Dumbest thing you've ever done

[Texun]

I was thinking about all the informative posts on how to do things the right way. Most people are proud of their skill or ability to build or tweak their systems and share that knowledge with others; it?s what makes this a great forum, but what about the things you would rather forget?

C?mon?. fess up and share your most embarrassing or dumbest PC mistake. We?ve all made plenty along the way. We?ll never meet face to face anyway so go for it.

I?ll go first.

1. Back in the days of DOS, and well before I knew or heard anything about pirated software, I bought a used 286 already fully loaded but without the floppies. Late one night I tried to dump a certain directory and its subdirectories. I used the DELTREE *.* command and it worked great. Unfortunately I was at the C:\> when I did it. I immediately learned the value of buying software.

2. I rebuilt a system recently and fought DV playback problems for hours before discovering I was still using XP?s AGP driver and not nVidia?s. I haven?t made this mistake in years ? if ever!

3. Not mine but one I was associated with- Years ago I upgraded Win 3.1 to W95 (using 20 something floppies) for a guy who used a tape drive for backing up his business. I delivered a perfectly working system and got a call the following day saying his PC went FUBAR. After asking a few questions he said he needed to retrieve a file from his tape. Instead of selecting the file he went with the "Full Restore" option. Poof! No more W95.

4. I've hooked up the floppy cable bassackwards many times.

5. Back when USRobotics Sportster's were hot I bought one got a for a BBS and to receive incoming faxes, but it wouldn't answer an incoming call. After many hours of troubleshooting and reading AT commands I took the modem back and exchanged it for another. The replacement was no better. Somewhere in day two I read the init string again for the 100th time. That is when I realized ATSO=1 and ATS0=1 are NOT the same. Those of you who used AT command sets will understand.

Edit:

This thread has netted more oddities and funnies than expected! I feel better knowing I'm not the only one who pulled a bone head stunt now and then. What I did not expect was to see myself in so many times in the situations posted below. I can see how lucky I?ve been, as very few of my mistakes ended in disaster. I've come close though.... forgetting to unplug the PS, plugging, unplugging, hooking up crap in the dark or by feel when I was in a hurry, etc. I?ve done it MANY times before with no trouble. I?ve been building for years and I've gotten reckless!

I know this is a bummer for some and funny for others, but there are valuable lessons in each reply. Maybe everyone can laugh a little and learn a lot just as I have. Thanks for the ?confessions? and keep 'em coming!

 

[PremiumG]

I ran an Athlon CPU with its heatsink on, but not fastened. I was just doing some quick testing, and figured having the HS make contact was enough. seconds later, there was a burning smell.

 

[MichaelD]

I've done a few bonehead moves...but nothing compared to this one...which happened to be when I built my current rig just 6 months ago.

Couldn't really see or reach the power connector on the floppy drive. So, I grabbed the little 4-pin power plug and reached my fingers all the way in the case, just going by feel.

/wiggle
/stretch
/wiggle

Ah! It's on!

Pressed the power button and something in the case went *BZZZZZT!*

/sparks
/small explosion (literally)

Just following the smoke was NOT a problem; it was obvious where it was coming from.

I had connected the floppy power plug off-center so that the 12v line from the PS was connected to the 5v input on the floppy. The motor literally exploded, pushing the rear of the motor off and into the case.

Thankfully, everything was OK in the case. MB, memory, GFX, HD, CD-roms, everything.

That could've been an expensive lesson, but the scare was more than enough. 15+ years of PC building means little when you're not paying attention.

Lesson learned!

 

[RebateMonger]

1) Slid a Colorado Memory Systems 40MB tape drive into a bay with the PC's power turned on. The tape drive's electornics brushed the metal bottom of a floppy drive......"poof".

2) Didn't verify the orientation of an IDE cable. The manufacturer had installed one of the 40-pin IDE connectors backward on the cable. When I turned on the motherboard, the IDE controller went "poof". Permanently.

3) Didn't use a flashlight to verify the correct connection of the power cable to a floppy drive. "Poof" when a one-pin mismatch caused a direct short between the five-volt pin and ground. It melted the power wire. Fortunately, nothing but the wire was damaged permanently.

4) Bought a Voodoo 5 card from Ebay. Plugged it in, and then I smelled smoke. I got a flashlight and searched for the source of the smoke. Finally, I went into the kitchen for some water and saw the melted pan on the stove.

5) Returned a new Abit motherboard when the IDE controller proved "dead". It wouldn't work with either of two drives I tested. When the replacement motherboard arrived, I found the NEW board's controller was "defective" too. That's when I realized that both tested hard drives were Western Digitals, with their weird three-way channel jumpers (Slave, Master (single drive), Master (two drives)). I'd set the jumpers on both drives wrong.

