What's the stupidest computer related thing you've ever done?

[jjyiz28]

1) applied as3 on gf2mx, and put my h/sfan back on, but noticed that it would slide back and forth, so worried taht it would fall off when its in case. so put a paperwieght on it, when to bed, hooked her up, and got artifacts all over. this was before i knew antyhing about ESD. either that killed it, or a constant pressure on the core for like 8 hours.



2) bought a ati 7000 thinking that it would perform like my dead g2mx, performed more like a gf2mx 200. those idiot newsgroupers.

 

[johnjbruin]

become addicted to them

 

[flxnimprtmscl]

Spent about 15 minutes installing/reinstalling/downloading new drivers for my onboard audio only to eventually figure out I'd plugged my speakers into the wrong jack

 

[BurnItDwn]

probably when i didn't secure the CPU fan on an old 700mhz duron machine I was rebuilding for my sister. I wound up killing the CPU and purchased a Tbird at the time (was a couple years ago). I usually don't do all that many stupid things with my hardware otherwise.

 

[MrAwesome]

I took a crap on my motherboard.

 

[FuZoR]

when i was around that age as well.. 11-12. I figure all you needed was the exe files.. so to clear some space i deleted all the files without that extension... Duke, Keen, Doom all those games stop working ;-)

 

[Gravity]

Originally posted by: RalphWiggum
I was putting together my current computer and had everything plugged in but it wouldnt turn on. So, I went thru all the normal troubleshooting avenues, but still nothing. I took it out of the case because I thought it was grounding out, but still nothing. Turns out I had plugged in the POWER LED, and not the actual POWER. D'oh! I plugged in the correct one and, well, here I am.

On a side note, has anyone actually every destroyed any computer hardware thru static electricity by just touching it?

Nah, I even had some bare wires in a case the other day for a fan kluge I was in the middle of . The wires sparked off the vid card and the motherboard, no damage.

 

[Rufio]

ahha funny shiet

 

[amdskip]

I fried a seagate hard drive while wiring my cold cathode while the computer was running I shorted something I suppose.

 

[Ionizer86]

I put an AGP video card in a PC while it was on since it wouldn't boot with it properly. My excuse? The card was "Plug and Play."

 

[Shawn]

i've done a lot of stupid sh|t but one of the worst things was format the wrong partiton when installing windows. lost everything, except my old ver of windows. :|

 

[Kev]

i was frustrated at a c++ assignment, kicked my tower in anger and it turned off. i managed to fix it though

 

The dumbest thing ever, hmmm.....typing forums.anandtech.com?

I have discovered that a molex connector lying on part of the metal in your case will cause the whole thing to short out. The cool thing is I had the lights off (and the side panel too) so I saw a blue arc move over the whole system.

 

[hevnsnt]

Great thread, and I have a good one to contribute..

(about 3 years ago now) I had just bought all the parts for this kick ass system (800mhz) and I got it all together and it ran superb.
:Start
I left the room and when I came back I found that it had JUST rebooted (as in I could see the bios check). I thought it was weird, I wondered if it was overheating or something. So I let it boot, then I sat there and threw every benchmark I could at it and I could never get it to overheat or reboot or anything, it just ran perfect. So I decided it must have been a fluke. I left the room and watch some tv and about an hour later I came back into my room to find that it was rebooting again!!! At this point I was pissed off and I turned it off for the night.

Day two: Goto Start. (did everything again, with the EXACT same results)
Day 3 - Day 6: Goto Start (did everything agian, with the EXACT same results)

At this point I had put a week in this, and could not get anywhere. I decided to claim defeat and asked about it here on AT forums. I got about 30 responses, check this, check that, which I did and everything seemed fine.. Then the most important post I think I have ever read showed up.. "Is the socket that it is plugged in to wired to the light switch?" MOTHERF(*&$WE*&%)#($*%&(*$&@!!!!!! Yes, yes it was. Everytime I left the room I turned the light off (and the computer) and when I came back in I switched it back on.

LOL.

 

[Ichinisan]

H4w!

 

[ucdbiendog]

well, see, my computer is watercooled. I was doing some maintenance on it, changing water, cleaning the radiator, etc. Well, my pump sits next to my computer outside the case. I put it all back together, the case side not on. I go to turn the system on t make sure it works, and it does, for like 5 seconds. After that, the hose popped off the pump outlet, so water is shooting straight up like a freakin geyser. As it is, water is getting on my compuer (inside) and my dumba$$ goes to damage control by covering up the outlet, but that only spreads the flow out further into my case. At that point i unplugged the pump. Water got all over my video card, sound card, and system board, as well as a nice puddle on the bototm of the case. luckily, the computer was not on, and i bought a hair dryer to dry out the water underneath the ram chips of the vid card. the next morning, the computer worked fine. i was lucky as hell.

