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

[NFS4]

1) http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=182745
2) At work a few years back, I was working on an IBM Valuepoint PC (PII 300) and had the case off of it while it was running. It had been sitting there for about 20 mins while I was working on something else. In the mean time, the monitor shut off. Now this was a VERY quiet machine; the fans were whisper silent.

Well, I come walking over with a PCI network card in my hand to the IBM that I thought was off. I plugged the thing into the PCI slot without a worry, and in the process hit the mouse as I was removing my hand from the case. At that moment, I saw a blinking cursor on the screen and thenn the Win98 desktop popped back up with "Windows has found a new device"...I promptly installed the drivers and shoved that machine out the door

 

[rickn]

didnt really affect my machine, but I didnt get the tips of two fingers clipped by a spinning 80mm fan behind my cpu.

 

[Spook]

My buddy had a simular experience... His monitor was off too, and he thought his system was off... He pulled the processor out(Pentium processor didn't have a fan)... Fortunately, for him it still worked after he powered it down, and put the CPU back in...

We call it the hot swappable CPU...

 

[zippy]

Spook, LMAO!

 

[Anaxagoras]

i flashed a bios with the wrong image once, like for the wrong mobo. that was idiotic. thankfully it was a PC at work and no one here knows what a bios is, so i just said the mobo died

also did the same as the above people when my PC was on. i put in a modem and sparks were the result. after a few minutes the PC was able to be turned on. this is like getting into your car and trying to start it when it is already running. you hear that grind from the flywheel and starter gearbox and look around, hoping no one saw you being so stupid

 

[Scorpion]

Well just the other day a friend of mine had his case open on his Athlon as he was tinkering with it. He has a very nosy cat. The cat came waltzing in the room, purring and looking for something to rub on. Neither of us had really noticed the cat come in the room behind us, until it rubbed up against my friends leg. He looked down and saw the cat walking right towards his open case! As quickly as he could, he grabbed it by the tail, but... it was too late. The cat has already gotten far enough in the case to touch something and shorted out his Mobo. The cat seemed to be fine. I don't even know if was affected at all, but his Mobo is getting RMAed at the moment...

Spook: LoL

NSF4: You lucky SOB.

 

[Czar]

Having one 12v wire and one ground wire from the PS touch the case, saw blue sparks allover the place and the electricity was cut of my room. Only thing that was broken after that was the PS.

Other thing was a open tower case that was on my desk and it was running with a PIII450. I had just removed some of that anoying whatnots that are on the case, to cover the AGP, PCI and ISA slots. Anyway I was just playing with one of them in my hand, bending it and such just when it flew from my hand and right into the case. It landed on top of the motherboard very close of hitting right into a PCI slot. Nothing damaged, except maybe some emotional shock when I saw it flew into the case.

 

[*kjm]

Installed Windows 3.1 on it

 

[NFS4]

<< thankfully it was a PC at work and no one here knows what a bios is, so i just said the mobo >>


LMAO


<< Neither of us had really noticed the cat come in the room behind us, until it rubbed up against my friends leg. He looked down and saw the cat walking right towards his open case! As quickly as he could, he grabbed it by the tail, but... it was too late. The cat has already gotten far enough in the case to touch something and shorted out his Mobo. The cat seemed to be fine. >>


That damn cat would have been strapped to my bumper and dragged down the highway at 90MPH...wait, that'd be animal cruelty :Q

 

[jmcoreymv]

A few months back, i had the same problem as NFS4 with my dell. The monitor was off and the fans were silent, so I went to switch ram modules in the machine. And that my friends is the story of how Windows 2000 finally crashed, for its first and last time ever.

 

[zippy]

I leave my case open and enjoy the presence of my bird (cutest lil animal )...well, my bird, zip (commonly zippy), gets bored sometimes. Once, he nearly went into my case! :Q That would not have been good cuz I have some uncovered 80mm fans in there! :Q

 

[HouRman]

I put a glass of Water on top of my monitor to rest while it was powered off and resting. Then it slowly condensed as it was ice water and drops of water dripped through the grill and onto the chips and circuits. Smoke came out and then it started a fire that spread through out the house, Oh wait that was final destination.

Actually my worst REAL experience is putting my hand inside to check if a non-visible fan was running. I ran my fingers across to see if i could feel the air flowing, but i got scraped by the fan and It gave me a cut and a helluva scare.

 

[resinboy]

I was recently impressed by the Antec P. Supply I have- I was tinkering in the case as usual, with it running of course, and I had just added a heatsink to that hot little bastich of a timing chip on my Asus board , and decided to plug in the new snail cage blower to make sure it worked, and ended up arcing the 2 wires together by mistake. My system shut down SO fast, I could not believe it. I have a fairly loud case, and my system is always up, so the silence was deafening!!! I was doing the &quot; Oh sh*t, Oh sh*t&quot; dance, then tried to power back up- nothing. Damn !!! Waited about 2 minutes and tried again- fired right up, everything has been fine since! The protection circuitry in the PS reacted instantly- I was impressed!

