What is the stupidest computer related thing you have done ?

[dman]

Originally posted by: DaiShan
I didn't do this, but my friend did against my advice (last semester too) He was having problems with his computer not booting, wasn't sure if it was cpu or motherboardm so he asked someone at an electronics shop similar to radioshack how to tell and they told him to take the HSF off his 1.4 tbird and turn it on and put your finger on it, if it gets hot its the motherboard. Well suffice it to say he now DID have a dead processor lol

And I imagine a burnt finger.

I've done a few dumb things in my time, most frequently after working on a PC turning it on and finding that I forgot to plug the power in. Or similar things, like assembling it all back together and the harddrive isn't recognized and I forgot to plug the ide cable in, etc. I've become familiar enough with those mistakes that I recognize it immediately.

The worst was working on AT Cases, and taking apart stuff. The old power switches had 4 wires to connect them and one time I was removing the front cover with the machine on and grabbed inside and managed to touch two of the contacts that weren't fully covered by the plastic. 110v gets the adrenaline flowing. That was my lesson in power-off-ness.

I'm sure I've done del *.* in the wrong directory before.

Format C: /u/s when I meant to do a d: or something.

You live you learn.

 

[VictorLazlo]

Did you ever think that you were copying something, when in reality you were moving it? And then you delete the second copy because you are sure that you still have the first?

 

[dman]

Originally posted by: VictorLazlo
Did you ever think that you were copying something, when in reality you were moving it? And then you delete the second copy because you are sure that you still have the first?

Yes. Using shift delete or w/o a recyclebin noless.
Lessons learned.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

moving every EXE to an "EXE" folder, and every DLL to a "DLL" folder, moving every other folder to it's own folder type, organized by file extention.

Ended up having to completely wipe the drive.

This was atleast 8 or 9 years ago though.

 

[brtspears2]

Sending 2.0V to a P3 coppermine series cpu.

 

[Pollock]

Got a computer with Windows ME...and before that several Macs. At least now I know better than my parents.

 

[Stark]

Originally posted by: JustAnAverageGuy
moving every EXE to an "EXE" folder, and every DLL to a "DLL" folder, moving every other folder to it's own folder type, organized by file extention.

Ended up having to completely wipe the drive.

This was atleast 8 or 9 years ago though.

lol

 

[Pex]

i used to drag the full exe to the desktop instead of a shortcut.

 

[DerMonkeyhauser]

I built a couple of adapter boards to plug into the back of Fibre Channel drives and break the 40 pin SCA connector out into power/data/etc. Plugged the first prototype into a drive and turn it on, drive PCB explodes in blue smoke and the adapter starts glowing. Oops, wired up the power wrong. Grab the next blank PCB, cut and rewire a few traces (etched my own PCBs even!), that should do it. Grab the first adapter (not the newly rewired one) and plug it into the next drive. Blue smoke.

Or another one that happened at a LAN. Little background - I was running a 1.4 TBird, which gets pretty hot, so I chopped a hole in the side of my case and installed a massive fan blowing directly onto the motherboard, which moved about 85CFM and was loud. Kept pulling my pants leg towards it and trying to eat me, too. So at a LAN, I had my computer set up next to this idiot "friend" who hadn't brought a computer, but was just being annoying. So what does he do, but dump his huge glass of Mountain Dew on my computer, directly into the intake fan. I wasn't looking at the time, but I heard it, and heard him go "oh, sh*t!". All was not lost, though. The fan was moving so much air that it dried off the motherboard (with the Dew all over it still) in about 5 minutes, at which point I plugged the rest of the power back in (ran the fan temporarily off of a different PS to keep the computer off) and kept going. Motherboard was very, very nasty afterwards (eww... sticky...) but it worked fine.

