What is the biggest newb mistake you have made since you got interested in computers?

[Stattlich]

Originally posted by: BentValve
The very first build I had was in about 99' .. . I screwed the motherboard directly to the case and wondered why it would not work. Hey, at least I figured it out on my own what I had done and no damage had been done.

LOL! Exact same here- exactly what I was going to post. Funny the same thing happened to the first poster of the thread.

Yep, it was an MSI Socket 7 unit, my first computer builld, and I was getting very flustered at the case manufacturer for cutting the I/O card slot holes too tall. Why can't I plug this modem in all the way?!? The board actually survived that.

 

[w00t]

yep buying a dell same here

 

[Dennis Travis]

Originally posted by: halfadder
Staring at my Commodore 64's monitor totally clueless when it asked me to insert an INITIALIZED floppy so I could save my word processing document. I don't think I was able to save anything for the first 6 months until I finally figured out how to initialize/format floppies with one of the utilities programs. (Some of my games were able to save onto another blank floppy as the game itself used its own file system with a new blank disk)

Another big mistake was when I had my first slot-load CD-ROM drive on a PC that sat under my desk... without looking under my desk first, I stuck my arm down and thought I was inserting a CD into the drive. Turns out I slipped the disc in the narrow gap between my CD-ROM drive and my CD-RW burner drive!! It put two serious scratches on the CD!!!

Wasn't the Commie 64 a pain to format? Dang it took so long! I ran into many that did not know how to format the disk.

I hope that CD was nothing you could not replace easily! OUCH! What I thought you were going to say till I read your whole message was you inserted the CD in a 5.25" floppy! I have seen that done and it tore up the CD.

 

[gabemcg]

I think my biggest noob mistake would be trying to turn on my pc after my dad had noticably crushed the cpu in an old 1.2 GhZ athlon, while trying to take off the hs/fan, the damn thing caught fire, and fried the (brand new) mobo, I was pissed, but he replaced it. never thought I'd catch fire to a pc tho! Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, burning thermal grease is not reccomended, it reaks! the whole basement stunk for a few days.

 

[imverygifted]

hehe, i dont even know how many good parts i've RMA'd when building computers from scratch

 

[jamesbond007]

Spending top dollar on the latest and the greatest. Now I just wait for the prices to come down to a respectable pricepoint where I think it has a good marginal value that will last a while without hitting the bank too hard.

The bragging rights were nice...but then I grew up.

 

[amol]

i went to bestbuy/officemax/circuitcity/officedepot/fry's/other electronics stores instead of buying from the internet

 

[Dru22]

RMA'ing my Dvd Burner when all i needed to do was update drivers, I then got my "new" burner and done the same thing and decided i would install the latest drivers and to my amazement it worked. Also, punching my "WOOD" desk and about breaking my hand while playing UT2004 because I got killed.

 

[miketheidiot]

buying parts off Ebay.

 

[Rami7007]

Well dont laugh at this... ... it was late... and i was tired...I was in a circuit city with my mom and she needed a USB floppy drive cause her lap top didnt come with one and mine was jammed (damn siblings)... We asked the guy who worked there where they were, he showed us and when he handed it too us, i not thinking at all (at all) said "Does this floppy drive use USB 2.0?"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

That must have been the dumbest thing i have ever done...well said...:laugh:

oh and getting a Geforce2 MX 400.... which i might add is still in this PC right now...that is why it is time for an upgrade (try watching me play Half Life 2 on this bad boy geforce2!)

 

[Cawchy87]

Before knowing anything about computers - Buying a dell

After Knowing somthing about comptuers - Buying a 9600XT

 

[Tab]

1 - ThermalTake Products (They suck)
2 - Antec Lanboy (Thin peice of crap, power supply is pretty damned good though)
3 - Dell Crap (Horrible Customer Support)
4 - USB 2.0 Enclourse (Really Fscked up, its really usb 1.1)
5 - Z-5300s (Sound like crap)
6 - Rounded Ide Cables (Twist Ties + Hairdyer)

 

[DJ LUCiTE]

Setting fire to an eMachines in a failed overclock attempt.
Actually, I think that was a GOOD idea.

Oh, and attempting to remove the HSF from my pre-installed AthXP just to see what was underneath (only previous CPU i've installed was a slot P3...lol...those were cool!)...then...dropping the screwdriver into the motherboard, and scraping up a few of the lil copper circuit line things. Fried mobo.

