What is the least thought out thing you ever did to a computer?

[smelanson]

I was working on a 386 with only the board, processor, case and controller card, no LEDs connected and I was having problems with the controller card so without thinking I removed the controller card and put another one it, then I went to power the computer on and I noticed it was already on.

[SaveYourself]

I once popped out all those metal things that are behind the 5.25" drive bezels, and it screwed up my airflow pretty good. Now it sucks heat out of the top and pulls it in with the front case fan.

[Mafiosy]

So?? :confused:

[ukulele]

The least thought out thing I ever did was turning the damned thing on in the first place. I've been fussing with it ever since. :D

[BipolarBill]

It was the first day when I looked at the monitor and said "Computer!".

:p

[SearchSkillzzz]

Throwing a 486 together, forgetting to put the ram in, then trying to boot, one of many!:D

[chip55]

Hello
doing fdisk on the wrong drive:o

be well
chip55

[SearchSkillzzz]

Chip thats it, youve done just fine, trivial, lol. Yoyll have that man.!

[smelanson]

I didn't do this but someone did it to me, did you know you can delete most of the Windows directory while in Windows 95, however, you may have problems shutting down properly.

[DocEvi1]

The best would be switching the voltage from 230V(UK) to 110V. There was a lovely green flash and a loud pop....one blown fuse and capictor in the PSU.
Or maybe when I got an electric shock from the socket on the PSU and dropped the then expensive PC base unit on the floor.



Stefan

[SearchSkillzzz]

The more I think about it, 1 more comes to mind, I was working on and old socket 7 board, I was trying to figure out the pc jumper header configuration for the case, hmm, some smoke and then a dead board, great rule of thumb, they weren't marked sometime ago. Please get the motherboard specs before you decide to run 5v or 12v back into the board! It was still experiemantal at the time, my own stuff, but that was a Yikes! I like this confession board thread, good for the soul! :D
It would be great to see the old egos swallowed and the other stories! I like this thread!

[Seggybop]

I pulled out all the PCI cards while the machine was on and poured alcohol in their slots!!!

[BipolarBill]

Originally posted by Seggybop
I pulled out all the PCI cards while the machine was on and poured alcohol in their slots!!! **HIC** :eek:

[snowfall]

I put an AMD K6 450 to replace a cyrix 686 and forgot to change the voltage on the mobo, a while later i smelled something burning.

And i short circuited a NEW mobo with a screw not placed correctly, and wondering why i wouldn't boot up

[herosrest]

Mounting the wrong capacitor reel (8*4 per board) to a 450 board production run. Wo! the MD's face.

[Strawbs]

Brought a can of compressed air in from the cold car, blew the dust out with it, then powered on... Pop went the two month old GF3 graphics card :eek: the dreaded condensation had done for me.

Played it smart for once (lied thru my back teeth) and got a new one on warranty. PHEW!!!

:D
needless to say, I now use a vacuum and a brush.

[jkac123]

After burning a CDR The Disk door opened and I hit with my leg and broke the door off ($200) !!!!!

I still need to find the option that lets the door open after recoding is finished?

Let some body else work on my old 486, he took it and was suppose to be fixing it, well either he was real bad at his so called skill, or he was trying to make more $$$$$, because when I got it back I had a friend come over and helped resolved my problems by simply "enableing" most of the things in setup that we believe he Disabled. I think he did it on purpose to get a return customer.

I have a million of 'em:D

[Bullet-Man-2]

I short circuited my Hard drive 3 times... That would teach me not to leave bare wire and not to try to make your own baybus using 20 gauge wires and 15 amp circuit breakers :rolleyes: .


Cheers m8's!

[dmoltrup]

The least thought-out thing I ever did was to let my wife find out I have a spare power cord. Now she takes both of them when she's pissed at me! :rolleyes:

[hyborn]

Would have to be "accidently" booting bits and pieces accross the floor when dismantling my PC.

Thankfully, as all parts are less than a year old (and there were no outward cracks etc, the warranty came into play ;)

[smelanson]

I had my case open on my 486 and was playing with it while on the net, I accidently hit the power cable to the HD (which was in bad shape) and the HD powered off. I didn't want to lose my work so I pushed it in a bit, the HD started up, I got a BSOD, when I hit enter I just kept on the net like nothing happened.

