What's your worst mistake just goofing off with computers.

[Albaholic]

Ouch.

yeah it sucked pretty hard.. had to buy a new mobo on the forums...but everything else works fine... now that i got a replacement board, i gave it to my little bro

 

[cetoole]

I have this tendancy to corrupt my install of windows, funny things happen to me when I am pushing for 2.85ghz with 240mhz fsb on this system. I am torn between doing my homework now or reinstalling again. I really need to get another hdd just for benching.

 

[NsOmNiA91130]

I usually....shut it down by holding down the power button.

BUT I WILL MESS UP EVENTUALLY! BELIEVE YOU ME!

 

[threeme2189]

120C???? long live AMD dudes!!!!
lets see a p4 survive 120C and do 80 for more than an hour....

 

[turd]

Old screwdriver, New P3, New heatsink, New Tyan Trinity 400 MB. One little slip and had to go and order new MB.

 

[the garynator]

Not really my mistake, but my first computer had a lot of troubleshooting to go through before getting it to work, and I had a friend helping me. It was kinda dark and he was using a LED flashlight attached to some very heavy keys to look at the open computer (lying on its side on the ground). Stood up and forgot that the keys were on his lap and the big ring of keys lands right on my new motherboard...I about lost it. After removing keys and restarting, it worked perfectly. (Long live the Abit durability)

2 words : screwdriver + abit...thought i killed it, but the abit survived! (happened quite a few times actually)

worst one was i was building a computer for a friend of my mother, 1.4ghz tbird abit at7 max... screwed up unlocking it accidentally (too much graphite) turned it on, dead! decided to test the mobo to see if it still worked, plugged my buddies 1800+(top of the line at the time) in and bang, the stench of burnt cpu filled the room, needless to say, i have a very expensive keychain now(and yes, i still have it on my keychain!) she's a little beat up now though lol :

 

[ghettocomp]

...Cleaning out computer with leaf blower...

I thought I was the only one who did the leaf blower thing! but if the leaf blower can also be used as a vacuum and has a small unseeen rock stuck in it... your imagination will leave the rest pretty accurate. much like a bullet


then smoked, and I mean smoked a Zip drive by accidentally plugging the IDE connection backwards.

 

[threeme2189]

cool key chain!!!
im lookin for an old p1 cput to make one out of...too bad its almost impossible to drill into those things...
but i know exactly how to do it...

 

[Renigade]

Middle of installing an OS update, I was trying to multitask cuz I was installing a printer at the same service call. I unplugged the USB keyboard and plugged it back in a minute later and computer popped, essentially BSOD during the middle of OS update...... "oh dang.........." 2 hours later, 1 reinstallation later, back up and running.

 

[mudpark41]

It was my first comp that I was building by my self. (no help from father)
I was a AMD something. Not Slot or Socket A. Well I ordered everything except a CPU fan. I decied I wanted to see if I had set everything else up correctly, so I booted it without the Fan. 5 Seconds Later I hear a lot of PC Speaker and the comp never booted again. About -300 in 1999. Needless to say the person who spent the money was not pleased.

 

[Celeron_Phreak]

mudpark, you must have set the voltage wrong or something, cause if it was a Socket 7 AMD (Since you said it wasn't socket A or Slot A) then it wouldn't have overheated. I have a 400MHz AMD socket 7 chip that I run on a tiny heatsink without a fan at all and it's been going for a good year now.

My older bro and I tried to burn a CPU up....Pentium 133 without a heatsink on....but it just wouldn't die lol. It got up to 240 degrees F and we gave up (we used a multimeter temperature probe to check it). The chip works to this day.

 

[BeerCan]

Dating my self here but; Somehow I managed to run vrepair from novell 3.12 on a novell 4.1 server. Needless to say it corupted the whole thing, the bad part is it was a banks main server and I later found out the backup had not worked in months -- OUCH that hurt. They were fu****. So was I.

 

[tenchi86]

Ohh that could suck.

 

[hibner]

I installed bonzai buddy on a computer at work just goofing around. It spread onto 2 other computers on the network. I have no clue how. But, it took 3 weeks to get it all cleaned off there.

 

[penquissciguy]

I ran scandisk for DOS on a Windows 95 machine once. It shortened every filename on the disk to DOS's 8.3 limit. The machine actually booted to Windows, but the Start Menu was BLANK. That was the first clue (at about 1 in the morning) that I was too tired to be doing what I was trying to do.

Ken

 

[JerMe]

Started my first computer up with the clear CMOS jumper in the wrong position. Doh. The text onscreen looked like I threw it in a blender and poured it back in.

 

[cetoole]

Started my first computer up with the clear CMOS jumper in the wrong position. Doh. The text onscreen looked like I threw it in a blender and poured it back in.

I have accidently done that a couple times, does it perminantly affect anything? My bios is fine.

 

[jstutman]

Laugh this one up

I once tryed to make an hdd hotswappable.

Just plugged that molex right up

ZAp

system restart

Omg it still worked

 

[Aphex_Tom_9]

Laugh this one up

I once tryed to make an hdd hotswappable.

Just plugged that molex right up

ZAp

system restart

Omg it still worked

lucky. ive heard some horror stories about unplugging/plugging HD's and FD's while the system's on...

 

[johnmcc516]

I have three funny things.

1. When I was first building my pc, I accidently placed the cmos jumper covering only 1 pin! DOH. It took me 3 days to figure out that was why my pc wouldn't boot correctly. I wanted to hurt myself when I figured it out.

2. I was installing my VGA Silencer on my eVGA 6800 GT. I wanted to make sure it was attached nice and tight, so I kept twisting until I gave enough torque to break one of the support pegs in half. Thankfully, there was a single thread left on the peg which was enough for me to get it tight. I was scared I would need to buy another cooler.

This one my friend did which was just stupid. He bought a new case for Christmas cuz it looked cool. The chassis wasn't bad either, having a built in duct and all. However, for some reason he took his processor out of his mobo. I don't knwo why he did it, he didn't need to. First mistake was that he didn't unlock the cpu, he and his father proceeded to rip out the cpu. OKay.... its not hurt. I've accidently done it and mine is fine. 2nd and worst mistake was that he tried to force the cpu back in the slot without unlocking the lever. Goodbye p4 3.2 GHz. It was so bad that we couldn't repair it.