Dumbest thing you've ever done

[mgacam2]

I installed windows vista


haha that top one is somewhat serious but on a more hardware based mistake my old athlon 700 slot A motherboard i somehow killed 2 of my 4 memory slots because i put one of them in the other way in and got so frustrated i started the computer with it half in. Needless to say that motherboard became a wonderful blue screen of death beauty and caused me problems for a good year or 2 before i upgraded to a 2.4 celeron GULP...im so thankful for my core2duo you have no idea

 

[sjandrewbsme]

Originally posted by: CDC Mail Guy
Just installed a HSF last night before removing the plastic from the base The REALLY bad thing was that it was not an easy install...had to remove the motherboard. Hung in BIOS forever, then temps in the 80's (C) I wonder why it didn't just blow up on me I went to bed wondering what was going on, then as I was falling asleep, I figured it out. Repeat the process of mobo removal this AM, and only 3 of the lock down pin thingy's came out, so I had to kinda reach in and pull off the plastic and half @$$ reapply Artic Silver, What a pain. Live and learn though...I'll NEVER do that again.

My friend did the exact same thing.

I was walking him through installation over the phone when he called back up and asked why his computer was crashing. I was able to deduce that his temps were too high and we confirmed. I told him to re-check the mounting of the HS/F which he did. He took it off and re-mounted it. In so doing, he snapped the portion of the retention spring. He kept talking about how hard it was to install and I just kept saying "don't worry about it".

Anyway - he asked a curious question when he FINALLY got the retention spring off: "should I take off the glass too?". Of course he was referring to the HS plastic cover. When it was all said and done his system worked fine - and is still working today.

I still give him hell for that one

 

[Gautama2]

Last night I took my headphones and laid down on my bed to have a good listen (Thelonious Monk FWIW), i set my alarm so I wouldnt fall asleep with them on. Needless to say, I fell asleep. I awoke, in a half-daze state. Somethine was beeping, there was a piano and a saxophone, I freaked. I clinched the headband and threw the HD555s off of my head, hitting the wall. The cord jerked and cracked hte plastic output on my X-Fi (still works) and jerked the card out of the slot. Luckily, the card still works along with everything else, except I fried that particular pci slot.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Not so long ago I was having problems with several of my external usb ports not working. I took a closer look inside the case which revealed that I'd plugged them into a firewire header. Once I plugged them on to a usb header they worked fine and I felt stupid.

 

[KamiXkaze]

The most dumbest thing that I done was sit on one of the disc (driver for the graphics card) so that really suck bad.

KxK

 

[MagicConch]

recently i took a cat5 port set in phone port modeand attempted to get a network printer working on it for about 35 mins before pluggin in a phone and realizing there was a dial tone. in this effort i somehow damaged an hp driver on my computer (already hooked up to the network fine) that i couldn't remove w/o reinstalling the os so i literally sold the inkjet printer and bought myself an epson color laser, prayed there would be no issues, and told most of the people around "it was time to upgrade.."

 

[Ruptga]

Originally posted by: Puffnstuff
Not so long ago I was having problems with several of my external usb ports not working. I took a closer look inside the case which revealed that I'd plugged them into a firewire header. Once I plugged them on to a usb header they worked fine and I felt stupid.

I once did the same thing, except it fried the USB ports. The mobo headers are the exact same, and they wouldn't make two electrically incompatible things physically identical would they? Well, they've done that at least once.

Edit: Or did I plug a firewire plug into a USB header? I don't remember, either way, there was a mixup and something died.

 

[Cogman]

This list is long but I just had to add some of mine .

The first computer I bought I did not get a heat sink with it (What would you need that for?) It was a Duron 600 MHZ. I figured out later that you needed a heat sink, but I wanted to see my computer run. So I got a plastic bag and some Ice... Surprisingly I did not fry anything and the computer booted up just fine (I probably had some of my lowest temps ever!)

The thing that I do on almost every install (man, it makes me sweet like crazy when I do it) when im installing the heat sink, invariably the screwdriver will slip and hit the mother board, Man that always scares me half to death (though I have never broken a motherboard that way).

I got my sister a Shuttle XPS system with a Athlon XP 2400+ Mobile. At the time, the 2400+ mobile was all the rage in over clocking, I had dabbled a little bit but did not really know what I was doing, I thought a 200W (may even have been a 150) power supply would be plenty.. That system never worked again.

not me, but my brother installed a heatsink on his computer backwards while I was away for like 2 years (I built the computer for him) Apparently some of his computer savy friends helped him with it. I swapped out the CPU and rotated the heatsink and Viola, everything worked fine (He traded a 2500+ Barton which was overclocking to 3200+ Speeds for a 2800 sempron.... I could have killed him..)

