What is the biggest newb mistake you have made since you got interested in computers?

[MarkM]

Paid $350 for a Timex Sinclair 2000 computer (this was 1984) Never could find very much software for it to begin with, then Timex closed down their computer division. I still have fond memories of the Sinclair ZX81 I had before it, and indeed still have the computer, which I built myslef -- FYI for all of you who say you BUILD your computers, I am willing to bet few or none of you have ever SOLDERED individual resistors, capacitors, jumprs and chips to a circuit board! -- but the 2000 I finally brought myself to take out of the attic and throw out a couple years ago, after it had seen maybe 20 hours of toal use over 20 years.

 

[nvbtye]

pwachz

 

[imported_Chemist]

Letting my parents buy themselves a Dell.

Thankfully I convinced them to let me rebuild their system and reuse whatever I can from it.

 

[krcat1]

Buying an AppleIIe instead of a Commadore. The Apple was nice, but BASIC programming editor required reentering the entire line of code to correct a syntax error.

Also, nobody told me that gotos were harmful. the first program I wrote had 500 of them.

I stopped using the computer for a long time after I finished.

 

[HannibalTheCannibal]

Bought a GATEWAY Astro all-in-one PC 12/05/99 A day I will never forget.
Celeron 400mhz, 64MB ram, 8mb video

 

[PascalT]

bought a pre-built comp at a local store.

3k for a full p3-450 system. that was 6 yrs ago..

 

[Pciber]

Originally posted by: HannibalTheCannibal
Bought a GATEWAY Astro all-in-one PC 12/05/99 A day I will never forget.
Celeron 400mhz, 64MB ram, 8mb video

I almost won one of those in a web design competition for middle schoolers, back in the day.

Worst for me was probably frying a 450mhz k6/2. Somehow or another I confused the voltage jumpers for the mult jumpers, and set them way too high. It posted, ran for about 10 seconds, then died.

I also killed an Epox 8rda3+ and an AXP 2500-M.. Bought a Thermalright SLK947U, used, and it didn't come with a backplate.. I didn't know it was supposeto come with a back plate, and i used the seller's directions to install it.. and promptly scratched my motherboard. Didnt notice the scratch, turned it on, nothing happened. :\

 

[amol]

Originally posted by: Chemist
Letting my parents buy themselves a Dell.

Thankfully I convinced them to let me rebuild their system and reuse whatever I can from it.

really? because in most cases, it is a good decision

im off to college soon and i'd rather have my parents (and other family members) call tech support rather than me if they have problems

 

[SlitheryDee]

WAAAAY back in the day I plugged my PS cable into an AT motherboard with the black wires facing outward. A smoking motherboad is not conducive to mental health...

 

[RanDum72]

I think mine was back in the days of the 486 PC's with VLB (Vesa Local Bus) slots. I bought this really expensive VLB SCSI controller (with memory cache, etc..). Because VLB cards are a PITA to install I exerted TOO much force, cracking the VLB card AND the motherboard (which is also a very expensive server-type mobo made by, I think, SuperMicro). Not believing I actually cracked both, I turned the PC on anyway and there was this spark and smoke was all over the place. I ended up burning the CPU, my harddrive, basically everything (even the PSU was flakey after that). Only the case was usable.

 

[alteredNate]

In '99 I "aquired" an old SCSI 20GB server drive (the 1" thick variety) from my work and plugged it into my controller which had a newer 36GB and an 74GB attached (these 2 I had payed for...). Well, upon first powerup the thing smoked the controller, my scsi CD burner, AND BOTH other hard drives. I mean litterally smoked them. My room stank for a could of hours. I never actually figured out exactly what caused the problem...

I learned not to trust "aquired" goods. Thankfully I was able to RMA everything, I just lost all my data. Nice!

 

[zakee00]

Trying "sudo rm -rf /" because someone told me to... (DON'T. EVER. DO. THAT.)

r_o_f_l
that sucks big time; sudo commands can be very bad.

 

[thelostjs]

not my worst per see sp.. whatever.. anyways anyone besides me tried to solder without using flux? i finally used some and i was like HOLY ^^$&%&#%@ this is easy

worst would be buying a motherboard with an agp slot and no agp support(865gv by asrock)... ie. it runs in pci mode... fix still pending.. arghh!..

 

[Mr. Lennon]

Man you guys have some great stories. Couple years ago when I did my first computer build I didnt think about the airflow from the fans. I just plugged in all 3 and turned it on. The pc woul always crash about 20 min into playing a game. After finally learning how to find temps in the bios I figured heat was my problem. Well to my suprise all the fans were blowing air into the case, not out.

 

[TheNiceGuy]

Putting up with the data cassette unit on the Commodore 64 my uncle gave us. I should have lobbyed my cheapskate parents to at least get us a disk drive. Even the worst games took about 30 minites to load, it was literaly a cassette tape.