[BobOmega]

wow these make me feel beter.
heres mine.
the first time i got my new computer up and running, i had not put the case on it yet and i looked inside to make sure all the fans and such were running. and i happened to see a wire dangle real close to the fan on the heatsink. so me being real smart just reached in and atempted to move the wire. but it was dark inside the case and i misjuged the distance and my fingr went right into the fan breaking 2 bades off. no that sucker made a real racket for the next week or so beacuse i could not go to the store to buy a new hsf untill then. what a great first week for a computer.

[SPEEDO]

What is the least thought out thing you ever did to a computer?

Uh, Install Windows....:D

SPEEDO

[TARP2]

I gave my father my aging 486.

Now I'm Tech Support Guy 24/7.

OOps!!

[bob05]

ummmmmmmmmm................changing the jumper settings while my computer was on.:D

[PengyDaPenguin]

Replaced my MB and forgot to put the Heatsink back on the CPU. Ah yes, nothing like an Athlon Paperweight!!
:cool:

[Bullet-Man-2]

hit the 220 volts instead of 115 on the back of my new PSU :( .

I sent it back saying the PSU wasn't working when I got it. hehe they fall for anything.

[Bogg]

Hmms, some of the foolish things i've done:



* Switching from 230 -> 115V on the PSU when it was powered on and i had it in my knee....(without trousers/pants or what you like to call them), my knees hurt for a couple of days after that...

* Touching the back of the motherboard when it was running,
my fingers was all over the back of the socket, and poof the cpu, motherboard and ram was gone

* Trying to remove a piece of paper from the psu-fan while powered on, dumb enough i used a screwdriver to get it off...
Poof again...

* Throwing away a 8Gb fujitsu drive, i got it from school because it didn't work...realized later that it was still 2 years warranty left on it...

* Running my tnt2 without a Heatsink..overclocked by 45Mhz...bye bye...

* Accidentially dropped my 486 Dx4 100Mhz on the floor and...well, bye bye pins...

* Dropped a pc down the stairs, well, lucky enough the only thing that broke was one the chassi-feet...

* Threw away my commodore 64 :( (worked perfectly)

Well...maybe not much as all of this happened trough a 5-6 year period...

[SearchSkillzzz]

Bogg, I have to hand it to you, fantastic confession! Who else is man enough to admit those items, I dare ya!!! Double Dare!! I would love to hear more. Swallow those egos fellas, lets hear it! Fantastic confession Bogg! KUDOS!;)

[SearchSkillzzz]

BOB, if it makes you feel better, lol, I've done that but lucked out and didn't break off any of the fan blades! Wow you must have some pretty rough fingernails man. This is a great thread, keep up the good work? lol Keep up the bad work on this thread man! This is great!Originally posted by BobOmega
wow these make me feel beter.
heres mine.
the first time i got my new computer up and running, i had not put the case on it yet and i looked inside to make sure all the fans and such were running. and i happened to see a wire dangle real close to the fan on the heatsink. so me being real smart just reached in and atempted to move the wire. but it was dark inside the case and i misjuged the distance and my fingr went right into the fan breaking 2 bades off. no that sucker made a real racket for the next week or so beacuse i could not go to the store to buy a new hsf untill then. what a great first week for a computer.

[o0O0oecho0O0o]

let my mom use mine to play Snood. I reluctantly left to go to a friends house, she had to call me up to ask how to turn it off! >.<

[Bullet-Man-2]

how do you break the fan fins? I mean I tried shoving in my fingers into all my fans to see if it would break a fin... But it doesnt work. :rolleyes:

[o0O0oecho0O0o]

well, what the heck Bullet! you better buy yourself some cheaper fans :-P or keep jamming your fingers in there

[Bullet-Man-2]

Originally posted by o0O0oecho0O0o
well, what the heck Bullet! you better buy yourself some cheaper fans :-P or keep jamming your fingers in there

lol. I steal most of my fans from COMPUSA. I mean they have open cases, I just grab a fan and pretend that im looking at the case *closer* and then just look at the price and walk away. I guy stoped me one saying "Hey!" then he's like "Did you know that we can get you 20 bucks off the floor model of that case" Im like "nah, I got enough cooling, for now, Ill come back next week." ;)


Cheers m8!