My last one I witnessed is a teacher allowed her students to play with some broken computers. It had not occurred to her that there might be dangerous parts in them. One of the kids opened up a monitor and pulled out one of the huge capacitors, He found a good shocking toy (The stupid teacher never realized that the capacitors can kill someone.) He punishment was I believe he shocked her a couple of times with it.

 

[jondl]

The first computer i built was a 1ghz AMD Thunderbird. I was installing an alpha copper heatsink and for some odd reason decided to plug in the power cord before i started installing the block. Well, right when i plugged in the power cable, the system turns on out of nowhere! I didn't know what to do and grabbed the heatsink and started pressing it against the CPU trying not to get it fried. That didn't work. Anyone that ever worked with a thunderbird KNOWS that they get EXTREMELY hot in milliseconds.

I was a boy in middle school at the time and called AMD to ask them for help. Got a nice CS rep who offered a replacement even though i obviously voided my warranty. 2-3 weeks later i get a brand new 1.4ghz CPU instead of my original 1.0ghz which i still have till this day!

 

[Nathelion]

Hah. Most of these stories are lame. Back when I was a n00b (=probably up to this day) I didn't know that there were different types of thermal grease. So I had this P4 Prescott, and I applied this cheapo generic white sticky silicon stuff on it and put the heatsink on. Well, guess what, after about a year the CPU HSF got so full of dust and crap that I had to clean it out. I also didn't know there was anything such as canned air that can help you with these kinds of things. So I take out the HSF and it's really, really hard to do. But these plastic clips on the socket 478 have always been hard to work with, so I think, whatever, it's just being stubborn. Imagine my horror when i realize that the processor came out with it! Once I had cleaned out the heatsink, I reassembled everything, and... the comp wouldn't boot. I take out the CPU, and guess what, one of the pins is off. So me and a more savvy friend get out this soldering iron and manage to fashion a replacement pin that we stick on there. So far, so good. The system works perfectly.
If that had been the end of the story, i would have been a happy man. But of course, being a sucker for punishment, i decide that I really need to get a better mobo so I can do some overclocking. So I take out the processor again, and of course the sodder pin falls off. What to do now? I call up the same friend, and we try to resurrect the CPU again, except this time, it doesn't work. The heat of the soldering iron ends up melting the solder point on an adjacent pin, and it falls off. This continues, and in the end, therre are 5-6 pins missing, and we're like "f*ck". Being an even greater sucker for punishment, I try to replace the pin with a little piece of metal that I stick into the mobo socket. Some people have indeed done this successfully. Well, I have 5-6 pins that I have to do it for, so end result is that it doesn't work and i end up thrashing the socket on the new mobo. So I went from working mobo and CPU to broken mobo and CPU (I traded in the old mobo to get a good price). End result? I end up getting a new board off of newegg and a used proc off of ebay. Set me back some $200. The new processor does overclock well, but since my RAM is kind of budget and the multiplier is locked... well, I've never been able to reach more than 3.6 GHz, and i can only run 3.48 or so completely stable. That's the system I'm sitting on now. but it's like they say. The more dumbass things you do, the more you learn.

 

[Nathelion]

Oh, and I've only used AS5 since that day. It doesn't turn into glue if you leave it on for a couple of months.

 

[pkrush]

The most moronic thing I ever did was when I tried to reformat my XP partition by booting from a DOS floppy. At the time I didn't realize that NTFS partitions don't show up in DOS, and so of course I typed Format C: and erased my entire data drive. Now I make sure to check what's on the partition BEFORE I format it.

A close second would probably be running a Duron 950 for six months with no thermal paste at all. I only noticed because it started randomly freezing. The entire substrate around the processor was discolored. Actually, the lack of thermal paste wasn't even the problem, it turns out that the RAM was bad. It still ran fine until I retired it 3 years ago, though.

 

[Techno Pride]

 

[ribbon13]

never had used a hex editor before... didn't know what the master boot record was either...

using rum in place of cleaning fluid on those 5 1/4" head cleaning diskettes

buying one of those 486 upgrade chips that piggybacked on to soldered 386s

i once was programming a game on my commodore 64 one summer, and after one particular stay-up-for-days session lasting about a week, all my fish had died

 

[Sumguy]

"Huh, well everything is connected but the fan and heatsink...CPUs cant possibly heat up that fast, right? Whats the harm booting it up to see if it works!"

Yeah, never do that.

 

[Modelworks]

dumbest thing was trying to install a motherboard with only light from a lamp on the table.
almost placed a jumper on the wrong spot.

Seriously best thing you can do when working on a pc is get plenty of light !

didn't do it myself , but friend tried removing heatsink with a screwdriver.
Screwdriver slipped, he managed to break several traces on the board, killing it.

 

[RanDum72]

Back in the days when you can actually upgrade the level 2 cache on the motherboard (some boards have some empty sockets for 128k or 256k tag sram or something like that), I ordered an upgrade for 256k that cost me like $150. just plugged it in and 'pfftt' burning smell. Turned out I put the thing wrong, I should have aligned the semi-circular notch on the chip with the socket. Fortunately, my mobo was fine so I ordered more cache memory. I made sure that I aligned it right, inserted, powered on, then 'pfftt''again. this time there was smoke adn sparks. Turned out I did align it right but two of the pins spread their legs and didn't insert into the socket. It instead shorted out a cap or something. This time my mobo AND my CPU died.

 

[secretanchitman]

ordered 2x512MB ddr-400 for a dell that i KNEW only could take ddr-333...i thought the ddr-400 sticks would clock down. again, they didnt, so i had absolutely no computer.

plugged the firewire headers on the mobo to the usb ones....that didnt go so well..........dammit those stupid pins not being colorcoded and for me not reading the manual.

 

[JSt0rm]

I was prying a hsf off a p3 with a screwdriver and drove it into the traces on the motherboard. New motherboard time.

 

[alzan]

These stoies are great. Here's a couple of mine:

1) Working on a PC at work (an old 486) and was troubleshooting a video problem; I had swapped in known-working parts and had removed the DIMMs last, I swapped in known-working DIMMs with the power on, DOHHH!!

2)Witnessed this one: Back in the day when a 300MB hard drive was the size of a washing machine and the disks were 15MB platters in a stack of 12 on a removable spindle, one our units where I worked was not operational and a service call was placed. It should be noted that the proper procedure when completing service on one of these drives is to spin the unit up without loading the heads onto the platters for 30 minutes to purge any dust particles. The guy came out and started servicing the unit. He gets all done, puts the disk pack in and spins up the unit with the heads engaged; I hear this metallic screeching coming from the drive and I see him spinning it down but it was too late; of the 24 read/write heads on that drive - 22 had to be replaced (at $75 a head.) The platters had some very pretty designs in them also ! Needless to say, he didn't come out on any service calls again (I'm pretty sure he got canned.) I'm also glad I had made a backup of that disk prior to the service call.

alzan

 

[primesone]

Do you see that red switch on the back of your psu, the one that lets you use it in different countries.
Don't change it's position while the computer is on.
While this may seem common sense to everyone, for some unknown reason i felt a need move it without considering what it was for.
What followed was a puff of smoke as it died
luckily the rest of the system still worked when i replaced it

 

[SpeedEng66]

my dumb moment

building my htpc (matx board in a matx case socket 479)
installing the mb into the case routing all of the wires/cables under the mb/out of the way, (spent a ton of time trying to make the inside look nice with a nice air flow) installed the pentium m in and then I just started cursing...I didnt install the hsf/back piece (socket 478 style hsf)


take off all the cables ect, ect, :frown:

 

[Rankor]

Wanted to "test" a 120mm case fan that I just bought from Fry's Burbank back in 2003.

Instead of using the psu's 12v connections, I decided to use a 120v wall socket.

It worked for 2 seconds spinning up and beyond max rpms before blowing up with a big "POW".

 

[vanvock]

Dumbest & luckiest- swapped cpu's with rig powered down but plugged in. I had got sidetracked going back & forth doing some other stuff at the same time & did'nt even notice until I had it all back together, looked over & saw the 5vsb led glowing. No problem though, works fine.

 

[Lazlo Panaflex]

Dumb mistake #1 -- Good to see I'm not the only one that accidently ripped out a heatsink w/ a chip attached (in this case, a Celeron 466); luckily, no pins ripped out...only bent ones. Straightened 'em, popped it back in, worked!

Dumb mistake #2 -- Forgot to take the plastic cover off the Freezer 7 Pro. Screwed up the MX-1 paste. Brilliant. Reapplied AS5, and then broke the plastic on one of the push pins while attempting to install said heatsink. PITA RMA w/ eWiz. I really detest that push pin setup.

Dumb mistake #3 -- Recently added 2 extra sticks of DDR2...wasn't paying attention & tried to install the 2nd stick backwards. Ended up breaking off a bit of the plastic thingy that holds the memory in place. Brilliant. Luckily, the RAM/mobo's working fine. TIP: Don't work on PC's while sleep deprived! :-O