What kind of stupidity caused damage have you done to your PC?

[Dulanic]

Me personally, I fried a 800MHz T-bird because the lip on the HS got caught on the socket. And I also broke the handle off my socket, oh yes and I scratched the board. I thought i broke a trace but it seems I did not. The handle on the socket.... I finally got a HS on after so much effort... well I forgot to put the handle down! I didnt want to take the HS off so I figured the handle had a LITTLE flexability... WRONG. Luckly some super glue and 2 hours to let it dry completely got it working OK.

 

[Cknyc]

I fried 2 celly 366's and a BP6. I had a gender changer for a fan and as I was installing it with the comp on I tugged on the fan and the gender changer came loose and dangled in my case and hit my heatsinks. I saw a spark then heard a pop and then smelled burning plastic. At this point I yelled F*ck!!!. By the way I had silver heatsink grease. Maybe if I had the other stuff it would have insulated the processors.

I did an RMA on the board and processors and got refunded within 3 months..

 

[Danlz]

Killed a good mobo by changing keyboards w/o powering down.

 

[gregor1]

I switched the wattage selector from 230w to 115 watts on my PSU while it was still on (I thought it was off). There was a blue flash and a nice popping sound. I said "Oh sh*t!" and then just laughed. I've also blown two AGP slots - that pissed me off. I blew one, got a new mobo and did the same thing again. I can laugh now. Ho ho ho.

 

[Haervii]

This isn't hardware, but I tried to eliminate some Internet protection thing my parents but on the computer that wouldn't even let me do online gaming, even though my parents approved of that. So I tried to erase it, and two weeks later, it had been destroyed, along with a lot of critical files from my HDD, lol. :Q Also, we had to get it fixed at a computer shop for $80, and I had to play dumb. Geez that sucked, but its funny now.

 

[merlocka]

I remember getting my brand new AMD 486 DX2 120MHZ chip back in college. I had been up all night completing a MP and the UPS dude showed up right after I turned it in. I was so psyched to pop it in and kick my roomates ass in some Doom deathmatch (my 33MHz 486 was a bit choppy). I popped it in, turned it on, and smelt the smell. Yup, put it in rotated 90 degrees and fried the mobo. I was sooooooooo pissed.

There have also been several times I was cleaning off floppies and would do something like...

c:> dir a:

blah blah blah

c:> del *.*

OOPS!

 

[4824guy]

I also killed a mobo by changing keyboards while the PC was on. Good thing it was still under warranty. Kept on getting "keyboard not detected" after that point.

 

[EmperorNero]

I had a crappaq presario 4550 (k6 233, 48MB, 4gb HD). the POS crashed A LOT and it pissed me off everytime. once time, it froze so I just decided that I had enough of using the computer for that day so I turned it off using the power switch and punched the on/off knob on the crappy 15" monitor. unfortunately, I punched a little too hard and it is now crooked, but it works.

 

[KDOG]

Check this out....a while ago me and the wife were fightin and I literally snapped and BEAT and KICKED my computer and monitor!!! HARD!!! Thought I broke my hand on the side of the monitor(it was all swollen). I knocked the empty 5 1/2 plates into the computer and broken the open/close button on my DVD drive. Can you believe it all still works!!! Well, except for that button...i have to open my DVD drive thru whatever software im using...but it works!!!

 

[NoFish4U]

AAACK!!!

Last week I toasted my celeron 566.

Had a big heatsink on the back of the slocket, with thermal pad between them.

Computer was running and I touched the sink to see how warm it was.

Z A P ! Little shot of juice to my finger. Screen locks up . No re boot.

Metal pins had pushed through tape to metal heatsink I guess..

was doing 960 too

 

[Possum]

I was fooling with the gameport of an Ensoniq Soundscape in my P-90 a few years ago, trying to see if a Sega (first console) controller could work just by finding the right wire connections between the card and the controller.
So at one point, I had a cable connected to the gameport, with the other end cut open soldered to paper clips to probe the controller's connector. Accidentally, a couple of them crossed, saw a lot of sparks and could've sworn I saw a small fire start somewhere on the soundcard. That pretty much disabled my gameport (but hurray for Gateway 2000 warranty service!).

Search my old old posts for my condensation with peltier stupidity

 

[hans007]

i accidentally slipped screweing in a card and hit a resistor on the board near the i/o controller, killing all the ps/2 ports. that sucks

 

[fake]

I sneezed into an old clunker computer I was working on and uhh .. things went downhill from there ... very downhill

 

[Ben]

About a year ago, a homemade watercooler setup I made busted open while I was at work. I was dumb for leaving it on while I was at work, that's for sure.

It toasted a TNT2 Ultra, a P2B-DS, two 12MB Voodoo2's, and a Linksys NIC. I had leaks in the past which were usually no big deal. I guess because it sat wet all day, things began to fry.

That was an expensive mistake.

 

[Fardringle]

I was recently flashing the BIOS on my motherboard while keeping our baby 'occupied' so my wife could take a nap. Well, the baby decided that since Daddy likes pushing the keys on the keyboard so much, it must be lots of fun. She decided to help me by pushing a bunch of keys in the middle of the BIOS upgrade... :Q

Needless to say, no more booting from that motherboard!

Of course, I HAVE been wanting to get a new MB for a while, so this wasn't as bad as it could have been, but the baby doesn't go near the computer any more..

 

[pen^2]

killed two hardrives by pulling on the power cable (as opposed to wiggling out the molex connectors)
back in the days c300a, i boldly attempted a celery sandwitch by puttin a piece of tinfoil (!) on the backside. surprisingly it ran fine for a while before it was dead and gone forever. had to learn it the hard way

 

[RegaPlanet]

Killed a network card spraying canned air on it while the comp was on.

Broke probably 4-5 different edo simms tryin to insert them into the mobo.

 

[BurntKooshie]

Killed a KA7, and an athlon 700 which did 863.

Killed a rage2c (its better than my ViRGE)

Killed a 1gb drive that had linux installed (hey, I was proud of managing to install it )

Um....given more time, I bet I could remember more.

 

[Rigoletto]

I was killed by changing a CPU whilst the computer was only off at the front switch.
At least I think I must be dead because everybody ignores me.
Will someone pinch me please?

 

[urbantechie]

Hmm..broke a perfectly good HSF cause the clip didn't seem right
Holding a HDD and "accidently" dropping it on some tiles.
Tried to put a CD-ROM in a 286..hmm didn't work..heard some noise..never booted again.

 

[TGCid]

I once found a wire in my computer that is not connected to anything so I plugged it in to the next thing that I found......bad mistake! I quickly realized that I have err when burning smell starting coming out. This was a long long time ago in the Pentium days.

 

[Imported]

Contributed to killing my HD by putting the power connector on. Soon to find out that I probably caused another problem..

 

[Rigoletto]

LOL TGCid!!!! That cavalier attitude can't be beat!
Still nobody has told me if I am alive yet.

 

[TGCid]

Rigoletto,

Hehehe, yes you ARE still ALIVE!! Reading you loud and clear.

 

[JarrettH]

...um got a bit'o black marker on the outside of my 6x Toshiba DVD (rim part where you load the cd), from labeling my cd's then sticking them in the drive to copy.

Yeah, I know it's nothing!
whatelse...
...scuffed up my case a bit!

ok,ok,ok I have never damaged my PC in anyway!