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

[Geeky1]

In light of Prime's thread <a href="http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21417">here</a>, I'm wondering what the stupidest computer-related thing you've ever done is.

I've got a whole list:
<ul>
<li>putting my hand on an open power supply's heatsinks and other components to hold it in place while plugging it in
<li>sticking a screwdriver in a power supply while it was powered on
<li>using shims AND foam pads on a SLK-800 installation (killed the 1.4GHz Athlon it was on)

[leishi85]

the stupidest computer-related thing i have done is probably

plugging in the power connector for my hdd while my computer is on.
that made a nice spark, and luckily it didn't kill the hdd.

[GnomeWizardd]

I was working on an AMD k6-3 450 and i got attacked by dust bunnies I sneazed and burnt the mobo

[primesuspect]

I too shocked myself on an open PSU by touching the heatsink. ouchie.
:mullet:

[CB]

I once built a system for myself, and upon turning it on, I couldn't get the computer to recognize the keyboard. So, what do I do first? I unhook the power, and open the case back up to check to see if there is something wrong with the mobo. then I get the manual out for the keyboard to make sure that it is not a windows only keyboard (it was my first MS brand keyboard, so I figured anything was posible) :rolleyes: ... I even switched out keyboards with an older one that I KNEW worked... and still nothing. It was late so I just went to bed.

The next day, I called GHoosdum from work, to see if he could stop by in the evening to look at my computer and see if he can find something that I missed. So, he stoped by on his way home from work, and I explained the troubleshooting that I'd already done. GH furrowed his brow and walked over to the PC. He looked at the back of it and calmly said to me, "Your keyboard is in your mouse port, and your mouse is in your keyboard port."...

I'd been building computers for almost a decade by then, but that made me feel like a n00b...

[Justin]

My stupidest thing was hooking everything on an FX-51 system up, EVERYTHING, without testing power on and off a bit at a time. Fired it up, flames leapt up from the SK8N mosfets, singed most internal parts of case and components. Who knew mobos were combustable? :shakehead

[RWB]

Well I have never done anything stupid in my life... I only tend to say stupid things :D But if you consider getting electrocuted through your foot, then that would be the dumbest thing I have ever done. :thumbsup:

[croc_]

Dell powersupply + Asus mobo. Yeaaaaaaah. I swear it said ATX. :scratch:

[csimon]

I was working on an AMD k6-3 450 and i got attacked by dust bunnies I sneazed and burnt the mobo
I'm really really sorry to hear that gnome ...but ROTFFLMFAO I would have probably blown chunks out of my nose had I been there!!! ;D

I fried a hdd by making contact with the exposed components on the underside with my thumb while holding it to plug the power connector ...unplugged it and plugged another right after only to do the same exact thing. duh :wtf:
Should I say thank goodness for rma? :shakehead

[Kwitko]

I took a RAID5 array out from one of our servers at work and put it back in the wrong order. Instead of pulling out the drives and trying a different order, I reinitialized the array, thus creating a brand new striping pattern over the previously intact data. :banghead:

Of course, the tape backups for the server were all erased that morning in an effort to redo the backup scheme.

It turns out we had a backup of everything on the VP's laptop.

[GnomeWizardd]

I'm really really sorry to hear that gnome ...but ROTFFLMFAO I would have probably blown chunks out of my nose had I been there!!! ;D

I fried a hdd by making contact with the exposed components on the underside with my thumb while holding it to plug the power connector ...unplugged it and plugged another right after only to do the same exact thing. duh :wtf:
Should I say thank goodness for rma? :shakehead


My father was there and Yes he laughed his ass off at me

[csimon]

My father was there and Yes he laughed his ass off at me
granted I would have felt so bad I would have probably paid for a new one ...in fact if you wanna reinact that one we may be able arrange something!!! Heck next time video it and we'll submit it to win $10k and we can split the reward!!! ;D

[Gargoyle]

How about a software mistake?

I had been the IT coordinator for my research center for two days, and then I managed to wipe all of someone's emails off their computer on accident. Apparently she needed those emails because they had crucial correspondence for her research. Oops.

[GnomeWizardd]

granted I would have felt so bad I would have probably paid for a new one ...in fact if you wanna reinact that one we may be able arrange something!!! Heck next time video it and we'll submit it to win $10k and we can split the reward!!! ;D


what was really funny is he didnt realize it was HIS pc i was working on. RMA saved me!

[tcith]

I was to rebuild a server - shut it down - formatted the drives (raid 5 array)
then realised I was working on the wrong server, they where two identicle boxes side by side.

