The dumbest thing you've ever done on a PC

BrainDanceR said:
I have a weird one.

I was sitting underneath my computer(was on the desk, i was on the floor), opened the CD tray and put a game CD in (I couldn`t really see what I was doing...)

My computer starts playing music.
WTF? I am sure I put my game in the drive...

Stood up, open the drive, out pops my game CD. Close the tray. Music plays again.
Eh??
Opened the drive, this time a music CD pops out.Wha...and my game disk was missing.

turned out I put my game CD on top of the music CD, and then my game CD fell down the back of the CD drive and was well and truly lost :D
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lmao I didn't think that was possible :p
 
Desdichado said:
I installed an AOL product once... that might trump ya ;)
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I've got one better... I once installed Microsoft BOB onto a family member's computer cause it was the "newest" GUI shell available.

Now that I think about it... BOB is the dumbest thing Microsoft's ever done to a PC.
 
a customers computer was making a nasty squeel so i was poking around while the computer was on. my finger made it to the cpu fan, sliced open my finger and left blood stains on the northbridge and a couple other places i couldn't reach to clean.

i was adding a cd rom to a computer and had to get the drive cover off the computer first. normally they just pop right off. so i tried to pop it off with a screw driver first and it didnt' work. then i get this bright idea to use a pci cover or whatever its called. so i pry the small side behind the cover and grab the longer side. i give it a hard yank and the thing doesn't move but my hand does. i slice open my thumb and first 2 finger and get blood everywhere again. turns out it was screwed in

only if i could remember the rest.
 
When I was in college, I worked as a computer tech servicing the staff/faculty members. A computer was brought back for me to work on - it needed to be imaged. The employee had quit, and it was ready to be nuked for a new employee.

So I hook it all up, and it can't see the image server. I booted to the DOS TCP/IP boot disk, and was unable to ping the server. Confused, I notice there's no lights on the network card.

I call Dell, give them the service tag, and say the network card doesn't work. Ten minutes into the call the network administrator walks into the room, sees what I'm doing, and pulls on the network cable. He shows me the other end of the network cable that isn't connected.

I tell the Dell tech on the phone that it was disabled in the BIOS because the network cable being unplugged was even more embarrassing. I get off the phone and we all have a good laugh.
 
cleaning the dust off with one of those compressed air cans, titled the can a little too much and a nice batch of frost appeared on the mobo. Waited a while before turning on and luckily still worked fine.
 
Unintentionally reprogrammed the memory addresses on a Heathkit 8088 processor and was impressed with the "Catastrophic Error!" message displayed on my green monitor. :eek:
 
ThreeDee said:
I actually managed to put a 128meg stick of PC-133 in upside down and get the clips to shut..

It sparked and smoked a smidge when I turned the computer on ...huh ..image that ..
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Probably the real reason they put heat shields on memory now days!

* nevermind, I just read the post that says you didn't put it in upside down with the pins up after all!
 
niranjan162 said:
cleaning the dust off with one of those compressed air cans, titled the can a little too much and a nice batch of frost appeared on the mobo. Waited a while before turning on and luckily still worked fine.
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I killed a VERY large cockroach doing that. It was interesting to hear the very loud cracking sounds its gooey bits made.
 
AntiSocialMunky said:
I killed a VERY large cockroach doing that. It was interesting to hear the very loud cracking sounds its gooey bits made.
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You squashed a roach in your rig?? :eek:
 
Here's a good one: When I was like 10 or 12 I got hold of the entire windows xp registry and replaced my windows 98 one with it suffice to say my comp failed to work so took it down to the local computer shop and twas fixed.
 
when i was adding a floppy drive i plugged in the power connectors in reverse (stupid floppy drive with no single-fit connector), after sparking for a good 5 seconds and me screaming and cutting out the power, my room had a nice plasticy gas cloud floating on the floor next to my computer. had to bust out a fan to get rid of it and i may have given myself cancer by breathing some of it
 
hofan41 said:
when i was adding a floppy drive i plugged in the power connectors in reverse (stupid floppy drive with no single-fit connector), after sparking for a good 5 seconds and me screaming and cutting out the power, my room had a nice plasticy gas cloud floating on the floor next to my computer. had to bust out a fan to get rid of it and i may have given myself cancer by breathing some of it
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:D Did that last week!!! :D pesky 550W PSUs
 
Went to St. Lucia on business, plugged a 110V workstation in to a 220v outlet (same outlet interface), turned around and two seconds later the sound of a gunshot went off behind me. :eek:

After changing my shorts I switch the power supply to the correct voltage and amazingly it booted right up in 220v, never again in 110v though.
 
I stuck my fingertip in my Vantec Tornado because it had no grill. It was on about 1/4 speed and damn near broke my finger. I no longer use these fans.

I also still occasionally stick my finger in my rear fan when I'm fumbling around with cables while the PC's running. Guess I should put a grill on there.
 
