Your best PC blunders.... *OOPS!*

I can't think of anything tremendously stupid I've done in relation to PCs apart from when I stuck a finger accidentally into the CPU fan and it shattered off a blade leading to the whole heatsink trying to break away from the motherboard. The solution was a proper Heath Robinson style job involving an old CPU fan and extra screws to bolt it onto the heatsink which had apparantly welded itself to the CPU. It might still be working to this day for all I know.
 
I once took a shuttle PC apart and when I was putting it back together, I couldn't remember which way round the USB connector for the front panel went. 10 minutes later there was a really bad smell and lots of smoke from it.

Building a new computer, everything was fine and I had left it running for a while to make sure the temps were OK. Left the room and heard a huge BANG and the computer cut out. What was the first thing I did ? Stuck my head round the back and plugged it back in. Nice big blue flame shot out the back narrowly missing my head and killing the PSU.
 
colinuk said:
Built a server up, put W2000 server on it and set it up, all nice, drive C was a little small, but thought nothing of it. Was about 10gig in size, enough for OS and some drivers, must be getting a RAID system in later for the data.. Powered it down, went home for the weekend.

Monday- turned the server on, blank, nothing on it, booted up the server with ws2K and sure enough drive c was empty, odd, not thinking right, before my 2nd coffee moment, rebuilt the server, on the network, users in, trained them up on the desktop pcs, server used only as a printserver and basic file server. Ran ok for the week. Weekend, turned it off.

Monday - aye you guessed it, Drive C blank, had to rebuild, but this time i was curious, 3 times it needs rebuilding, thats not right.

Checked the BIOS, noticed it had 16gig RAM but not showing a hdd.

Opened up the server to check the harddrive was ok, nothing there, just an empty spot..

Realised my error, on boot up the bios is told if no hdd, use 10gig of mem to make a virtual drive C LOL....

I will never forget the look on my bosses face when i told him the server he paid £20,000 for had no hdd and had to expalin how it had been working for a week with out one...
Click to expand...

This is amazing
 
Plugging in a CD-Rom, done it loads of times while system on.. until I tried it upside down no realising it wont in but still can make contact :(

While making up my own long wires for fan "holding" the ends in my mouth and then my wife deciding to go on the PC okay.. except the other end was plugged in :(
 
my fav 2 Blunders :

Installing a danger den maze gpu block to my old x1900xt passing the 24 hour leak test with the pc not being on (just a spare psu to drive the loop) then seeing i left the plastic on the block with AS5 as well , good thing i did'nt do a full power up like that

when i was swiching cooler on a x2 3800 in DFI NF4 SLI i som how pulled the cpu out of the socket damage free , but it was still stuck to the cooler (a XP-120) so a slow slid the cpu to one side of the cooler base before i slid it totaly off, good plan but then fall off on its own , jump across my desk and hit the floor , 2hours later and 50+ pins made stright again it worked fine and still is :)
 
pingwing said:
About 2 years ago my an8-sli died (useless southbridge cooling) so i got a £20 rdx 200 from here (bargin of the CENTURY) and decided it wouldnt be hard to switch them.

Forgot i used artic silver on my opty 148, which was stuck on to the max! (i couldnt be assed to turn on the pc for a bit to heat it up...) and i managed to rip the heat sink with cpu attached out the socket (wince one though it was all ok). 2 hours of thinking of ways to get them separated to get the cpu back in the socket and i didnt have any brilliant ideas. So i put it on its side and the thing tried to 'self right' aka bend 4-5 rows of pins!!!

I swore a lot! Then pried the thing off with a screw driver and set about straightening the pins....

It worked when i put it back to gether, supprisingly!! :D (just, as it turned off when it got too hot....)

Moral of the story, pins on the motherboard all the way! Edit: also hammer guy genious!
Click to expand...

lol looks like i was'nt the only one
 
When building my first 386 I had put the Mobo power connectors so the black wires were at the end and not together in the middle. Lucky I did not power up before checking.

Oh and I once installed Windows ME.
 
My worst weekend, my weekend horriblus as i like to call it.

I bought a vapochill case and cooler for my athlon XP1700, and thats where the problem started.

My fingers were cut to shreds on the vapochill case, i didnt read the instructions properly, and ended up snapping the socket off the board i had.

Went to the shops and bought another board, fitted it in, cut my fingers on the case again and didnt realise i had bled into the case, which set my floppy drive on fire, taking out a power supply. Bought another psu, fitted it, hadnt sealed the vapo right and blew the board and chip, bought 3rd board, snapped off the socket from it.

To add insult to injury, i bled into my 9800 without realising it, and blew that up as well, all told, the weekend cost me about £800, not including the £500 the vapo had cost me, which was sold the week after for about £300.

Absolute nightmare from beginning to end.
 
Probably putting the motherboard in without the rising screws. Then again I was only 14 and can gladly say I haven't had any mishaps since then to this day :)
 
I've never made a blunder when making a PC, but i have made the mistake of using cheap CD-R's.

They had a silver top that would peel off and when i used one, and the CD drive was spinning fast, i heard a "PUFF".
The top of the CD managed to disintigrate into a thousand pieces inside the drive. I had to spend about 2 hours removing little silver foil from the drive.

Never again.
 
When 5.25" drives were being phased out slowly, I bought my new "stiffy" to replace my "floppy" :D and tried to install it without turning my PC off.

*POOOOOOOOF*

Lots of smoke, lots of noise and I actually had black smudges on my face like Wile E. Coyote :D I sent it back and told them it was faulty - got a replacement a few days later.
 
Worst Blunder: Was fitting a CPU waterblock for a friend, this one has a bar you screw down to push the block ontop of the CPU. Was screwing for 5 minutes thinking when will it end? Only to look down and see the motherboard BENT severely from the tension. Happy ending everything was ok =D
 
I had a motherboard i needed to RMA and had the number and box all ready. Removed it clumsily and crushed the cpu pins, rendering it un RMAable! Doh
 
gingerly balancing a motherboard (with ram & cpu connected) on the edge of a sink (was doing final testing of waterblock before connecting it all up to the pc

the sink was full of water, the house phone went, so i popped out to answer it, then my dog came in to see what the fuss was about (the same sink is used for her water bowl / food)

dog pushed the board into the sink, i heard the commotion on the phone, but was taking a holiday booking for my mum, ran back in and the board was fully submerged for about 30 seconds!

was gutted, took it all apart and dried in the airing cupboard for 3 weeks

all components still working fine :cool: -that was about 5 years ago


-------



once deleted the partitions on my usb hard drive (had all music, and pics on it about 250gb worth) during a windows xp install, i'd forgotten to add the sata drivers, so only the one drive showed up and was on the phone to the gf at the time

luckily i noticed before copying any files to it, then i used testdisk to restore it in about 10 seconds :) didn't lose a thing, i donated £50 to testdisk that day!
 
Well not technically a PC blunder, but I changed my Xbox hardrive (original) with a bigger 250Gb one, but forgot to turn the power off. If my hand touched the PSU to the right, I would have been in trouble. :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom