Dumbest thing you've ever done

[Hans5849]

I was sleeving PSU cables and i didn't push some of the connectors back in enough. When i turned the computer on i smelt burning as the wires shorted out, killed my floppy drive but i got it before it hit the DVD drives.

 

[HardWarrior]

This is the most recent: I was slapping in this HUGE 8800 GTX. I had two pumps drilled AND two-sided taped to the motherboard tray. I had to remove one of the pumps to get the video card in. After I unscrewed the pump mount I had to cut and muscle it the rest of the way because of the damned tape. When getting it out I cracked a barb on my res. 2x200gig HD's took a bath in old coolant (no longer non-conductive) and died. I long since got past the point where I freak about stuff like that, but damn, I feel like a rube for not doing what I KNOW to do, check all connections.

 

[bobsmith1492]

For 10th grade English class, we were giving demonstration speeches. I was showing how to build a computer (simple enough, right?) This was my first build. I had built it already so that all I was doing for the presentation was putting the hardware back in the box.

So, things went smoothly until I went to power it up. Nada - the power didn't even come on at all; the fans simply twitched and that was it.

I got marked down for the class because it didn't work, but didn't find out what was wrong until later. I pulled out everything extra but it did the same thing. Finally I stripped it completely - just the MB and PSU - and it worked. Upon putting parts back in, I found out the header for two extra USB ports on the back of the computer was causing the problem. To this day I have no idea what could have happened to it; maybe I shorted the USB chip out somehow, but I don't see how simply connecting the connector could cause the system to not power up.

 

[Juno]

i was a complete idiot for putting the memory stick upside down.

 

[bobsmith1492]

Originally posted by: Juno
i was a complete idiot for putting the memory stick upside down.

:laugh:

 

[Cheezeit]

Originally posted by: Juno
i was a complete idiot for putting the memory stick upside down.

It doesn't even fit like that, the slot has a notch in the middle. Did you actually force it in? :Q

As for my own stupidity, I plugged in a molex to the CD drive on my first build while the computer was still on. I somehow didn't realize it was on. Blue flames shot out the back of the drive, and thus I started my first RMA.

The stupider part is that in trying to make sure the CD drive was dead, I tried plugging in another drive. Once again, I somehow did not realize the computer was still on. Thankfully this time I plugged in the Molex evenly, and the computer simply shut down with no damage.

 

[Texun]

Man.... found another one for the trophy wall!

A few years ago I swapped fans on my HS. Being 101% cocky and 100% confident in my work I closed the case and fired it up. About 20 minutes later the PC shut off without warning. That's never happened to me before so I was naturally puzzled for about a minute, so I opened the case and it was like an oven in there. I reached in to do give the copper cooler the old "feel test" and almost lost my fingerprints.... Forgot to plug in the fan!

Lesson learned: Thermal protection is a good safety net for people who do stupid things.

 

[ForumMaster]

the only thing I've done was this:

my dad built a new computer but his case was one of the older ones were the PSU is above the CPU. (for the slot based p3's that blew sideways.) his computer was very hot cause it couldn't get fresh air. so we switched cases me having a weaker amd athlon xp 1700 relative to his new amd athlon xp-m 2500+. apparently when i put my mobo back in the case, i short circuited it. good bye mobo. at least everything else (CPU, hdd, cd, ram, psu) were ok.

 

[Ages120]

The dumbest thing I have ever done is accidentally pulling a PCI card without turning off or unplugging the power supply. Killed the mother board. Just RMA'd it and then all was fine. It wasn't even my computer though, it was my friends, so I felt crappy about it.

One other time I thought I had fried a Pentium 3 1ghz chip. It wouldn't post in the new motherboard I got to get an AGP slot. So I put it back into the old compaq whatever motherboard and it didn't post. After a couple hours I thought I would give it another try and it worked fine. I had no idea what happened.

Funniest thing was when my friend brought over his comp for a lan party. He somehow had ants inside his pc since at his house he left the sides off. He thought his system was shorting cause the ants would get into the PSU and fry themselves making an arcing noise and restarting his Athlon TBird computer. After we took it apart we cleaned everything out and it worked fine, but there were a ton of black piss ants.

 

[yh125d]

Cloning an old 40gb Hd to a new 120gb without checking the box to resize the partition to fit the new drive >.< soooo.... you'll probably see me post a thread asking how to fix it any day now.

 

[tigersty1e]

LOL. I had some "new" RAM" for my new rig. I didn't know about DDR, DDR2, or non DDR memory. The RAM I got was not DDR memory, but I still tried to jab the ram sticks in the motherboard. I somehow shorted out the motherboard and had to buy new parts.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

Dumbest thing? I was about 9 years old. Just got my first pc that had a hard drive. It was old school Amstrad pc with a MFM drive. Some reason I needed to boot from a floppy and it kept booting from the hard drive. So I booted the computer with the MFM controller card unplugged and then after it was booted from the floppy I plugged in the card.


Needless to say, I fried my motherboard. My parents were just a little pissed at me

 

[Smartazz]

When I finished building my PC I tried to turn it on without switching the power supply on. At first I thought that it was a problem with the power supply or something, then I saw that the PSU was set to off.

edit: I also bought the wrong kind of hard drive PATA instead of SATA.