Late at night, tried to force a RAM stick in backwards because I was dumb...took about 5 minutes before i realized I was attempting to put it in backwards...

Installing Debian Linux expecting a GUI...

Trying "sudo rm -rf /" because someone told me to... (DON'T. EVER. DO. THAT.)

Buying a eMachines in the first place...

Buying an FX 5200...

Using a 200W PSU in a comp with 2 HDDs and an overclocked FX5200...

Using another!! 200W PSU after the first one started smoking and died...

and last but not least...
Telling my friend about in-case neons. His computer is so full of them, the entire room glows blue when he turns the damned thing on. It's like a big blue glowing box of shit. Or a christmas tree. Might as well slap a body kit on it and call it a Civic, lol...

 

[Siddhartha]

Putting a floppy in upside down. This explained why the computer only saw the floppy 50% of the time.

Connecting 5 IDE, 4 hard drives and one CDRom, devices to my computer. I can not remember exactly how I did this. This caused random shutdowns.

 

[Jedi2155]

I fried a stick of my Mushkin PC3500 Level II BH-5 by cleaning it with a wet rag......(static)

 

[Blain]

Installed a P3-450...
The system booted up and loaded into Windows, then locked hard...
I looked in the case and noticed that I had not installed the HS on the P3...
You guessed it, my curiosity got the best of me... I just had to touch the CPU core to see IF it was hot.
IT WAS... VERY :laugh:

 

[bigal40]

Originally posted by: nick1985
buying a dell.

hey same here

 

[kranky]

Way back when laser printers were $1000, I told my boss that we should buy an $30 A/B switch so we could share one printer between two PC (no networks then). He was impressed by my clever idea and told me to do it.

I wasn't smart enough to realize there were two types of A/B switches - one with pin 1 tied common, and one with each pin wired straight through. I ordered the first one I came across that had the right connectors.

Hooked it up, flipped the switch, no printing. Flipped it back, no printing from the other PC. Hmmm. Called the vendor, who asked which type of A/B switch I ordered. Which type? Uh-oh.

I fried the printer by using the wrong one. The boss took it pretty well, though.

 

[halfadder]

We shared our laser printers on a network back when even the cheapest models cost $4000.

But come to think of it, a few A/B switches would have saved us days and days of token ring networking "fun".

 

[bigj3347]

laid the motherboard right on top of the case, installed the ram and video card, cpu. Then tested it before installing the components in to the case. Needless to say, sparks flew and smoke billowed from underneath the motherboard.

 

[Gothgar]

Had an old e-machines, and went and bought an mx-440 (first mistake) that was agp, tried installing it into a pci slot (second mistake) broke the card (motherboard didn't like it either, third mistake) returned the damn card, and actually did research next time i bought components

 

[halfadder]

I remember another one:
I was installing a new case fan while the machine on its side and running. I accidently dropped a screw onto the motherboard! No sparks, but the machine locked up hard! After a hard reboot, it seemed to work fine again... but every now and then the motherboard beep speaker would start beeping for a few seconds for no reason!!! That was an old 440BX system, so it's been awhile since it's even been out of my closet.

 

[dullard]

It was the first computer ever for my family (~17 years ago). Got a couple of games with it; on floppys of course and no hard drive. Half of the time the machine would work, and half of the time it wouldn't work. We struggled for hours over and over to get it to work. Took it into the shop where it was purchased at least 10 times. Each time it would semi-work at home and work perfectly at the shop. Spent about 2 months wasted on it. Who knows how much money my parents spent as well trying to fix it.

Turned out that one floppy disk was leaving the dust protector inside the floppy drive, and it would catch on another floppy disk and come out. We'd remove the disks before going to the store, thus it worked there. No one knew enough to notice that one disk had no dust protector and the other had two.

 

[meltdown75]

Working on my sister's business computer about 2 years ago, I was inside messing around with the connectors for the COM and USB ports. Well, I got the ribbons mixed up and accidentally plugged the COM ribbon onto the USB pins, or vice versa.... sizzlin smokey goodness! the ribbon melted and my sister was fully convinced of how "good I was with computers"... muahahah...

 

[InlineFive]

Killing three processors in a row. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why this motherboard wasn't working. It turns out it was frying processors.