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

I nearly killed myself with stupidity!

When i was first into overclockers/modding (and a lot younger) i wanted to use 2 PSU's in my first water cooling setup and needed one of them to power on the pump when the computer started, i wanted to hide all the cabling inside the other psu but it was a spur of the moment decision and because i wasn’t very organised i forgot that the psu was still plugged into the wall, i removed the casing and for some stupid reason touched the 2 big metal heatsink things, man that was a SHOCK and a half, good job it was only 1 hand otherwise the current would have passed right through me, Also why is it that its so hard to remove your hand from the electric current when you are being electrocuted (oh and my little brother was there and didn’t help, thanks mate)

I leant from that lesson and have never electrocuted myself again "goes and touches some wood"
 
Friend of mine at college didn't know what the switch was on the back of the PSU so he flicked it, que loud bang, sparks, killed the whole room of computer's. Lots of angry students. Few days later I went to see if the techies had fixed it, wouldnt turn on, looked at the back of the computer, yeh switch is still down, so switched it back, still no luck. So next thing I think, fuse must have blown so I used the monitor cable, goes in BANG, me fly a few feet away with nice purple sparks comming off the computer. I don't think it work's no more.

Only other blunder ive had is slicing my hand open when I popped the drive bay cover off to put in a DVD drive. Dam there was a lot of blood.
 
Colbaker said:
Also why is it that its so hard to remove your hand from the electric current when you are being electrocuted (oh and my little brother was there and didn’t help, thanks mate)
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As the shock makes your muscles clamp down involuntarily, it's a bit like passing a current through a dead animal their muscles will twitch.
 
Once noticed a case fan wasn't plugged in while the PC was running. Went to plug it in and was greeted with a nice electic flash and a bang. Killed a Zalman fanmate in the process. Was very lucky I didn't take out anything else.
 
PSU Voltage Switch and Unplugging the fan at the same time :rolleyes:

Cue burning smell and a nice display of flashing lights and a burnt out motherboard and PSU all-in-one.
 
back at uni I was in a room working with my final year project group. On the way out one of them saw the big red button on the wall which said "do not press" and decided it would be a good idea to press it. All the power went out and the other person in the room using a computer lost all his work :s

Colbaker said:
i wanted to hide all the cabling inside the other psu but it was a spur of the moment decision and because i wasn’t very organised i forgot that the psu was still plugged into the wall, i removed the casing and for some stupid reason touched the 2 big metal heatsink things
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you really shouldn't do that even if the power's off. They have huge capacitors in them so the charge will still be there regardless. You need to know how to discharge the capacitor safely which probably needs specialist equipment in a psu
 
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There was also that time that I got hold of an AS/400 a few years ago and was a bit of an OS/400 noob. Couldn't figure out how to shut the thing down. Also didn't realise it had a built in UPS. So I got frustrated and thought sod it and pullked the plug. And watched it still on like it was mocking me.

Managed to shut it down eventually. (pwrdwnsys *immed)

Burnsy
 
Zogger said:
you really shouldn't do that even if the power's off. They have huge capacitors in them so the charge will still be there regardless. You need to know how to discharge the capacitor safely which probably needs specialist equipment in a psu
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Or just turn it off while it's under load as long as it's a 'soft off'.

Burnsy
 
Burnsy2023 said:
There was also that time that I got hold of an AS/400 a few years ago and was a bit of an OS/400 noob. Couldn't figure out how to shut the thing down. Also didn't realise it had a built in UPS. So I got frustrated and thought sod it and pullked the plug. And watched it still on like it was mocking me.

Managed to shut it down eventually. (pwrdwnsys *immed)

Burnsy
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My Dad used to work for IBM and his group had one of the first AS/400's in the country, (single digit serial number etc etc) ... the day it arrived they managed to drop it off the back of the lorry :rolleyes:

Fortunately they managed to put it back together in the lab and get it working again .... :)

Worst I've done is slice the end of my thumb open when fitting a motherboard IO plate, although I did had a VX chipset motherboard with a bit of a curve in it from installing a cache module which didn't quite have the clearance from the floppy bay that I thought it did ...
 
bought a juno p6 case (from here) which i've still got in a cupboard, too expensive to bin and too ugly to sell :p

tried to change a fan in a psu while it was plugged in and switched on was going fine until my mum distracted me and i put my hand on the input pcb :eek:

I'm also in the "flicked the psu voltage switch" club but like so many was 15ish at the time :D

and not me but a guy i used to work with in a computer shop managed on several occasions to put a socket 370 cpu in the wrong way round which i've never been able to fathom :confused:

oh and at the same shop the place we used to buy oem p4 cpu's from had the stupid habit of putting warranty void stickers in the middle of the heatspreader :rolleyes:
 
da_ging said:
tried to change a fan in a psu while it was plugged in and switched on was going fine until my mum distracted me and i put my hand on the input pcb :eek:
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Why on earth would you work on a PSU when it is SWITCHED ON?!

I'm also in the "flicked the psu voltage switch" club but like so many was 15ish at the time :D
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Yeah, I think we've all done that around our teens.

My friend nearly blew his room up switching the power supply switch to 110v. that was the best fireworks display I have ever been too.
 
when I was a wee bit younger I used to think pc's were like spectrums and c64's and they lost all their data when turned off.

I also tried to insert a cpu the other day without removing the protective cover on the bottom oops.
 
Orange livebox went bang (well, plug did, but it was sealed plug) so got another plug and length of wire, and tried to mate it with the end that goes into the livebox.

Switched it on, the livebox went pop and up in smoke, and so did everything else connected to the extension lead (PC, monitor, Speakers). could never get it repaired so had to replace it all :D
 
Thought of the second one, was about 4 or 5 and playing day of the tenticles with my best mate harry (he lived next door) on some crazy old pc. We got pretty far then decided to go play out side and thought "oh we cant leave the comp on" so harry pressed the "rest" button (reading should be taught at a young age!) and we walked off.

A few mins later we mentioned it to his dad who RAN LIKE MAD to go see if the thing was ok :D (thankfully our grasp of pc's were better than his,....)
 
Oh I remember a great one at my old workplace. We hired some techs to come help us out with some dev work one time and they were working away at the corner, I needed a spare monitor so went over to unplug one from one of the terminals there and accidentally turned off one of the techies screens.....when I say screens I mean his whole machine.

If anyone from there is reading this now, haha.
 
My almost worst PC blunder was today when fitting a new GPU cooler, I went all emo on the graphics card and stabbed it with a screwdriver :(
 
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