 

[coolpurplefan]

I put a socket A heatsink at an angle. Boy, did I laugh when I saw that. lol

I thought it was unusual to have to use so much pressure to install the heatsink. But, I only noticed later why.

I've done lots of stupid things including thinking a floppy drive wasn't working when it was actually only disabled in the BIOS. Of course, the last one was ruined because I installed the cable the wrong way. It was a Sony and the IDE cable could be installed both ways.

 

[Piuc2020]

I killed a card and a mobo because the card was not set right for some reason (though I triple checked and the screw went in fine), I RMAed the card though I had to buy a new mobo.

 

[choovanski]

I saw this thread and I just had to join in. Not the dumbest thing I've done but the dumbest thing I've witnessed.

I had a project strewn all over the kitchen table one day when my boyfriend came home. He sat down at the table to chat and having no where to set his Coke (every last inch of the table was covered with parts, tools and manuals) he placed it on top of the power supply. Yes, the power supply of the computer. His sweating, aluminum can on top of a 500W power supply.

Needless to say, that sparked an argument.

 

[john49]

Back in DOS days, and when i hardly knew how to turn a computer on, i had a "car" game on it that i was deleting, was so proud of myself when i deleted the remnants of the game too, a useless file that had to be part of the "car" game, because it was called "AUTO"exec.bat
hmmmmmmmmm, wonder why computer stopped working???

 

[seanc85]

Not really anything esp dumb but made me look dumb.
Was helping a friend get a somewhat older pc running and just wanted to check the components first, as im reseating the ram i make a smartassed comment about "always wearing a ground strap".
went to start the pc, no video and hooray no system speaker
spent 45min troubleshooting the video card, tried a second maybe-good card. Finally dug out a speaker, postcode said ram
pulled the stick i had resat, everything was great

ill never hear the end of that one

 

[Imyourzero]

Originally posted by: Texun
I've hooked up the floppy cable bassackwards many times.

I hear ya on that. Man, why did they make those so that they can be plugged in either way? It's usually easy to do it right if you pay attention, but if the connector and socket were keyed like an IDE HDD's connector there would be NO problems. :disgust:

I was trying to think of some dumb mistakes that I made with my first couple of builds...I can't remember the really stupid n00b mistakes that I made but here's a recent one that made me feel like a tool:

For my most recent rig, I set aside a few hours on a Saturday so that I could take my time building it, doing some neat cable management, and configuring the OS to my liking. I installed everything into the case and after a quick once-over I was ready to connect the power leads from my Silverstone PSU to the motherboard. The mobo, a P5W DH Deluxe, had the large 24-pin connector as well as the smaller 4-pin connector. However, when I was ready to make the connection to the PSU I was heartbroken because I had connectors for everything BUT the 4-pin connector. There were a couple of 6-pin PCI-E connectors, multiple SATA connectors, the 24-pin main, and one or two 8-pin connectors. No 4-pin connector in sight.

I thought, surely this brand new PSU would be made in compliance with newer motherboards. Why does my motherboard not have an 8-pin power connector, and/or why did the PSU not come with some sort of 8-pin to 4-pin adapter to accommodate boards that only accepted a 4-pin lead? I was heartbroken...I had put off assembling the rig for a few days so that I could take my time and have all day to play with it. The next step was to call Asus support, explain the situation to them, and see if they could offer any assistance.

Needless to say, the phone call to Asus was brief. After being connected with a tech, I told him what motherboard and PSU I was using. I explained that the PSU didn't have a 4-pin lead for the mobo power and told him I just couldn't believe that these components wouldn't work together out of the box.

He then said, "On that particular PSU, check the 8-pin power connector. It should split in half, giving you the 4-pin that you need to plug into the motherboard." Sure enough, there was a hairline split on the 8-pin connector. Man I felt stupid after that. I told him that this was by far not my first build, and his tone of disbelief made me feel even dumber. I then attempted to BS with him about the newer Asus boards but he probably thought I was too much of an idiot to know what the Striker was.

Later I found out that this little "feature" was explained in the documentation that came with the PSU. I guess that's why they say you should always RTFM!

 

[tallman45]

Installing Token Ring

 

[fivetiger]

I was planning on my building my first computer later this month....and now I'm terrified.

 

[imported_flounder]

Went through 3 psu's due to a defective motherboard. Didn't even cross my mind that the mobo might be bad

 

[ObscureCaucasian]

I had a cheap PS in a machine once, and the thing wouldn't turn on. I'd hit the button, it would start to power up and then when I would turn it to work on it, it would just stop. Kept doing that a few times until I saw one of the pins from a power cable had slipped out of the plastic plug and was dangling around inside the case. Luckily it was shorting out on the case and not something important .