[Omega2k1]

You Feith. :p

Hmm. I'd have to say one of the least thought out thing ive done was getting a new mobo, processor, and power supply and when it got to my house, i then found out i had an AT case instead of ATX, so i had to get a case too. I could have saved around $30 if i had just got a Barebone Kit...

Another was with the same processor i used the standard heatsink/fan. It sucks balls at cooling my computer and i ended up putting a 120mm fan in the side of my case. Then about 2 months later my Radio Shack thermal gel dried up and i could run my computer. So i ended up getting a new heat sink(Volcano 6cu+). Now my temps are back up cause my stupid Radio Shack thermal **** is dried up again, and i don't really like taking the heatsink off(you always run the risk of hear *pop* and you have a $150 paperweight.

[genesound]

One time, and one time only, I reached over and smacked my hard drive with a closed fist while it was on. I guess it was bein bad and I was mad... well, needless to say it was bein worse after that. It made a grinding noise for a minute then smoothed out. It was a Seagate 10MB full height mfm drive sitting beside the 8088 computer, hooked up with long cables 'cause the XT case wouldn't hold it. Amazingly it continued to run, but some of the files wouldn't access. I ran Disk Doctor on it continuously for a day, re-installed whatever was lost and used it for months afterward, with just a few (dozen!) bad blocks. Whew! Never did that again. Of course that was about 15 years ago... now I've learned to make nice with the hardware. Doubt if I'd get away with that on one of these 10k drives...

[dev3175]

Being strupid enough to say to everyone i knew that know how to fix computers . The phone never stops ringing and i never have time to focus on what i want to do with mine.:D

[cusimar9]

A few basic rules in life regarding a girlfriend/wife:

1. NEVER attempt to teach them to drive
2. Try to avoid letting them read the map while you drive
3. Try to avoid letting them drive while you read the map (??)
4. Never EVER tell them you can /are willing to set up their computer.

Soooo many arguments have risen from my girlfriend calling me while im busy at work saying something like "i've forgotten the password (again) - it must be your fault".

Take heed - don't do it! :D

[o0O0oecho0O0o]

so, what if one is setting up a compuker for their boyfriend? i bet you boys complain more :-P well, not *you* boys because you all obviously know what you're doing. but the ones who dont, i bet i'd never hear the end of it!

[cusimar9]

Good point, I stand corrected. I must admit I was going for the "sexist" approach, but I'll admit it'll work both ways.

so in amending my previous thread........

"A few basic rules in life regarding your PARTNER............

...

4. Never EVER tell them you can /are willing to set up their computer. "

'owzat? :D

[regrob]

:o what about spilling a glass of coke over an open case with the power on :o

Makes for nice fireworks :D





....Reg

[chas3rd]

LOL dmoltrup wifey used to pull that on my and my kid broyher wher super nintendo came out.

the only bad thing I think I ever did was erase a whole hard drive because of a master boot virus .. a little more reserch found that I didnt need to spend 4 hours reloading all that software could have cleaned it from dos geeze

shoulda asked you guys first

LMAO @ tarp got the same situation here :p

[Roy Wilkins]

Well , what I did is that I took my desktop computer in my driveway ,open the case & I used my electric blower,,, about 1 HP. Point the nozzle directly to the tower & blow out all suckers(dust) inside the tower.
It works fine & I,m still doing it.:p

[Moliere]

On a previous computer I was swapping out the power supply. As I was putting the wiring on the board I didn't realize that the power was on. Every time I went to test it, the surge protector kept shutting it down. Being real smart I decided to bypass the surge protector and plug it directly into the wall socket not realizing that some wires were reversed. Before I could even plug it all the way in, the wall sock sparked. The entire socket was charred black and the prongs on the cord even melted halfway down. I must have sat there for 20 minutes thinking how close I came to seeing if there really is a god.

[Swordfish]

Finally, threw my state of the art video card SIS 6326 from the top of a 17 storied building.....:D

Thats the end to that f vid card :t

[Bogg]

Have one more...