My birthday present a year ago was a brand new laptop my dad bought for me. Using it in my room in the loft, went downstairs for a drink and decided i wanted to use the laptop downstairs.

Me being lazy, i told my younger brother to carry it down the loft ladder and bring it down. Next minute - BANG!!! Ran upstairs, found he tripped up over the laptops bag in my room, and down came the laptop from loft, down more stairs to the kitchen.

After me very upset and beating my brother up, my birthday present lasted two hours - BUT guess what - IT STILL WORKS LOL. Screens bent, dvd drives messed and quite a few scratches here and there but it still turns on and works OK ill say. :D
 
Ahh another one..

While here in the office working on computers, the guys dared me to spray my private area with compressed air fluid.

Its best described as a vice grip clamping pain. :eek:
 
When I was younger, put a CD-ROM in the 5.25 floppy drive. Fortunately I didn't force the lever.

Plugged in my computer to a non-grounded extension cord, then noticed the weird tickle I got when touching the case. :eek:
 
Rurki said:
Ahh another one..

While here in the office working on computers, the guys dared me to spray my private area with compressed air fluid.

Its best described as a vice grip clamping pain. :eek:
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something very similiar with me, but it involved my belly button.

my co-worker was a big guy and whenever he would bend over you'd see a huge crack. i got annoyed with this so one day i sprayed his crack with it and never saw it again after that.
 
sploiz said:
something very similiar with me, but it involved my belly button.

my co-worker was a big guy and whenever he would bend over you'd see a huge crack. i got annoyed with this so one day i sprayed his crack with it and never saw it again after that.
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hahhahahahaha

yup. I know a guy who wears his pants like that. hes a contracter to, so he bends down alot. so now whenever i pass and hes bent over i just comment on "how sexy that ass is". He's pertty homophobic so its a good reaction, but he hasnt changed his habbit....

maybe i should pick up a can of that compressed air fluid tho. maybe thatl change his mind.
 
The dumbest thing you've ever done on a PC :

1. Offered to help someone fix theirs for free.
2. Made a career out of it.
3. Told a friend that the old Dragon-orb fans were low RPM. He then proceeded to try to get a piece of stuck dust/lint off of the dead area, and missed. Blood sprayed all over the case.
4. Same friend: Showed him a modding site named hardforum. There was an old old post a few years ago about how to put a cigarette lighter (car) into a 5 1/4" bay on a lian li case. Well, we went out and got the parts for it, and he then put it in. It looked nice on his case, until he lit it. Apparently some people need a disclaimer about hot items in plastic cases.
5. Put an AGP 8x card in an AGP 2x board. I thought they were compatible. Guess not.
 
Reminds me. Way back when I was a youngling, and we had just gotten our first computer (a Packard Bell 386SX-16 with TWO megs of ram and a 40 meg hard drive!) I decided to learn DOS the hard way: Run every single executable, batch, and command file in the DOS directory. This wasn't really stupid as I never made parameters for commands like format, but still it could easily have been disastrous had I been more haphazard.
 
when I was 9 or so, on the family computer running windows 3.1, I moved win.dll
things didn't go so well after that.
 
bmartin said:
The dumbest thing you've ever done on a PC :

1. Offered to help someone fix theirs for free.
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I've done this dozens of times @ college and here at home ... guess I'm too nice. :p
 
In one of my first posts here, few years ago, I was asking about using zip ties on a HSF.

Well, that's what I did. I was using zip ties to attach a HSF to my AthlonXP 2500+ Mobile because the heatsink my dad bought me was meant for s478. PC wouldn't stay on for more than 5 seconds. :D
 
JaYp146 said:
I've done this dozens of times @ college and here at home ... guess I'm too nice. :p
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As a stereotypical nice Canadian, I understand your situation.

I got called over to a friend's house once to install a router. A plug and play router.
 
Screw driver slipped off and hit the motherboard as I was trying to install a heat sink on a 1U server I bought off Ebay. Hasn't booted since. :mad:
 
Night Black said:
As a stereotypical nice Canadian, I understand your situation.

I got called over to a friend's house once to install a router. A plug and play router.
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LMAO WE CANADIANS ARE TOO NIIIIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCCCCCCE
 
I was moving in 2000 when I only had one computer to my name and it was the centre of my existence. I packed up everything in a moving van and went to bed. The next morning while unpacking I realized half my computer stuff was missing. I called my old roommates and they said they couldn't find anything anywhere. On a hunch I borrowed my bro-in law's car and drove two hours back to the house I had moved out of. There on the front porch were boxes containing all my software, burned CDs, mouse, keyboard, joystick, "media unit" (the computer was an Aptiva so there was a separate unit for CD-ROM and Floppy), cables, etc...

It started to rain hard about ten minutes after I found the stuff and it was totally exposed. It was also a student neighborhood so I was very impressed with my peers for respecting my property. At the time this was my only computer and I would have been hard pressed to replace it myself. Good ol' P166MMX w. 64MBRAM and a 4MB Diamond Monster Voodoo 1. Got it in September 97. Played lots of Quake 2, Rainbow Six, and Half-Life on that puppy.
 