 

[BoberFett]

I thought I could rearrange and zip-tie the power cables in a customers machine while it was running. That's what I thought anyway, until I moved one of the molex connectors near the hard drive. That's when a huge blue arc flew from the power connector to the hard drive and shut the machine down. When it didn't boot back up, I nearly had a heart attack. After unplugging EVERYTHING and letting it sit, it did eventually start up, no harm done, I hope. :Q

 

[Thor_Sevan]

Hahahaha.... just imagine the bird entering his nose into the fan.... hehehehehe !!! Sorry.... I had to laugh !!

Or that stupid cat having a good electric discharge ! blehehe !


Thor !!!!

 

[Rebels7]

I had my case off of my computer one day and I was play NASCAR Revolution. I had just been to the kitchen and brought a nice tall glass of iced tea and put it on my computer desk. As I was about to pass Jeff Gordon I jerked the joystick to intentionally wreck him, (not my favorite driver), I accidently turned over the glass of iced tea and guess where it landed? I shut down my computer and thought the worst. I dried out the inside and let the whole unit sit overnight. The next day I fired it back up and have not seen any adverse affects from this encounter. Lucky me!!

 

[zippy]

MMmmm...I love the smell of hot tea wafting to my nose from my computer...

 

[NFS4]

Keep 'em coming, this is gettin good

 

[Techno]

Story 1

3 weeks ago, i got my order from 2CoolTek, Apart of the order was those small Video Card heatsinks and i got something else for old HDD, So i went to Anandtech to look at some last minute stuff and then w/o turning the computer off, i just ripped the video card out and unplugged the HDD and in the back of my head i thought &quot;i'll keep the computer running in case i do something stupid i don't have to wait for it to boot up&quot;. Um..... yeah right

Story 2,

A year ago i got my new P3 500Mhz and STEP cooler. Was looking at Anandtech and read that there was a certin S-code that can overclock to 620Mhz. So, I couldn't wait to see if my Processor was one of them and so ripped the CPU out of the Slot to look.... Wile it was still on.

3rd Story,

At the end of Last year, I got a new SBlive Plantinum to replace my older SBlive. Wile the System was running, Ripped out the old Sound Card and plugged the new one in. Fried the Power Supply, Motherboard and both sound cards.

Blonde moments

 

[Fireball]

Was working on my new machine, testing out the soundcard. Had to re-seat it because it didn't work properly. Booted into Windows to test it. Found that I forgot to plug the speakers in, so reached behind it, plugged in the speakers. For some reason, it felt like it went in further than it did before. Looked and was shocked to find out what had happened.

I had not yet put in the screw in the case to hold the card in, and pushing the speaker connector in pushed the card half way out of the socket. The computer made a horrible beeping sound when this happened and switched to a black screen.

Quickly pulled the plug and pulled the card out. Breathed for a minute, and put it back in.

Been working great ever since.

 

[Zorba]

Well I was installing a networking card on a compuke for a friend. This computer had no fans (besides for the PS fan), and only one little light. The thing was asleep so the light was amber, and I didn't even notice it. I stuck the card into a PCI slot, and went to turn the computer on... and I notice the switch was already on. Well this scaried the sh~t outta me. Fried the card, but the computer is jus as crap as the day it was made .

 

[Scorpion]

Techno: Man! Haven't your learned by now?! Those things aren't Hot-Swappable!

 

[CyberTiger]

Techno:
are those computer yours or your company's?

 

[rastaman]

I found an old 15&quot; Gateway CrystalScan monitor and started using it on another old 486. I left it on for about 5 hours. I came back and the monitor was on fire. It seems that a lot, I mean a lot of dust, had accumulated inside the grill and it got to hot and ignited. Ohh well.

 

[beer]

Alright - this beats almost everyone's story here.
Whereas you all just took down your own PC, I practically shut down the company I work for for the longest seven minutes of my life, it seemed.

Last week we got a Smart UPS 2000 in, so I asked my boss if I should hook our voicemail system into it. He said &quot;no prob&quot; so I went in to our computer room and shut down the NT server that the voicemail runs off of. I thought it would only take the voicemail offline for about five minutes while I rearranged the plugs and plugged it into the UPS.

Nope. It took the entire company's PBX offline!
Within 30 seconds, I had my boss yelling at me and about half the company wondering why their phones weren't working.

I very, very quickly plugged everything back in and booted it. I swear it took forever.

It turns out that there were only about fifteen people on the phone, and only one was a very, very important business deal. He was in the final stages of closing a $2,000,000 lease for one of our properties and the phones got killed.

Doh.

Now I have the nickname, &quot;The Terrorist&quot; for taking the phones offline.