And 18 months ago, trusting the salesman that the Sis740 based Fujitsu PC would play all the latest games and was upgradable for the future. After about 4 months I figured out why nothing over directX 7 would play - no AGP slot.

lol

 

[imported_sphinx]

My folks got me a PC for christmas in the early 90's, it was a Packard Bell. I was running Win 3.1. I had bought Quake for it. I installed the game, with no problems. When I tried to run the game I received an error telling me it couldn't run the game because I didn't have a math co-processor installed on my system. So I called a local computer store asking for a math co-processor and, they hung up on me. I felt like a freakin moron at that time and so embarrased when they had hung up on me. It is actually pretty funny now but not then.

 

[Texun]

1.) Bought a used 286 with DOS back in the late 80's. I learned not to use DELTREE *.* in the root.

2.) Buying a dual socket motherboard because it was dirt cheap and thought I could buy a couple of cheap Celerons to run it. Ended up buying 2 PIII's for 5X what the board cost just so I could use it.

3.) Not my mistake but a friends. I offered to upgrade Win 3.1 to Win95 for him and spent the better part of a day getting it to recognize his modem. He called later to say W95 wouldn't boot up after he restored some files with his tape backup. I asked what files he restored and he said, "all of 'em."

 

[Cheesetogo]

Standiing by and watching as my friend randomly deletled stuff in the registry of several school computers and screw up the bios settings. One of the computers would not boot windows, the other could not detect the hard drive, and two of them booted up and started off half way through installing windows.
Watching my friiend buy an alieware for $3000 with stuff you coudl get for $1000, and then him letting his brother distroy a perfectly good one year old dell because windows had to be reinstalled but he never activated it and he did't bother calling tech support.

 

[JackDanielsDrinker]

I'm embarressed, but I just made this mistake 2 weeks ago and I've been in computers for 20 years.

I was screwing with an old ECS board that was freezing. Replacing all the components one by one. Then I started messing with the BIOS. Suddenly, the computer won't POST. Just get two double beep codes.

I start up my other computer (Pentium 2 300--ouch) to research. I clear the CMOS (already done this three times that night). This time it didn't work. ACK!!!!

I spend 90 minutes trying to get the crap floppy on my Pentium 2 machine to make a boot floppy, because you can still flash the ECS with a specially made boot floppy (even if it doesn't POST).

Now I'm rotating all three floppy drives I own into the Pentium 2 to make a bootable floppy. No go. I've always hated floppies.

So I finally glance back over to the main computer. Hmmm, that's funny, why is the VGA cable lying on the carpet? ACK!!!!!!

VGA cable fell out of the video card.

 

[JackDanielsDrinker]

Originally posted by: MarkM
Paid $350 for a Timex Sinclair 2000 computer (this was 1984) Never could find very much software for it to begin with, then Timex closed down their computer division. I still have fond memories of the Sinclair ZX81 I had before it, and indeed still have the computer, which I built myslef -- FYI for all of you who say you BUILD your computers, I am willing to bet few or none of you have ever SOLDERED individual resistors, capacitors, jumprs and chips to a circuit board! -- but the 2000 I finally brought myself to take out of the attic and throw out a couple years ago, after it had seen maybe 20 hours of toal use over 20 years.

At least you could take it with you when you travel. That was the (relatively) tiny one right?

 

[JackDanielsDrinker]

OK, I just did it again.

I have my 3.5 inch drive cage unscrewed and sitting on the 5.25 inch cage. The bottom hard drive was exposed to the metal 5.25 cage.

Can you say MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION?

Good Lord I need a Jack.

 

[Regs]

Putting a Fart + Burp keylogger program on my boss's computer. Everytime he pressed a key - "Buuuurp, Fart, Burrrrrp, Fart". Hah. Even went through all the trouble of disconnecting the power switch from the master head on the motherboard.

 

[Mem]

Hmm buying wise probably a generic 300w PSU years ago in my padawan days which exploded within the first second of power lol.....build wise installing a floppy drive power lead the wrong way round,result =dead drive.

 

[Nick5324]

I have two. First, I was troubleshooting a hardware issue, which meant shutting off the comp, taking something out, turn it back on, not it, do it all over with a different part. After about 6 cycles of this, i was tired of dealing with it and became careless. I pulled the modem out of the computer while it was still running. At first, I was like 'why the hell is this modem so hot...' then it hit me. Surprisingly, i was able to put it back in and the computer started up with no problem. Second, i had a Geforce 2 GTS, and for some reason the hsf fell off while i was using the computer, and fried the GPU. In a hurry, I went to best buy to get a new card. I found two cards in my budget, a Radeon 9500 and a GeForce4MX 420 (not even a 440!!!). The Radeon was something like $10 more, but at the time I wasn't a fan of Ati cards, and bought the MX420. *Sigh*

 

[Malladine]

I put thermal grease on the little pads in the corners of the cpu instead of on the die...