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: fivetiger
I was planning on my building my first computer later this month....and now I'm terrified.

follow linkie in my sig

 

[ScrapSilicon]

push pwr button front of case ..nothing.. hmm..push again a little more firmly..still nada.. :light: ..plug power cord into back of psu ...*bingo* :roll:

 

[zagood]

Building a computer for a girlfriend way back when, set everything up, turn on, post, then nothing. Sometimes got through half an XP installation then shut off. For about 3 days tried switching out parts, everything.

Finally went to switch out the processor and realized I hadn't put any thermal paste on.

So began my cooling OCD.

-z

 

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by: fivetiger
I was planning on my building my first computer later this month....and now I'm terrified.

Take at look at the guide mentioned by Scrapsilicon, or maybe this. Pardon the shameless plug.

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon

follow linkie in my sig

That is/was a great guide, but the hardware in there is a bit dated. Lots of things have changed since the Socket A days.

The stupidest thing I ever did was fry myself and a floppy drive putting together some old junk systems (used/beat up slot 1 machines) to run Linux with a friend. I was testing something and had the floppy sitting on top of the case, properly connected but not screwed into the appropriate drive bay. Something shorted out and the floppy drive started smoking. I tried removing the power cable, stupidly, and got a nasty jolt. It was only after then that I thought to unplug the machine at the PSU instead.

Needless to say, that floppy drive is kaput.

 

[Oyeve]

Dumbest thing I ever did was tell an intern never insert a card in a system with the PSU still plugged in, and to never unscrew a screw unless the PSU is unplugged, meanwhile I was doing exactly what I was telling him NOT to do and he said well, why are you doing it, so I told him I have been doing this for YEARS and I am a pro, as soon as I said this I drop the screw on the system bored and fried everything. This was 17 years ago when a system cost 1000s of dollars.

 

[Gautama2]

Originally posted by: choovanski
I saw this thread and I just had to join in. Not the dumbest thing I've done but the dumbest thing I've witnessed.

I had a project strewn all over the kitchen table one day when my boyfriend came home. He sat down at the table to chat and having no where to set his Coke (every last inch of the table was covered with parts, tools and manuals) he placed it on top of the power supply. Yes, the power supply of the computer. His sweating, aluminum can on top of a 500W power supply.

Needless to say, that sparked an argument.

FEMALE ALERT


Pics?

 

[Nohr]

Tried to boot up with the clear CMOS jumper enabled. "WTF is wrong with it now? oooohhhhh.." *slap forehead*

Have a friend who was having a party at his place and someone set their drink on top of his computer:
rum & coke + blowhole = dead video card and fried 3-pin motherboard fan header

 

[Imyourzero]

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Dumbest thing I ever did was tell an intern never insert a card in a system with the PSU still plugged in, and to never unscrew a screw unless the PSU is unplugged, meanwhile I was doing exactly what I was telling him NOT to do and he said well, why are you doing it, so I told him I have been doing this for YEARS and I am a pro, as soon as I said this I drop the screw on the system bored and fried everything. This was 17 years ago when a system cost 1000s of dollars.

LOL...when a co-worker of mine and I took our current positions as network admins, we had some free time and were trying to resurrect some old Celeron PCs. He asked me if RAM was hot-swappable. :shocked:

Why did someone like that get such a job, you ask? His mom is the CEO. :roll:

 

[btcomm1]

Stupidest thing I've ever done was breaking a couple of capacitors off of a video card because I wasn't paying attention, this was after I had been so careful to replace a chipset fan on the motherboard.

What? Ram isn't hot swappable?

 

[Texun]

I have a couple more I just remembered....

Again in the old DOS days, I replaced a board and everything was fine for about 2 days and then the drive stopped working (not found). Checked all hardware at least a dozen times but didn't have replacement parts to compare them with. I naturally assumed the controller was bad and went back to the wholesale shop to swap the board. They argued but I raised enough hell that I finally got my new board. Same problem...... Found out later the floppies I used for the install were infested with the NATAS virus. Of course I never told the guys at the shop.

Another one I was associated with but not directly responsible for - I have a friend who dabbles with PC's and likes to "help" others with his vast knowledge.

One Saturday afternoon he calls and leaves VM asking how to use a boot floppy for a W98 install. I call him back and he blows me off and says he figured it out. He's upgrading an older PC. Fine.

He calls back about 30 minutes later asking me what kind of CD drive has a slot like a floppy? I knew he had stumbled across an old machine that not only had a 3-1/2" but a 5-1/4" floppy as well. Knowing full well that he had already formatted the drive, I told him under no circumstances should be format his friend's PC or it would become a door stop.

He calls back 15 minutes later asking me where he can buy a CDR drive on a Saturday night.

 

[warlord]

When I built my first rig I tried to drill a screw out of a mounting hole of a floppy, I cross threaded it during installation, and this was my attempt to fix the problem.

I have no idea of what I was thinking at the time, but at least it happened to a cheap piece.