Whats the dumbest thing you've ever done while assembling a PC?

[BigToque]

I managed to force a 128mb stick of pc-100 into my BX6-R2 in backwards and didnt even notice anything was wrong till I saw smoke comming from DIMM slot 0

 

[BA]

I've put a 486 in backwards before. Not quite as dumb as you, since they actually fit that way. I noticed the smell before any smoke.

 

[jsbush]

I remeber putting the power connectors in backwards once! You know those old AT motherboards a power supplys. P7 and P8, and black goes in the middle or something.

 

[Fumiup]

I forgot to plug in the heatsink cpu fan and kept wondering why I was getting BSOD's.

 

[CalebTG]

I haven't lived yet, I guess the worse thing thats happened to me was I did not push down hard enough on an old 486, so It would never start up

yeah, I know, I'm not exciting -- I apologize

 

[pillage2001]

Did the same as what Fumiup did. My cpu was at 1.85V while it all happened and it was on for about 10 minutes. Lucky me it's still alive although the heatsink would have fried an egg at that time. ;P

 

[chiwawa626]

pluged in a flopy drive power cable backwords ON PURPOSE in my comp repair class, just to see what happens...hehe
i once had a system running, the harddrive was connected and runing, but on top of the system, and it was pcboard side up, and i put a metal cover thing from the back of the case on top and it shorted and rebooted, it still worked though.

 

[Viper GTS]

Reached in & grabbed an ISA modem with the P/S still plugged in. Gave myself a nice shock.

Viper GTS

 

[jsbush]

Oh wait I remeber something! Hehe. I went to change the CPU on an Intel 810motherboard and I forgot to unplug the power supply and the motherboard fried. Had to get a replacement, good thing the guy didn't ask any questions.

 

[Pretender]

Couldn't figure out how to get the golden orb on my PIII-650 (my current system right now), so I tried for about 3 hours to boot up the computer, but to my despair it would keep freezing. I had a revelation in my sleep that I should try putting the HSF on and try again. Lo and behold, that morning, soonafter I put the Gorb on, it worked.

BTW, Stefan, if there was a Darwin award for computer makers, you would've been nominated in a heartbeat. Backwards?!? How the hell do you install a DIMM backwards? After forcing something in for more than a minute it should occur to look and see if the pins lined up with the slot....

 

[heng1028]

i have not done anything dumb that fried any hardware yet

but i forgot to put in the RAM and yet i was looking around what had happened wihout knowing i need a ram to boot

 

[jimmygates]

I opened our first family pc and managed to use a magnetic screwdriver in the process. Managed to erase CMOS and fortunately nothing from the harddrive.


-Jimbo

 

[igowerf]

Once I tried to take out the motherboard + mobo tray without unscrewing any cards... I can't believe I did that. I didn't break anything but the metal pieces on the cards that lines up with the case got bent a little. I've also tried to move the monitor while it was plugged into my video card. The tower fell pretty hard onto it's side.
I also dropped my slocket + processor + Alpha PEP66 while I was trying to install the processor. It fell onto my newly installed GeForce 256 resting in its AGP slot. Luckily, nothing broke or chipped.

And this has never happened to me but it happened to a friend. He plugged headphones into his SB Live! and didn't scew the soundcard into the case. After a while, he forgot about the headphones and stood up, yanking his soundcard right out of the PCI slot while the computer was running. He shutdown and pushed the card back in with no damage done.

 

[Mem]

I also accidently put the power lead for the floppy drive the wrong way round & ended up having to buy a new one.

 

[nEoTeChMaN]

I fried my first Abit BP6 mobo by unplugged the power connector from the CD Drive. Doh!

Lucky, the dealer replaced mobo for free. Whew!

 

[Pretender]

I just realized the purely dumbest thing I did. I was using a Y-power connector, and the wires were kinda fcked up and loose as hell, so the red and yellow fell out, when I put them back, I put the red where the yellow belonged, and the yellow where the red belonged. Somehow not noticing when I hooked it up to my 2 hard drives and the main power lead, and when I turned the computer on, it couldn't detect the HDs. When I realized the mistake and corrected it, the HDs didn't spin up at all. Nada. Killed 2 HD's with 1 stone. Had to beg friends for HDs for a week to get my computer working again.

 

[andrey]

Once a while back I accidently reinserted video card while my power supply was connected to the motherboard and in the on position. Since my speaker was not connected, I didn't hear beeping and was wondering why I can't boot up. I took out video card, inserted it back and next thing I saw a smoke and that lovely smell from both of my power supply and video card. That was Creative GeForce 256 Pro by the way

 

[ToxicMussels]

I was in such a hurry, I forgot to plug in the Power, Reset, L.E.D., and Speaker connectors on the MB. I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't power up!

 

[Bignate603]

Right after i built the pc below i had it sitting on my desk. I was installing drivers and all that crap. Pulled out a cd and got up to get the next without closing the drive. I shoulder checked the tray and popped it off it's little track. Luckily, with enough pulling, twisting and yelling at the thing it popped back in.

 

[toph99]

i don't have the money to do anythign dumb

 

[Deeko]

My K7V didn't work with my TBird, so i replaced it with a K7M. When you turned on the power switch on the PS, the K7V would turn on for a second. When I put in the K7M, for some odd reason I assumed it would do that too....I spent an entire day trying to figure out why the power supply wasn't working

 

[odog]

i've changed the jumpers on my old P2B, while it was still on.... no damage i've taken a slot P3 out a cutomers rig, while it was on (he turned it on when i walked away).... no damage helped work on a buddy's computer, knocked the hard drive off the counter... 100% total damage:|

 

[odog]

check this thread for some more laughs

 

[CrimsonWolf]

I was rebuilding and cleaning out one of my extremely old systems to get all of the dust and crap out. I pulled everything out of the case and proceeded with cleaning it. After I was done cleaning it out, I put everything (motherboard, hdd, cd-rom, sound card, yada, yada, yada) back into the case except for the video card. It took me at least 30 seconds to realize why in the hell it wasn't posting...

 

[slpaulson]

Something possessed me to change the fan on my alpha while it was still clipped on the cpu. Somehow I managed to screw one of the long screws in too far and I ended up cracking the corner of my cpu pcb. It still works fine though.