Stupidest thing you have done on a computer?

paddy said:
I killed my GSCEs with Command and Conquer: Red Alert :)
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Settlers II for me

Worst thing I did was when I was building a PC for a mate who wanted to watch me build (which I hate) and didn't seat the CPU correctly, one Socket A processor knackered later and an eggy smell that lingered for days! I had to pay for it as well, annoyingly.
 
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Plenty of acidental deletes, formats of wrong drives etc.

Broken a few laptops at work while taking them apart to fix them when i first started...its how you learn :P
 
Mixed up inlet and outlet on my watercooling, half a litre of water was in the computer, went to power up the pump and realised what I'd done. At this point my coolant looked like pink fluff as it'd bubbled up.
I had to turn off the pump, turned the PC upside down so that the half litre was downwards, so I could hack at my tubes and get it switched the right way.

There was still coolant in the pump and it stained my carpet.

I managed to get it all tubed back up etc and it went fine after that :p
 
I was so convinced that bad contact between the cooler and CPU die was causing random overheats that I forced the cooler down so hard, the motherboard cracked.

Turns out it was just a slow-moving fan due to dust buildup. Felt like a complete idiot.
 
I put an Intel DX2 66 CPU back in the wrong way round of my shiny new PC :( It glowed red hot before I turned it off. My parents replaced it with a Cyrix chip :(
 
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On my first Win95 PC when I was much younger I started to play about with some windows tweak programs, things to change the wording on the start button and the like. I then found an option called "Disable GUI" but I had no idea what this GUI was so ticked it to see what happened.

Ended up having to reinstall the OS because I couldn't work out how to change it back without using the GUI itself.
 
I don't understand why people don't do overnight runs on watercooling systems OUTSIDE the computer now. I mean this was the norm in the past, what changed?

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Worst I've done is encrypt some files and forget the password.
 
Incredibly, in my 20 years of using PC's (building them for around 12 years) I've never done anything really stupid. The only time I've ever damaged anything was when I knocked a glass of water over and some dripped onto a USB card reader and blew the mobo. I don't know whether to be proud of my awesomeness, or sad that I don't have any funny stories :o
 
When I was about 10 we got our first computer. It had a tiny hard drive which would quickly fill up so I set off clearing some space thinking I was a massive geek genius. I managed to delete a whole bunch of stuff including all the windows sounds and sound drivers - forever more our computer had no sound and none of us could work out how to fix it at the time. My parents still don't know t'was me :D
 
I just knocked a large glass of Shiraz over onto my MacBook, which ofc was on at the time. I quickly powered it off and mopped everything up with kitchen roll, but it won't boot now. :(

It's currently in the airing cupboard now, hopefully it'll work when it dries out, if not I'll be making my first claim on the house insurance. :(
 
SuBsTaNcE said:
I flicked the voltage switch on the back of the PSU whilst the PC was on about 12-13 years ago, there was a nice bright blue flash and a puff of smoke

Instant death for that PSU
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i dont that, oh what does this switch do. oooopppps, with mine tho it didnt blow the PSU just the fuse on the plug so i was lucky. eek lol

worst thing was when i upgraded a to a new HHD years ago, with the old drive i thought i had backed everything up so went ahead an formatted it ready to sell it. - i didnt do a standard format i used one of the progs that do the loooong format thing so files are gone.

after i done it - i realised i hadnt backed up the folder that had about 5 years worth of digital photos.

Im a backup freak ever since then.
 
Back in 2001 got a brand spanking new Dell System was state of the art at the time.

Booted into the OS and immediately tried to overclock the graphics card, rebooted and it locked at windows start up screen everytime, i then proceeded to re-install windows XP all over again when i could have just fiddled in safe mode :/
 
Failed college because I got the internet for the first time and got hooked on Soldiers of Fortune 2 and Dungeon Siege (was probably other reasons, but thats my excuse anyhoo!)
 
The stupidest thing I did, was when formatting Windows.

Put the CD in the drive
Reboot machine
Pressed spacebar when promoted to push any key
Went through formatting / installing of Windows
Reboot
Pressed spacebar when promoted to push any key
Went through forma.... hey, what?

:D:(
 
EVH said:
The stupidest thing I did, was when formatting Windows.

Put the CD in the drive
Reboot machine
Pressed spacebar when promoted to push any key
Went through formatting / installing of Windows
Reboot
Pressed spacebar when promoted to push any key
Went through forma.... hey, what?

:D:(
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haha i have to admit to having done that in the past back in the windows XP days :D
 
EVH said:
The stupidest thing I did, was when formatting Windows.

Put the CD in the drive
Reboot machine
Pressed spacebar when promoted to push any key
Went through formatting / installing of Windows
Reboot
Pressed spacebar when promoted to push any key
Went through forma.... hey, what?

:D:(
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Hahaha yes i have done this too!!
 
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