What is the worst thing that you have done to a computer that was running?

[Maverick]

Well, this isn't really something that happened directly to me, but I saw it happen to my freshman year dorm roommate.
We both had our computers on opposite sides of the room, and suddenly water started coming underneath our door and flooding the room, his computer was on and mine was off. We were both asleep at the time and I got up to get a drink of water. I stepped off my bed and my foot was half submerged. I was yelled "Mike your computer!", but he was already off the bed trying to get it to shut down. Of course, the machine hung. So he unplugged it and lifted it up on a desk. We then went to get a vacuum to fix the room. After the room was clear, he lifted up his machine and it literally SPEWED water. It was like emptying a bucket full of water. We thought it was dead for sure. Anyways, he opened the case and turned a fan on it to dry out for like 2 days. Then he powered it up and everything has worked perfectly since!

 

[Adul]

My cat doesn't do bad things like o into my open case. he just likes to sit on my keyboard. DOH!

Techno, Stay away from my comp.

Some years ago my mom was having a problem with her comp at her office. So I had to fix it. Well, I proceed to trouble this computer and try to figure out whats wrong. I start to put everything back Video, memory, 486 CPU. Turn it on and was greeted by a bright orange glow from the vicinity of the CPU. YIKES! :Q Needless to say I fried the CPU and cracked the ceramic casing on it. I also took out the MB in the process. Went to a dx4-133 has a quick fix.

 

[NFS4]

Techno, quit looking at Anandtech while making hardware changes

 

[Techno]

All 3 storys happened on my old home machine.

My only defense: My X-girlfriend (wile with her) turned me stupid!!

 

[arthurb1]

Oh man, I have almost put a GFD onto my Athlon while it was running once but I plugged in the powerlead for the GFD and saw the light come one...sh*t! luckily the GFD still worked though...Buzzed my fingers in a fan so many times that I have calluses that could rival any guitar players!

 

[Marty]

I screwed the bios on my KA7. I was supposed to use a clean boot disk, but instead used a win98 install disk, which launched all kinds of crap. End result: bad bios chip, which I mailed to Abit. They flashed it for free and sent it back within a week.

Not me, but some guy came into work with a PC. He had physically removed and reinserted a sound card while the computer was running. he said he saw a spark. Bottom line: dead sound card, dead motherboard...

Marty

 

[Edski]

A several years ago when Duke Nukem was the rage, I had an P133 system. Well, my system was starting to get slow and getting on my nerves really bad. During a game, I had gotten so lagged that I just blew my cool. I stood up, took a step back, then proceeded to drop kick my system. It flew across the room and slammed against the wall, everything went black. My wife came running in to see what happened, she saw the computer on the floor and the look on my face and just shook her head. After I had time to cool off, I plugged everything back where it was supposed to be, it came right up and went into Windows....for about a week, then the processor went out.

 

[yata]

When I bought my first computer online, I ordered a system that included a KDS refurbished monitor. It arrived to my dorm, hooked it up, and ran fine. But after a week, the monitor would not degauss properly, geometry goes haywire everytime it's turned on.

I had to hit the monitor a couple of times to fix the crt, while I'm playing games...

One day, I left it on to go to class. When I came back, WHOLLY SH!T~~~!!! I open my door and the room reeked of burnt plastic. The smell was so strong it would've killed any mammal if it had slept over. My monitor was fried for a whole hour.

That smell got out and took down the whole hall too. I threw the monitor away, but man... I mean... that air... it was so strong to even get high from it. Wasn't three days after until the sickening plastic reek went away.

 

[Seeko]

Yo techno, the point is learning from your mistakes. But it doesn't seem that you have. I hope your next girlfriend smartens you up, before you black out the whole city

 

[Seeko]

Another thing Techno, I think your next girlfriend should be a brunette.

 

[theChiquitaBanana]

This happened to my friend just this week. Well he got a new PIII 600e, not really cause he need one, but just cause me and a few buds got new comps so he jumped on the bandwaggon. So anyway he proceed to install an old BE6 into his case, only he didn't put in those little rings that fit under the board so that the solder points doesn't touch the case. So he turns it on and promptly fries the board. Well so the next day he goes to PC Club, what's customer service?, and gets an Asus P3V4X, he installs that and guess what still doesn't install the rings. This time the board catches fire and he gets the thing exchanged. So finally he gets the system running and I go to his house to help him install a video card, I plug the thing in and guess what, the rings were sitting on the desk.

theChiquitaBanana

 

[Soccerman]

lol this reminds me of that thread a long time ago about electricity and shocks.. didn't that one somehow turn out to being a levitation device by attaching a cat's paws to the peanut butter side of a peace of toast? oh wait that was another.. that was hilarious!

Though I haven't ever done anything while the computer was on, I have gotten my hand scraped by the fans! lol..

 

[arthurb1]

This guy came into software etc while I was in there the other day (b4 Diablo II) And he talked about how him and his buddy had wired their two houses together for a LAN. I told him about what could happen and he called me crazy, do I get points for at least warning him about a fire and possibly killing himslef with an electric shock?

 

[RossGr]

This was about 8yrs ago. I decided that the 2" case speaker on mighty 286 was way to cheesy. I stopped by Radio Shack and picked up a nice 4" with a big MAGNET. Opened the case and was looking for a good place to mount it, this while loading a game off the hard drive. For some reason I cannot remember I sat the new speaker down on the hard drive. For some reason the game ceased to load. This is a lesson on how to do a bulk erase on an HD.

Ended up getting a new Mobo because I did not have the setup program for the old one needed to do a low level format.

 

[brian_riendeau]

When I first got a Celeron 366@550 it seemed like my Alpha cooler was not firmly seated on the CPU. The Alpha was cool to the tough, so I figured, "Heck, might as well touch the back of the slotket and see if that is hot, then I will know if my Alpha is on there right..." I reached into the case and touched the sloket without grounding myself or anything. Right as I touched it a statice charge went from me into the sloket and my computer turned off instantly as if the power went out. Everything was fine when I turned it back on, woohoo!

 

[Snoopyduke]

I have my comp running with the case open (its much cooler that way. ). It sits a couple inches from my right foot (my kicking foot. )

I was playing quake one day, some guy shot around the corner and blew me away with a single super shotgun blast. It scared the hell out of me, my arms/legs went flailing, and i NAILED my sound card.

Luckily, no noticeable damage occurred. )

 

[Cknyc]

I fried my bp6 and 2 celerons last summer, I had a few of those fans that were made for the motherboard fan connectors. Anyway I had molex adapters connected to them. Well I was working on my computer and by mistake tugged on one and the adapter just came right off and a 12v wire swung in my case until it hit my processor heatsink. I saw a spark and then a pop and then smelled burnt plastic. Thank god It was replaced. I would have been out a good $300+. Everything else worked fine.

Another time i was working in my case while it was on and my finger went into one of the 80mm case fans. Well nothing happened to my finger but the blades broke off the fan. Dont try this at home. I think i had one of the slower RPM fans.

 

[TheBigZ]

Like all good byteheads, I leave the covers off all my pcs. Well, one night somethin came over one of the cats and it sprayed one of the pcs. Got it pretty good... motherboard, most of the cards, a few drops on the memory. Needless to say the pc was down in the morning and wouldn't boot. So figuring I had nothing to lose, I took it outside, took it all apart and washed it off. Yep, 2 buckets, one with soapy water & one with clean water. None of the drives had been hit being higher up in the case so I didn't wash them. Wash & rinsed everything well and laid it out on the picnic table in the sun to dry. Went to RatShack & got some compressed air to blow out the water under the chips. Left it outside all day & used the air several times.

Anyway, put it all back together and fired it up... only thing I ended up losing was the nic (don't they always fry?). The thing ran great til I upgraded about 8 months later.

Top that

 

[Mday]

i shorted a connection on a mobo with my finger... i think i killed the connection between the cmos battery and the bios chip... that mobo has been funky with remembering bios settings ever since... it's a good thing I don't use that PC anymore

 

[Mday]

but the most dreadful thing was... drum roll.....




install windows.

*rimshot* tada...

 

[DaveJ]

A while back at work one of our intrepid technicians decided to disassemble the PS on an old Mac we were using. After he took the cover off, he got distracted for a few minutes and took off. I was standing right there, and called to one of the other guys... he turned around and stuck his hand right into the open PS! I've never seen ANYONE move that fast... luckily the machine was off at the time but he got one heck of a shock...

Dave

 

[HannibalX]

Well back in the days when Mobo's didn't have onboard controllers, I killed a mobo accidently, heres how.

Just got a brand new swankin fast 486 DX 66 (yeah baby!) along with a new mobo and IDE/Serial/LPT controller card. Opened my case, popped all the stuff in, tried to boot to WFW (Windows for Work Groups) and no beef. I thought damn, whats wrong.

Poked around in the bios, every came up ok, recognized all my drives, ect. So I figured I would try my old controller instead. So with the new Mobo - I had not yet connected the little lights for the case, and I had the fan turned off, so it was silent, and no case lights (Monitor was sitting on the desk, I was on the floor) so I thought the biotch was off. I yanked the controller card out, stuck the new old one in, and the ISA slot gave a little "sizzle" and that was it, killed the mobo, and CPU - well theres 950 bucks out the door

 

[Sacotool]

One time I accidentally connected a power lead to the floppy drive in my old pentium 233 while it was running. It sparked and the computer instantly shut off. I let it sit for a moment and it came back on with no problems. phew!

 

[Thorn]

I destroyed a running Packard Hell with a 12lb sledgehammer, very satisfying.

I also spilled a full glass of tea on a running Compaq... and yes, the cover was off. :Q And no, it didn't work again after that. Just a few sparks and *poof*.

 

[sd]

reading this thread..........hehe