Instead of reformatting an unused Database server I had destroyed the e-mail server with over 3000 mailboxes on it

I restored the server - took many hours - sleepless night
and basically made many excuses for the dribs and drabs of e-mail that was lost due to being outside the last backup.

"You do realise internet e-mail is not 100% releiable" :shakehead

[Guyute]

These two are evenly tied for ultimate stupidity...

Boner #1- In 1994 I had a co-worker install Doom I on our PC at work- once I was done the game he said that our network admin's in Houston could tell what we were doing so I manually went in and deleted everything I could find, INCLUDING MY CONFIG.SYS file, my AUTOEXEC file and one other important file- I think it was called COMMAND.COM?? Turn off the computer, reboot, and get a black screen with a smalll message saying something like "I can't even turn on". I kuh-rapped myself for about 10 minutes, then called my boss at home (this was 8:30 at night). She was so computer illiterate she literally only knew how to save files in Wordperfect and type out files in our contract program. I told her it happened while I was saving something in Wordperfect 5.0, so she flips out at the PC, comes in the next morning and calls the admin in Houston and rips him a new one for having such an unstable system. I walked away from that one without a scratch. LOL

Boner #2- In August I forwarded to my wife at work a nasty e-mail from my boss, along with my sarcastic rebuttal. We use Groupwise so the e-mail from him is imbedded in mine. She clicks "reply" and responds to HIM saying in very unladylike language what she thinks of his management skills and what she thinks of the boss I have between him and me. I don't realize what happened until the next morning when he sees me, says while laughing "Steve, come into my office and close the door". Not having any idea why he is laughing, he turns to me and says "I got YOUR message". It took me about 10 seconds, and then I wanted the building to fall on me.I think he could have fired me on the spot for about 80,000 company policy breaches, but he just laughed it off...

[EgoShowcase]

First comp i ever built I end up installing the ddr ram in backwards (motherboard flexed) and fried 1 stick and the motherboard. To this day im very catious when in install ram

[Cyclonite]

These two are evenly tied for ultimate stupidity...

Boner #1- In 1994 I had a co-worker install Doom I on our PC at work- once I was done the game he said that our network admin's in Houston could tell what we were doing so I manually went in and deleted everything I could find, INCLUDING MY CONFIG.SYS file, my AUTOEXEC file and one other important file- I think it was called COMMAND.COM?? Turn off the computer, reboot, and get a black screen with a smalll message saying something like "I can't even turn on". I kuh-rapped myself for about 10 minutes, then called my boss at home (this was 8:30 at night). She was so computer illiterate she literally only knew how to save files in Wordperfect and type out files in our contract program. I told her it happened while I was saving something in Wordperfect 5.0, so she flips out at the PC, comes in the next morning and calls the admin in Houston and rips him a new one for having such an unstable system. I walked away from that one without a scratch. LOL


Grrr... You know how many times I've been chewed out by computer illiterate managers because one of their employees' computers went *poof* and the employee doesn't know why?! You make me mad... :p

Nah, it's cool. I'd probably do the same thing. But being on the receiving end of the lashing is not fun.

[Camman]

I used to have an emachine that sucked real bad and I would give it a good kick every once in a while when it wasnt working right. I owned that when I was a newb and I put a Voodoo3 in it and I couldnt figure out why the damn thing always froze...turns out it came with a 120w power supply. I also screwed the motherboard directly to a case on my first computer build....luckily somebody told me what the standoff things were for before I turned it on.

A friend of mine bought a brand new power supply and somehow upon preparing to install it in his case, dropped the entire case on the brand new power supply and destroyed it...no RMA for that one :D

[Thrax]

As of yet, no hardware has been fried under my watch. I think, however, that it's only a matter of time.

[Guyute]

Cyclonite,

Luckily for me she is one of those ones you read about that called her admin every 10 minutes in a hysterical tizzy...they were so used to her doing something and not realizing it that they never bothered to check further and see if anything fishy was going on...and she never realized we knew how to get a dos prompt as the contract system loaded up on booting, so she thought that was all you could do with the PC. hehe.

[djstubbs]

when i was 11 i typed in the deltree command on dos-prompt windows 95 after while listening to a jerky boys song for the first time.

by the end of the song i had a formatted hard drive, and was clueless...