I once tried to desolder the USB-connectors from my p3 motherboard, needless to say, it didn't work out very well.
That mobo never started again...

[herosrest]

Swordfish.

I hope you had taken the card out of the system unit.:cool:

[$1500-P4 gamer]

My first home pc. Twas a 386. Spent a week loading the os i.e. dos and windows 1.0. Everytime it would load and save but on reboot it was gone. Everytime. Here my buddy had used it and run one of his home disks on it. Had given me a boot sector virus. Cost $150 for the shop to reload and remove virus. That was when I said enuff is enuff. I'm learning this stuff.
So that was two stupid moves.

A: never let unknowledgable PC'ers mess with your pc.
B: If you loose the data over and over every boot, its probably a virus-duh! :eek:

Man I was dumb back then, surprised I didnt look for the any key.

[$1500-P4 gamer]

Oh, and come to think of it there was a buddy of mine who wanted to run Linux on his 440bx board. So I said,"I dont know linux but I'll try to help".
Get there, install it, it finds the voodoo3 card and stuff no prob.s. It reboots to start the linux Red Hat O.S. and smoke rolls out the back. Killed the voodoo3 and the agp socket. Never did figure out that one, just that there is no linux on my expensive machine. That scared me right out of the whole Linux scene alltogether. I'd run it on my old 486 and while its smokeing I can roast marshmellows.:t

[Bullet-Man-2]

lets try to keep these threads REAL. Enough with this BS of trowing computers down 17 stories off from some WTC in Japan. I mean most of these are funny, but some just sound stupid and made up.


ohh well.... I kicked in my new sub woofer by accident =(.. 6.5 inch excurtion I bought for 150 bucks.... Ohh I loved that sub... :(

[dmoltrup]

One recurring stupid thing I used to do was install stuff or save files to a "RAMdisk", and then press reset, or switch the power off. I probably did that nine or ten times before it really sank in to make sure I was on drive 'C:'!

[herosrest]

There really isn't that much to learn.
When You step back and think through the science,
accept that twenty years ago no one really knew what they
were doing - understand that a 'garage' business exploded
in twenty years to economic gianthood and is a phenomenon
ready to touch every human on the planet, its amazing that it does just work

:t :t :t :t :t :t :t :t :t :

[G Ray88]

Discovered that sound the MB makes when installing memory, in an old 386 and the snapping noise wasn't the memory snapping in place needless to say, the MB was toast.:eek:

[morpheus kain]

I had just set down a glass of water so my hand was a little wet and when I bumped something (dunno what) I heard a loud pop and I felt a piercing pain shoot up my arm:eek:. That old server has never given me a problem since.

[Steve Canyon]

Worst I ever did was sell my 386DX40. It would run all my DOS games and Windows 3.1 with no problems. But no, I thought I needed to upgrade to a 486, and that's when all my problems started. Second worst was buying a barebones on E-Bay, and then having to upgrade to Win98SE.

A close second and third was watching two different Techs screw up my computer(s) while I was standing right there. I warned them, but they seemed to think they were doing OK, and, not being a Tech, I let it go. Who am I, not being a Tech, to argue with a Tech? Ha ha.

[mcool61]

One time I "fixed a 50x cdrom. I completely dismantled it & never did figure out what "fixed" it. I was just happy that it worked!
When i use it to install software & it ramped up to full speed it vibrated & my computer locked up. I eventually figured out that high speed cdrom drives are mounted on rubber & if the drive isn't hanging from them & touches the enclosure a high frequency vibration is transmitted to the drive cage & may ruin your 6.5 gig hard drive. I saved a $35 cdrom & bought myself a new $100 hard drive. I am truly my own worst enemy!

[couch potato]

Originally posted by Seggybop
I pulled out all the PCI cards while the machine was on and poured alcohol in their slots!!! WTF were you thinking, or were you thinking at all.....:confused:

[BadBadNeil]

I was doing my final 3D project in college and it crashed on me, i threw my chair and made a hole in the wall and then proceeded to kick my pc....

it shut off and made a beeping noise that wouldnt stop and it wouldnt boot. I found out i destroyed my floppy....thank jesus it wasnt my hard drive or i would have really flipped!!!

[smelanson]

Sounds like a bit of built up anger