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

[pac1085]

I bought a Hercules 3DProphet DDR-DVI from someone on the forums here...It had these chintzy home-made ramsinks on it, so I proceded to take them off to replace them with Alpha ram sinks from www.2cooltek.com...I got 7 of 8 of them off perfectly, get to the last one, and the ram chip came right off with the heatsink...that had to be the worst day of my life knowing that I dont work and the $200 I paid for it took me a long time to make...

 

[AmdEmAll]

Whats up pac!! its Lars8888 LOL. I remember the day when you did that to your new GeForce, I laughed at you a lot

Anyway, I put a P90 in the socket the wrong way and it bend a pin...tryed bending it back and it broke off, oh well. I had some fun with an already broken 1.6gb harddrive. Those things are really hard to open...even with a shovel

Oh and I was flashing the bios on my parents comp uh...lets just say it didnt work correctly.

oops I just relised I brought this thread up from like 2 months ago, oh well.

 

[Looney]

back when the Pentium was first released, my work had about 20 new computers with CD-roms. Buddy next to me was using the CDRom as a cup holder, and had his coffee in a styrofoam cup in there. One day when he got up, he accidentally bumped the cdrom, and it started closing.. spilled the coffee right into the A: drive which was right above it. was freaking hilarious.

 

[JokerF15]

i toatsted a 5 gb hard drive, cuz i thought that u could connect a power cable to the drive while the computer was ON, since i had disconnected while it was on..

than BAM, frozen comp, plus a zap on my finger, not a good thing!
=)

 

[borealiss]

peltier hooked up to fan header on the mainboard. can you say bbq?

 

[noxipoo]

never use foil as substitute for jumpers many things will fry

 

[Weyoun]

about a year ago when trying to get my new geforce ddr working, i came across the inevitable. after 1 month of trying everything to get the b@stard to work, it still wouldn't go. new mobo, new everything. so on the verge of returning it, i figured it was a power problem, and was related to my notoriously bad power supply. anyways, i turned the computer off, and saw a nice purty switch on the back of it. flicked it, blue sparks flying out teh back of it, and the smell of burning plastic. no boot, no nothing. after realising it would no longer go because of a blown fuse in the PS, i opened it up (after leaving it for 24 hours) and replaced the fuse in it with a new one. low and behold, it booted, much to myself and my wallet's relief. anyways, just as we were about to turn the computer off, huge flames started spurting from one of the larger capacitors. i somehow didn't like this PS.

after that, bought a new power supply, and much to my relief everything in it was still fine, mobo, geforce (one fuggin huge relief at that ), cpu, etc.

i've now cringed every time i turn the computer on, remove the power cables, and was very picky in chosing a PS without the purty little red button

 

[Modeps]

Way back in the day, i decided that I was going to install Paperboy on our 8088. Paperboy came up with a nice little saying that said "Dont install if you dont have x" (i forget what it exactly said, hence it was WAY back in the day) i said , whatever, this computer RULES it has everything.... continued the install. and it screwed the hard drive. had to format that huge drive ( i think it was about 10mb or something )

Also, before all components were keyed, i decided to attach my new powersupply to my motherboard. pop-pop-hiss-hiss, hey whats that smell? ahh the sweet smell of frying electronics.

 

[Mem]

Fried my Floppy drive about six months ago when installing a new PSU,I had the power leads in the wrong way,lucky Floppy drives are cheap to replace.

 

[AndrewR]

<< anyways, just as we were about to turn the computer off, huge flames started spurting from one of the larger capacitors. i somehow didn't like this PS. >>


OMG, I almost pissed my pants when I read that. LOL!!

Fortunately, I have yet to destroy anything. I have had a hard drive and a motherboard die on me, but that's about it.

 

[Hanpan]

I fired 128 megs of sh!tty ram. was pissed off about soemthing and not looking put it in backwards. IT made a pretty red light and then the smell started. Damm 5 second delay on the power button. By the timei got to the back of the case the traces ahd melted together. NOe if you think that was bad i decided to take the anger out on the outside wall of my house. At the end of the day was out 128 megs and the use of my righ hand. ( Fractured a metacarpul.) Note to self.. do NOT punch cement.

 

[superbaby]

I put a 128MB DIMM in incorrectly once into an Aopen mobo, I think it didn't seat properly or something but in any case the computer booted up fine and ran okay for 30 minutes.

However I didn't know this at the time. I noticed this burning electronics smell and I couldn't tell where it was coming from. It smelled like it was coming from my other computer and I opened that up and took a look, but nothing was wrong. I didn't know what was going on and the smell kept getting stronger so I called the fire department. They came and turned off all my computers but the smell remained (didn't get any stronger).

We had to move out for 2 days while they checked my house for bad wiring and suprisingly they did find some and ordered the insurance company to fix them. But when we moved back and I turned my computer back on the smell came again. I used it for 3 more days and suddenly it wouldn't boot. I opened it up and didn't see anything. I tore the thing apart and looked closely at a little black spot on the DIMM slot, I thought it was some paint, but it was black carbon. Then I looked at the DIMM and 3 of the gold plated connectors were missing and were melted to the board.

Needless to say the mobo fried and the memory was gone as well. Obviously I didn't tell the fire department that it was my fault

I still don't know how that happened, the computer ran fine for nearly a week!

 

[Hanpan]

Luckily i got to keep my mobo.

OF course i couldn't really use my computer (kinda hard to type with one hand...) for 3 weeks.

 

[TheRabbit]

I killed may Power Supply by switching from 220V to 115V
There was a flash and a very loud BANG :Q and some pieces shot out of the Unit (some transistors i think). Surprisingly they didn't hit me!

Another day i killed my USR 56k modem by smashing it towards the ground (I was VERY angry :| about my f***ing phone line, cause i never get above 19200bps). Two days later i had a new modem no more money, and the knowledge, that modems aren't built of steel

I killed about 4 joysticks (2 Logitech Wingman Extreme, 1 MS Sidewinder Precision Pro, 1 MS Sidewinder FF Pro), because i got upset while gaming... (also look above, the modem death)

Finally i destroyed a ms mouse 2.0 by grabbing it on the cable, and throwing the mouse at very high speed onto my desk (guess what: i was angry... )

maybe i could save some bucks, by calming down just a little bit in the future

Greetings from Austria (Europe, not Australia )

 

[Zenmervolt]

When I upgraded my 486DX/2-66 to an IBM 6x86MX PR166 (which I OC'ed to actually run at 166MHz) I inadvertantly wired the reset jumper on the new mobo to the case's turbo button (still using the old 486 case). The reset jumper carries a lot more current than the turbo jumper did on the old 486 board. I melted the solder on the turbo button and actually burned through the insulation in the turbo switch wiring in the 30 seconds it took me to realize that I had traced the wire incorrectly. So now the turbo switch is permanently soldered halfway between on and off and the LED on the case shows a half-hearted 66. Not that it makes a difference as the turbo button was never used and the rest of the case is fine. It's currently home to a K6-2/500 with 64MB RAM and a 20GB Maxtor HDD, though I'll have to switch to an ATX case next time around.

 

[timco]

About four years ago I took a hard drive out of my computer and turned the thing on when the drive was not in the horizontal position. Result: lots of smoke and cursing. It still worked though...

Blew the PSU on my mom's computer from work by switching it from 240V to 115V - I thought it wasn't on and decided to try this little red switch on the back to see what it did. It broke it. My parents took the computer to my mom's work and pretended it didn't turn on properly...

On an old computer about 7 years ago (a BBC Micro - a &quot;classic&quot; British computer), with mobo-mounted sockets, broke one of the pins in the floppy connector off. I took it into school and attempted to desolder the socket and put a new one on - of course it never worked again and it went away to computer heaven.

Bent a pin in a monitor connector at work . Fortunately someone else bent it back...

Broke lots of tape recorders (ah, the days when floppies were rare...)

Cracked a monitor screen on a little monochrome Phillips 12&quot; - still p*ssed off about this one.

Broke the keyboard connector on my Atari ST. Blu-tak repaired this

Put an Abit KT7-RAID motherboard in it

Broke the connector on a SCSI card. Whole card replaced for free

Lots of scratches and dents...

Etc, etc. I am the living, breathing inspiration for Mr Bean...

 

[Rigoletto]

How about this for dumb things to do to my computer that DIDN'T cause damage?

1) moved the computer when the monitor wasn't screwed in. Monitor yanked out but it all still works.
2) didn't screw in my TV card and forgot about it. Replaced the aerial... hmm, why doesn't it work right anymmore? Rebooted a couple of times. Opened my case and saw only half the card was still plugged in the damn slot.
3) decided it was a great idea to change the heatsink on my Athlon. Remove Athlon. Remove heatsink. Install heatsink. Push in processor and connect cpu power. It works! Then see that all that was saving me from electrocution was the ATX switch on the front of the case. Ha ha I cheat death again...