Stupid Things You Have Done With Your Computer...

Not all of us are perfect with computers so now is your chance to tell us all how. This thread is all about how we have all &^*@ed up our computers over the years and didn’t really mean too. Maybe you were trying something out or just installing a new sound card. Lets all hear your best one or two computer mess up stories. Let’s not make fun of each other but laugh together about our bad luck or just plain stupidity.

1. Me and my friend a long time ago wanted to take the processor out his sony viao to put in a new processor. First sony glued the processor to the heat sink, which we had no idea about. So we pulled so hard on that thing to get it out. Finally the heat sink came out along with the processor, unfortunately that didn’t give us the chance to unlock the processor. So we go to put in the new processor, and one goddamn pin is bent. We bend it back, stick it in and nothing works.... So we go to put in the old processor, of course we had no idea about zero force nor the fact that you must lift the lever for the processor. Long story short we had three people at the same time pushing on the heat sink to get in the processor. 2 weeks later we realized that you needed to lift the lever, put is back in and somehow it worked again.

2. Just recently I built a new computer. I had a hard drive on it with all my music and other things from my last computer about 120 gigs worth. I wasn't paying attention, and plugged it into a Fan power connector... Oh yes everything was gone. Smelled some burning, realized what I did, and just sat there in awe.

I have many more, but this is what first came to mind... Lets hear yours!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Not physically, but I was clearing out disk space by deleting stuff several years back. Then I came across this folder called "Efficient Networks" and then I looked through it. There were only a couple of files there and they didn't seem important so then I deleted them. I went to the internet to access something, but it didn't show up. Turns out I had wiped out my internet connection! I forgot how wwe fixed that problem, especially since the disk was tucked away somewhere obscure at the time.

I almost wiped out my internet connection again after using trying to delete the New.Net junk created by IMesh. I tried using XCleaner to remove it too, but my internet connection was still gone. Luckily System Restore worked its magic.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I had my computer open one time and the cable for the side fan had become exposed. I turned the computer on and saw some sparks, then the computer turned off- the power supply went- the fan cable touched the case or something. I was happy that the rest of the computer took no damage.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Oh man I never had anything with sparks... Thats great, but at the same time sucks haha

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

A while back I collected up a load of spare parts to build a second machine, and forgot all about the heatsink + fan (it was a slot 1 PIII). I left it installing windows and even used it for a while. I left it doing what I intended to use it for (quake 3 server) and when I came back that thing had BURNED.

Before that, I had a pentium 75 PC I moved to a new case. It used the old-school PSU connection, and I forgot about making sure both power connectors to the motherboard had to be on correctly (black to black). I turned it on and it died. Nothing spectacular, it just didn't do anything.

The only other thing I've done is something you only do once, ever. I switched that little switch on the back of my PSU from 220V to 130 or whatever it was. I turned it on and it popped. =\

I was speaking idiomatically.

A While back when I was about 9-10, while messing with my uncles computer (windows 3.1), I somehow managed to delete the system files needed to boot the OS. It gets turned off and when I turned it on again i was stuck at Dos. Thankfully I haven't ever done that since (without intending to).

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

The only thing I've REALLY done is literally cave-man a stick of RAM backwards into a slot. Needless to say, the slot is broken, but the RAM surprisingly works (and is what I'm using at the moment).

My parents, on the other hand... let's see... On an old 486 computer, they were trying to get Windows into 256-color mode so that they could run a game. Long story short, they ended up with the monitor showing nothing but a postage stamp. I have NO clue how they fixed that one.

Most amazing jew boots

Originally Posted by Murdercrow

The only thing I've REALLY done is literally cave-man a stick of RAM backwards into a slot. Needless to say, the slot is broken, but the RAM surprisingly works (and is what I'm using at the moment).

Haha, I've done that. And the RAM still works aswell as the slot in my case. I was very lucky I had the case open at the time and as soon as I turned it on sparks and smoke was seen. Any longer and I probably would have ended with a lot of dead things.

Another crazy thing I have done is open a PSU and clean it up. The fan wasn't going so I stuck my finger in it to help it move :\ Got a decent shock from it and also tripped the circuit. I was freaked at that time since it was 2am in the morning and all the lights went out

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

When building a computer, I apparantly let the motherboard touch the case. After trying to turn it on a few times, my hard-drive started to burn. Good thing I put a 4GB in for testing, and not my 40GB (which was a lot back then). Sent the parts back, telling the company they were busted (everything died) and even got my money back Used that to buy new parts and let my father put the thing together. The thing is my sister's now, and works fine (after replacing the video-card and the hard-drives).

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Roph

The only other thing I've done is something you only do once, ever. I switched that little switch on the back of my PSU from 220V to 130 or whatever it was. I turned it on and it popped. =\

I've done that too =[

Turned it on and saw some green spark fly out the back, scary stuff

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Last year I was looking into making my computer quieter, and ended up buying a somewhat unusual fan/heatsink for my CPU. The stupid part of this was that I decided to do it in the middle of the school semester when I really couldn't really afford break my computer (or mess with it at all for that matter).

To be honest, I'm still not actually sure if I damaged anything or not. I took my whole computer apart since screws had to go in from under the motherboard, and although I tried not to mess anything up too much I have a feeling I broke a lot of computer-building rules. In any case, I put my PC back together and gave it a test boot, but the darn thing wouldn't even start. I tried removing parts, reseating things, etc. but I couldn't figure out what was wrong so I took it apart again. It looked, to me, like the CPU was fried or possibly even the motherboard, so I ended up ordering replacements for both. Put everything back together, including the new fan, and the computer wouldn't boot. Took it apart, looked at the CPU again, and it looked like the other one. I felt pretty dejected at this point since the only alternative was an old Mac G4 I had (coincidentally) brought up from home, but I just couldn't take being without my PC. On a whim, I decided to try putting on the old heatsink/fan combo with the new CPU/motherboard, and it worked on the first try! Furthermore, I'd cleaned a fuckton of dust out of the heatsink/fan which made it even louder than it'd been before!

One of these days I'm gonna try putting that Zalman fan back in, but first I have to figure out why it was giving me problems in the first place.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Magic

Last year I was looking into making my computer quieter, and ended up buying a somewhat unusual fan/heatsink for my CPU. The stupid part of this was that I decided to do it in the middle of the school semester when I really couldn't really afford break my computer (or mess with it at all for that matter).

Incidentally, my stupid computer-killing story starts in the exact same way. I was using the stock AMD heatsink and one generic fan, and the combination was noisy and bad at keeping things acceptably cool in summer.

I bought an Arctic Cooling heatsink and some nice temperature controlled fans, and a tube of Arctic Silver to install the heatsink with. The heatsink and fans went on perfectly, worked perfectly, and all was well...until I had the bright idea that I could improve the system's cooling further by using some of the leftover Arctic Silver on the bottom of the chipset heatsink. In the process of removing or reinstalling the cooler, I managed to break a trace on the (rather expensive, BTW) motherboard, which killed it completely.

That board was replaced with an el-cheapo ECS, which actually went perfectly well until I killed it in another over-enthusiastic burst of noise reduction. Suffice it to say that you should not disconnect the chipset fan from a motherboard if it comes with one. I can't say for sure that disconnecting the chipset fan was what killed it, especially since $40 ECS boards aren't exactly the most reliable things ever made, but it definitely started to go downhill after I did that, and by the time I made the mental connection and hooked it back up, the board was already nearly-useless.

my third motherboard was an MSI with a passive cooler, and I'm not touching it with a ten-foot pole. o_o

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?