[Jimborae]

Sleeving a psu, I made a diagram so I could rewire the atx connection correctly; however I didn't realize that somehow the peice of paper with diagram on it had spun round & that i was now reading the diagram upside down. Consequently I rewired it in complete reverse to how it should be. Plugged it in, switched it on. Bang, crackle & blue flames & sparks coming from the motherboard & psu. Killed the motherboard, cpu & psu. :)

[madmat]

I installed a stick of PC100 ram backwards one time (how, to this day I don't know) and fired up the mobo with it like that and *~POP~* fried the stick of ram and killed the ram slot it was in. Oddly enough the mobo it was in survived with the other 2 ram slots still working.
This was at work, none of it was mine...my boss laughed and said, "well I guess we'll have to sell that board on clearance" ;D

[GHoosdum]

The stupidest things I've ever done to a PC involve sticking things in while the PC was powered on. Once, I stuck my hand in to move a cable or something, and accidentally jammed my finger in the spining CPU fan. All 3K RPM of 80MM goodness stopped with one of the blades embedded in my finger.
The other stupid thing was when I was running my secondary PC without an I/O plate on the back. I tried to plug in my USB keyboard, and I accidentally hit the side of the USB ports instead of the port itself. I heard a snap and the PC shut down immediately. Luckily, it ran again after that, but I was scared for a bit.

[Zanthian]

One time when i was in a hurry to plug a usb cable into the back of the computer by touch, I forced the cable into the port backwards and the computer didn't like that much at all and shutdown.

[derek]

had a 1.4 amd thunderbird, and of course it was running hot.
got a new heatsink for it and in my excitement mounted it backwards.
fired up pc and black screen.
looked close at it and felt like kicking myself in the head for frying my chip.

derek

[GnomeWizardd]

Sleeving a psu, I made a diagram so I could rewire the atx connection correctly; however I didn't realize that somehow the peice of paper with diagram on it had spun round & that i was now reading the diagram upside down. Consequently I rewired it in complete reverse to how it should be. Plugged it in, switched it on. Bang, crackle & blue flames & sparks coming from the motherboard & psu. Killed the motherboard, cpu & psu. :)


Thats what i was most scared of when sleeving my old global winn 520 last year, but no problems occured, sorry for your loss!

[keto]

Har!

I stopped an 80mm fan with my finger ON PURPOSE, thinking it was total BS that such a small blade could cut you. Rest assured, the stories you read are true and I was wrong. :rolleyes:

Any of you electrical geniuses understand the difference between series and parallel? I've done a fair amount of home electrical work and, of course like most of you, am the local neighbourhood and extended families computer guru. But I just cannot hammer the concept of series and parallel thru my thick skull. Anyways, bought some LED's and wired up a light strip as a cheap alternative to a cathode light. Wasn't *quite* fast enough with the camera, when I hit the power switch (naturally I didn't try to fire it up on its own, had to have it hooked up to a box full of brand new components) I'm lucky I didn't lose an eye. *POP* *zing rattle* as the exploding LED's blew apart and bounced off the inside of the case and the walls around me. Didn't get touched and didn't lose any computer components, tho I soiled some shorts.:wtf: I think the string was 10 or 12 LED's long, didn't burn them all but about half as I recall. Rebuilt it the OTHER way (series or parallel???) and it worked a charm. :scratch: :wtf:

[EMT]

keto... usually LEDs have to be wired with a resistor because they don't take much power and if they're forced to they simply die like that. However, if you put 10 of them in series each will take 1/10th of the power, my guess is that was your solution.

Okay here's my dumbest. Years ago before I found Icrontic I was working on my Celeron 300MHz and somehow the CD drive had really gone fubar. So I disconnected a bunch of stuff, removed the drive, and put a screwdriver in to uhh fix something mechanical? I'm not sure it even worked. The real problem was that when I put everything back together the computer wouldn't boot - I think it didn't POST! So I see this two-pin plug coming from the power supply not connected to anything, and guess that it's supposed to be connected to something. First mobo pins I tried didn't have any effect. I put it on a second pair of pins (I was just asking for it), hit the power... smoky goodness ensued. The wire actually melted and the mobo, PSU, CPU died on the spot; the HDD also died later. (Incidentally as a result, a few months later I bought a Tbird 1100 and joined Icrontic) (and haven't done such stupid stuff since!)

[TheSmJ]

A couple of years ago I installed a heatsink backwards (over a 1600+ CPU). Lucky for me I had enough AS3 on it that the heatsink actually made ~50% contact with the dye. The CPU ran like that (folding) for at least 6 months before I replaced the heatsink because -guess what?- it was running too hot!

[Gargoyle]

I did that one too. :shakehead
Glad I'm not the only one ;D

[Cyclonite]

I guess I should add one.

I was really bored one day. I had just set up my new computer about two days prior. I had the side off and was looking inside it. So, being the bright one I am, I decided, "Hmmm... this fan is pretty snazzy. Maybe I should touch it." So, guess what I did! Oh, and the computer is on at this point. I thought to myself, "It'll probably just act like a ceiling fan..." Boy, was I wrong! I didn't get any cus or anything, but I managed to snap off 3 of the blades. I told Newegg it just broke, and they replaced it for me, but that scared the hell out of me when it happened. I also was really pissed at myself for being a dumbass. ;D

[dragonV8]

When Sally and I decided to build our very first computer ourselves, i was fairly frightened at the prospect. All i could think of was: "What if.....".