Night Black said:
Eh, while you're up here, beer's cheaper than in the states!

I think we should get back on topic.
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200X better too.

FYI americans, Budwieser is about as hard core as a soda.
 
I did a firmware flash on my optical drive, then it was not working right so i unplugged the molex and ide connector while the pc was on to switch cause my mobo was acting weird, the drive proceeded to pop, smoke and catch on fire. sigh. this was a while ago though
 
-Trying to take off a Accelero x1 from my 7800 GT. The thing was extremely difficult so I started to move it back and forth, eventually it came off along with a capacitor. Luckily I was able to solider it back on.
-Overclocking at 3am. Just a bad idea.
-When I had my AMD 64 4000+ and was overclocking it I set the FSB and left the room, well it went on a loop of hard reboots and when I found it all the data on the drive was corrupted.
-Recently I upped the ram voltage way too high. At first the computer wouldn't boot so I kept restarting, and restarting. About the 3rd restart the mobo started to smoke. I took out the battery and tried everything, but it just wouldn't post. Finally the next day it worked.
-Installed a chipset cooler. Those little plastic plug things broke off so I rigged it up so a screw would hold the cooler in place. I never put a washer on the small nut and 3 months latter it made a small hole in the mobo and the IDE controller and PCI controller where dead.
-Trying to plug in a fan well the computer was upright and on. I couldn't see quiet what I was doing and ruined 2 fans by plugging them into the game port pins on my mobo.
-Plugging in a fan controller well my computer was on. The end result was smoke.
-During my first system build I installed everything by the book. The computer just wouldn't post. 3 days latter on working on it and testing everything I figured out that my stick of ram was in the wrong slot.
-Same build, I couldn't get the CD drives to work. I swapped cables, plugged in different 12v leads, but couldn't get it to work. It being time for finals I had no time to try to get it to work and eventually cracked, bringing it to a computer store. As it turns out I had both drives set to master, and a missing 50 bucks out of my pocket.
-Overclocking my video card, I wanted to see if it would be stable if I maxed out the mem. The card wont OC anymore.
-Leaving for a week from work while leaving bit torrent running. I sure as hell hope my boss doesn't look at my USB drive or I am fired.
 
Well there is the classics:

1)Forgot to turn on the power switch and wonder why the computer doesn't turn on.

2)Formating the wrong dive and screwing up all the data

3)Clicking on ads and having some hot steamy porn ads delivered to my computer daily.

Now here are some innovations of my own:

1)Trying to install Lindows (now called Linspire) and wiping all the data from my drive

2)Trying to backup GT4 on a $10 dual layer DVD+R (turns out that a lot of PS2 doesn't read dual layer discs and now i get a $10 Verbatim coaster. Also it's when the first dual layer disc that came out in my region)

3)Buying the most keyboard and mouse in the neighborhood. (started with IBM keyboard w/o start button, 2 button mouse, then came Logitech optical mouse and 10 bucks cheap keyboard, Logitech broke n came MS natural multimedia keyboard, after that was MS Wireless Desktop Elite, Next came Dinovo Laser with mx1000 the mouse just fell of my bed and now the Logitech G7 and Dinovo Edge) I spent over 500 bucks just on keyboards and mouse. But I shouldn't complain I always had the best in input devices goes.
 
had a KX7-R (333fsb) with a semi decent watercooling setup... well i had just moved, and had forgotten to tighten one of the DD plastic tubing clips after draining hte system... a few days later I came home to a big mess of water in my case, on the floor, etc... the untightened clamp ruined 1 mobo, my cpu, 2 sticks of ram, a brand new Ti4600, and a PSU... my most expensive damage to date I think...

tried to throw 6 122W pelts in series on a 550W Enermax PSU.... I saw a blue flame and woke up in the dark after throwing all the breakers in the house... I had a nice little burn mark up my arm, and a dead Enermax PSU that took 6 months to RMA...

after overclocking my 750 blue core to 1280 mhz (almost 100% overclock) I bought a 1200 blue core and proceeded to kill it with my homemade 1/2" barstock retention mechanism... I had to make payments on that CPU to my company for a long time... (i also never ever bought another flagship CPU)

purchased a leufkins/Alpha pel setup for a socket 370... tried it on mysocket 462 750 Duron/Asus combo and killed the Duron, then tried it on a Athlon 750 thinking it was a dead CPU (the duron) and proceeded to kill the Athlon too... noone at that time was dumb enough to try out pelts on socket AMD's, and for good reason... it did have a nice idle -10c, but the 80c under load temps are what killed the air-cooled pelt idea until swiftech came out with there MC HSF

if only i could remember how many mobos, amd socket A CPU's, memory modules ive ruined....i would have many more stories...
 
almost forgot... i had 300+gbs of data ruined by forgetting to install the vista RAID Drivers on my 500gb RAID...

I still kick myself for that...

good thread BTW
 
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