 

[goatjc]

Originally posted by: BlameCanada
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 .

I will never go cheap on a PS after I had this exact same thing happen to me.

1. The computer would not boot for the life of me, turns out, one of those USB to PS2 deals went bad, unplugged that, plugged the USB mouse into the USB port and not that converter, and started just fine.

2. Troubleshot a laptop on a docking station forever and figure out I forgot to plug in the docking station's power. . .I also could not find the audio output and it turns out there was one on the front of the computer behind a little latch deal on the docking station.

 

[imported_Imp]

Not removing the 3.5" drive cage before putting the motherboard (ATX) into a mini tower. Have to hold the rear sockets by the finger tips, and was confident that I must have broke something. Luckily, nothing broke because of me...

Oh, and going paranoid over the plastic cover under an A64 S939 CPU. I removed it, then tried plying off the heatsink in fear of having not removed a second, hidden piece.

 

[Krakn3Dfx]

Some years back, I had my PC on and was trying to screw down a Diamond Fireport 40. Screw slipped, went right into the PCI slot next to the FP40.

Hilarity ensued. Luckily, the only thing it appeared to do was completely kill that slot and for whatever reason made the bios on the FP40 completely unaccessible, even tho the card still worked fine.

Go figure.

 

[corkyg]

Just last night, i got a flashing light on my printer telling me it was low on ink. So, I put in two new cartridges. I then went to run a test page, and could not. I reinserted the cartridges twice - still no connection. Troubleshooting just went in circles.

I then tried my laptop and it had the same problem - no connection. But - I couldn't figure out what was the problem. I turned the printer on, off, disconnected the Cat5 cable (networked) - no answer.

Then I decided to try my newly Vista equipped back up computer. I clicked on Settings, and then that printer. Whoa! It gave me this screen . . .

Duh

As soon as I saw that - I shut the lid very firmly - end of problem. Duhhh!

This is also a plug for the much better display of facts and data in Vista! I was impressed.

 

[nervegrind3r]

I downloaded a linux iso from the net a few years ago (first time installing it) and had no instructions to help. I formatted my hard drive (bye Windows) and coasted through the linux install. Rebooted the system, and was prompted for a username / password in a dos looking screen. WTF? I didnt remember setting up a username/password during the installation, so now what.... I tried everything I could think of, but couldn't get past the login screen. Didnt have another computer to try searching for the info. Got so annoyed, I formatted the hard drive and installed Windows again.

till this day, I have never installed linux again. DAMN "root". :\

 

[piasabird]

I installed a new hard drive and then went to FDISK to redo the partitions and deleted the partitions. However, I did this on the old drive, not the new drive. Oops.

As a suggestion, if you are using two hard drives give them both names and disconnect the drive that is good first. Where you place the drive, or where you plug it in at, can cause the new drive to be named C and the old one to be named D.

 

[dedwards]

Oh, so it was YOU !!! hahaha

Wish to god I didn't know what an Active Monitor is...

Originally posted by: tallman45
Installing Token Ring

 

[CDC Mail Guy]

On my first build, I had no idea what RAID drivers were, or how they should be used. I didn't want a floppy drive in my PC, so I got a cheap 5 dollar one online, left it out of the system, and connected it. I'm not sure what it touched, but it WAS metallic in nature. LOL, there were sparks, and smoke then it died. Fortunately for me...I didn't!

In retrospect of course, I didn't even need anything off that floppy dist, but it DID come with the motherboard!

 

[CDC Mail Guy]

Oh yeah...I almost forgot. When I just did my watercooling project, I originally put the water block on SIDEWAYS! Bent a couple doo hickies on the motherboard, but they didn't break.

 

[CDC Mail Guy]

Originally posted by: corkyg
Just last night, i got a flashing light on my printer telling me it was low on ink. So, I put in two new cartridges. I then went to run a test page, and could not. I reinserted the cartridges twice - still no connection. Troubleshooting just went in circles.

I then tried my laptop and it had the same problem - no connection. But - I couldn't figure out what was the problem. I turned the printer on, off, disconnected the Cat5 cable (networked) - no answer.

Then I decided to try my newly Vista equipped back up computer. I clicked on Settings, and then that printer. Whoa! It gave me this screen . . .

Duh

As soon as I saw that - I shut the lid very firmly - end of problem. Duhhh!

This is also a plug for the much better display of facts and data in Vista! I was impressed.

lol...Did it actually tell you DUH???

 

[Bob Anderson]

When I did my first build in November 2005 I dutifully attached an anti-static strap to my wrist and grounded it to the metal case chassis, only to realize after the build was completed that because the PSU wasn't plugged into an AC socket, I wasn't grounded!

It was a very good thing it was a humid day, I have hardwood floors, and I regularly touched the kitchen sink tap.

-Bob

 

[bluemax]

Waaay back in the XT days, I put in my first 2400 baud modem. Worked great!

For some stupid, unknown reason, I felt I needed to take it out again.... while wearing a big, fluffy sweater.

There went one expensive modem. It wouldn't be until my first 386 that I'd have a modem again.