Well, i had to post a message in this forum to ask for help. Major problem. Checked everything, reseated everything, no go.

Turned out........USB plugs fit straight onto Firewire pins on the mobo. Writing was very small and failed to see it. Not too sure if I ever owned up to that or not.



In the 80's, we bought our first computer. As we were working at a remote mine-site, all phone calls were long distance and ran through a company satellite set-up.

We got a modem with it running at some unbelievable slow baud rate.I wanted a game to play as we had none. Hooked up to a bulletin board service, found a file called Kermit, and started the download. The whole program fitted on a 360K 5 1/4" floppy. Took 30+ minuted to download at a rediculous $$ rate. Turned out not to be a game, but something to do with modems. :(

Felt quite foolish on both occasions.

[entropy]

I'm with Thrax. Though I've only ever built one computer.

Stupidest thing I've done, though, was I somehow managed to break the hell out of Windows XP Home on my mom's Dell. I could usually fix it, seeing as how I did it often :p, but it just wouldn't work for the life of me. So, I installed Windows NEXT to the other Windows. Two XPs, running on the same partition. Good fun, I tell ya... it ran that way for months and months until I built mine and salvaged their files :p.

Somewhat stupid ... just the other day, when I was at school helping with the school newspaper (I'm a layout editor) I think it was me who accidentally kicked out the power plug for the router we were on. Almost lost ALL our files. Thank GOD crappy Indesign (2.0) had crashed the day before and I freaked and backed everything up 4 times, lol.

[muddocktor]

I guess the stupidest thing I've done with computers was when I decided to swap my celeron 433 out with the P2-300 my daughter's Compaq had in it and overclock it to 450 MHz on my BH6 board. The Compaq had used a passive heatsink that wouldn't even fit on the BH6 board and I was waiting for a new heatsink to arrive for it, but I wanted to see if it would boot up in my BH6. This was an original SECC slot1 proc that used the steel heat transfer plate over the processor slug and I figured it would give me a little leeway, so I plugged the proc into the slot and fired it up with my finger on the heatplate. 5 seconds and a severely scorched finger later, I was able to pull the cord out of the psu! :eek:

That taught me a good lesson on how fast processors heat up. ;D

[TheSmJ]

Oh, I just remembered one of them, but I blame the badly designed part more than I do myself:

When I first built the box in my sig, I connected my floppy drive's power connector too far to the left (so only 3 or the 4 leads were connected to the drive) that caused a dead short across the 12v rail within the floppy's power connector (so much for an effective keyed connector). I powered up the system, the PSU fans ran faster than ever before as the PSU tried to compensate for the lost voltage, and shut down..

I ended up destroying the power connectors on both the PSU and the floppy, but I was able to replace the drive’s with a spare, and I have yet to even bother replacing the connector on the PSU.

[Shivian]

Well fortunately my experiences aren't destructive ... here's the main one I can remember...

My first lan setup and we were using the good ol' BNC. I didn't know what the purpose of the end connector was. 2 hours later ... to this day I am still reminded about this (at least 5 years ago that happened).

Oh and I did have an experience with my little finger and a 60mm fan (quite fast those things are). I accidently touched it and my little finger didn't forgive me for several days. Should put some grills in or something but I still take my chances :o

[TheGr81]

I've hit quite a few 80mm, and a couple 92mm fans with my fingers... Nothing broke, no blades, no fingers, etc. Maybe it's because I wasn't using any high-rpm, high-cfm fans?? :confused:

One time I ran outta jumpers for my asus mobo... so I tried using little pieces of tin foil to conduct on two pins I stole a jumper from... That jumper just happened to be on the case intrusion detection thing, so every time I turned on the computer it told me that my case had been opened, and to please check parts or whatever, and it wouldn't let me past the bios... :banghead:

Maybe I should have taken a look at the board's instruction booklet?? :D

[mcwc]

I was taking apart a retired 486 a few years back. I was trying to remove the power connector from the floppy drive and that sucker was on there really tight. I managed to remove it with enough force yanking it off that when I banged my index finger on the corner of the PSU, I bleed in the case.

Another one was taking a can of canned air and blasted and blasted the heatsink's fan. It whurred loudly and never worked again.

I have yet to do any major damage to computers.

[blaunchb]

The stupidest thing has, surely, to be getting involved with the bloody things in the first place!!
Brian