 

[GalvanizedYankee]

Good thread indeed!

Being old and slow I was very careful with this comp, my first build 5 months old now.

I only have one WD hard drive and I loaded my OS with a jumper on master.
I could not get it to boot normally. I could only boot from the bios. I emailed
Intel, triple checked everything. A friend of a friend techie said in the most
casual way. enh, just pull the jumper off. So simple. Man did I feel dumb.

 

[Corporate Thug]

forgot to connect the fan on my slk800 before turning it on

 

[Ionizer86]

Hmm, where's DocSmarts when we need him most?

 

[Kev]

lmao @ hevnsnt

 

[PoPPeR]

Originally posted by: hevnsnt
Great thread, and I have a good one to contribute..

(about 3 years ago now) I had just bought all the parts for this kick ass system (800mhz) and I got it all together and it ran superb.
:Start
I left the room and when I came back I found that it had JUST rebooted (as in I could see the bios check). I thought it was weird, I wondered if it was overheating or something. So I let it boot, then I sat there and threw every benchmark I could at it and I could never get it to overheat or reboot or anything, it just ran perfect. So I decided it must have been a fluke. I left the room and watch some tv and about an hour later I came back into my room to find that it was rebooting again!!! At this point I was pissed off and I turned it off for the night.

Day two: Goto Start. (did everything again, with the EXACT same results)
Day 3 - Day 6: Goto Start (did everything agian, with the EXACT same results)

At this point I had put a week in this, and could not get anywhere. I decided to claim defeat and asked about it here on AT forums. I got about 30 responses, check this, check that, which I did and everything seemed fine.. Then the most important post I think I have ever read showed up.. "Is the socket that it is plugged in to wired to the light switch?" MOTHERF(*&$WE*&%)#($*%&(*$&@!!!!!! Yes, yes it was. Everytime I left the room I turned the light off (and the computer) and when I came back in I switched it back on.

LOL.

hahaha

Well this ones not something I did, but a very non-computer literate friend of mine. After I upgraded my video card I gave my old one to him, and being the guy that he was, he figured he could just pop out the case, take out the old card, and put the new one in. Hell, that is pretty much all you do actually, with a few minor things along the way. Anyways, he's tugging on the video card in the AGP slot to no avail, and instead of calling me, he just yanks... and pulls the card out of the slot, completely breaking it.

He calls me up and the first thing I ask him is, did you push down on the switch holding the card in? All I heard was silence for a couple of minutes

I tested the board out and sure enough the switch was gone, and we had to go buy a PCI video card to get the computer working again.

 

[kranky]

Back in the days before networking, I bragged to my boss that I had found a thing called an A/B switch and we could get one to share a $500 laser printer between two PCs, and it would only cost $150. Since we didn't print all that much, he thought it was a great idea. It turned out there were two models - one had all 25 pins switched, the other had pin 1 tied common. I ordered one, and hooked it up when it arrived. Fried the PC and the laser printer, and for good measure I turned the switch and fried the other PC as well. Oops - I should have ordered the other model!

About $1500 worth of stuff ruined trying to save the cost of a laser printer.

 

[xcript]

Never done anything too awful.

Worst I've done is crushed the core on a 1GHz Duron whilst attaching the heat sink (Volcano 9), which requires a fair amount of force. Somehow a wire going from the HSF to a front panel mounted rheostat got between the HS and the core, and so I ended up trying to force the HS on at a slight angle.

Yeah, that sucked. I still remember the grinding, crunching sound it made.

Needless to say, I now /always/ make sure the area around the CPU socket is completely clear before attempting to attach the heat sink.

I've also pulled cards (IDE, NIC, video, etc.) out of a running 486. But this was intentional (it was pissing me off).

 

[xcript]

Originally posted by: kranky
About $1500 worth of stuff ruined trying to save the cost of a laser printer.

Ouch.

 

[MovingTarget]

Well, I once tried to install a motherboard about two years ago without using any standoffs whatsoever. When I finished screwing it in, I noticed that the board was bent in all sorts of curvy shapes. I look at the pouch of screws and asked what I had left over was for. Me=dumba$$. I then took the board off and reinstalled it using standoffs. I then booted the machine once I put the rest of the components in and guess what...magic smoke. Sheit....that time instead of not using standoffs, i used one too many and shorted out the board. Grrrrr....well, needless to say, every mb install since then has gone perfectly. I learned the hard way.