computer sitting on the floor. In the middle of the install my Mother comes in and demands that I clean my room that second (was a few years ago). Well I leave the comp sitting on the floor and start cleaning. In a pure moment of genius I put a full, unopened can of beer on a box next to my computer. Somehow the can fell off the box and into the open case, got punctured on some sharp piece in the computer and proceeded to spray beer all over the inside of my case, including my brand new video card. I was freaked! Stood the computer up and put a big box fan blowing into the case and left it for about 4 hours. Hooked it up after it was all dry and turned it on. Nothing. Started checking everything, and pulled out the video card and found that there was beer inside the AGP slot. Let the fan blow on it with the vid card out until dry, booted up and it worked perfect.

The inside of the case still smells like beer.

Oldbenwa
 
1) I needed to resolder an old AT power switch. Note to self: unplug the power supply first, this ain't ATX folks ;)

2) I grabbed a Y power cable to hook up an extra drive. The asshat manufacturer had the 5v and 12v rails reversed. My precious 6x CD-ROM immediately ejected its tray and went poof.

3) On at least one occasion I have knocked a brand new hard drive off of the table. I remember one in particular that made this absolutely horrible sound afterwards, and in fdisk it would go from 0% to 1% and back to 0%... I'm sorry Maxtor, but I needed that RMA.

4) Using a USB keyboard and mouse (all I have around), I proceeded to apply the USB2.0 patch. Well, if you don't do things in the perfect order, and ignore certain "you have to reboot"s, you end up with no USB. :) "Last known good configuration" saved my ass on that one.

Had a few close calls. The most recent involved spilling water into my laser printer. Afterwards, it would not work right. I guess it eventually dried up because it's back with the living :)

That's all I can think of, never had any really catastrophic data loss or virus infections, thankfully.
 
Oldbenwa said:
My Dumbest thing.....

Was in the middle of installing my brand new Radeon 8500 and had the computer sitting on the floor. In the middle of the install my Mother comes in and demands that I clean my room that second (was a few years ago). Well I leave the comp sitting on the floor and start cleaning. In a pure moment of genius I put a full, unopened can of beer on a box next to my computer. Somehow the can fell off the box and into the open case, got punctured on some sharp piece in the computer and proceeded to spray beer all over the inside of my case, including my brand new video card. I was freaked! Stood the computer up and put a big box fan blowing into the case and left it for about 4 hours. Hooked it up after it was all dry and turned it on. Nothing. Started checking everything, and pulled out the video card and found that there was beer inside the AGP slot. Let the fan blow on it with the vid card out until dry, booted up and it worked perfect.

The inside of the case still smells like beer.

Oldbenwa
Click to expand...

ha ha ha, thats the best. Kinda makes me want to get a vapochill case and turn it into a kegerator....HEY!!!
 
Back in the days of yore when I still used a modem (28.8k) I dialed up a bbs that was long distance (New York I think when I was in Kelowna BC Canada). I think I was looking for a game patch or something, I no longer remember. Looked for what I wanted, couldn't find it, told the computer to disconnect (I thought), and then went out of town for the weekend. Came back two days later, went to use the phone and heard wonderful modem noise. I just about dropped a load right then, International LD for roughly 48 hours straight = nasty phone bill. Damn bbs didn't have an idle timeout :)
 
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