 

[DrPizza]

Spent an hour on the phone with customer support trying to figure out why all my sound would work, except the CD player. He had me checking virtually everything inside the computer... I had already checked every connection twice. I looked for conflicts. I couldn't find a thing. I was convinced that my super-fast 4x CDROM was shot. In a last ditch effort, he wanted me plug my speakers directly into the CD player... wait a second... what the.... who plugged the microphone into the headphone jack?! Damn kids! Problem solved.

edit: and of course, I formatted a wrong partition once. Fortunately it was the old primary drive two generations back... I had everything on a 5 GB partition as a back-up in case there was something I needed someday down the road. Old emails, etc. It was a positive error... now I have that drive space back.

 

[Mik3y]

got caught with porn....

 

[JulesMaximus]

Joined ATOT...J/K

 

[Pepsi90919]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: Ime
Left one too many motherboard mounting posts in the case... resting against the back of the MB...

Never seen blue flame shoot out of a MB before then...

How in the hell can 12v generate a spark? let alone a flame?

ever seen a car driving on the road?

 

[dman]

Have my UPS on the floor, with PC plugged into it like a good little techie.

Like an idiot, I was stretching my toes and turned off the power at the UPS.

On more than one occasion.

Still haven't moved the UPS but it's been a while since I've done that.

 

[MaxDSP]

Done too many stupid things...latest one being: fried 2 brand new mobos (1 ECS and 1 Epox) trying to figure out why my system wasnt booting. Thats was like $150 down the crapper

 

[Chaotic42]

Deleted 4 years of porn.

Oh... what?

I guess trying to find out if my 3.1GB WD hard drive was hot puggable.

It wasn't. I got a shiny new K5-166 out of it though.

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: JustAnAverageGuy
moving every EXE to an "EXE" folder, and every DLL to a "DLL" folder, moving every other folder to it's own folder type, organized by file extention.

Ended up having to completely wipe the drive.

This was atleast 8 or 9 years ago though.

ROFLMAO

 

[MAME]

Originally posted by: MaxDSP
Done too many stupid things...latest one being: fried 2 brand new mobos (1 ECS and 1 Epox) trying to figure out why my system wasnt booting. Thats was like $150 down the crapper

why didn't it boot

 

[AgentOrange]

Originally posted by: JustAnAverageGuy
moving every EXE to an "EXE" folder, and every DLL to a "DLL" folder, moving every other folder to it's own folder type, organized by file extention.

Ended up having to completely wipe the drive.

This was atleast 8 or 9 years ago though.

LMAO, too funny :laugh:

 

2 stupid things in the same story

when the 1gh athlon first came out, i blew about 1 months pay on ordering all the parts to build a new machine
i went out drinking after work the day all the stuff came in, so i was realllllllly wasted when i came home
i was so excited, i decided to put it together that night

i put the whole thing together without the motherboard standoffs
i didn't notice, but the thing wouldn't work

my first thought was the power supply, so i unplugged the main power connector and connected what i thought were the correct two load sensing pins with a paper clip
when i hit the switch the power supply popped and smoked

i went to take everything back apart, and noticed that the I/O shield wasn't lined up and the video card was only half seated

the video card/motherboard had that little plastic locking latch - i had never seen this before (and didn't realize it had one)
i pulled and pulled on the video card until it finally pulled the plastic agp slot off the motherboard with the video card

i don't do hardware while drinking anymore

 

[MaxDSP]

Originally posted by: MAME

Originally posted by: MaxDSP
Done too many stupid things...latest one being: fried 2 brand new mobos (1 ECS and 1 Epox) trying to figure out why my system wasnt booting. Thats was like $150 down the crapper

why didn't it boot

That's the worst part...I never figured it out.

 

[episodic]

Originally posted by: hypersonic5
Tried to install a distro of Linux. Had two drives, C: and D:. I wanted to clear C: to make space for Linux because I wasn't using it. Did so, but then remembered C: was the drive with the operating system on it...

I've ruined a few windows installs with linux, not all in this way . . . Definatley not linux's fault either. . ..

I'm getting better now that I've stopped experimenting with distros to dual boot. I had to try them all in the beginning. I've stuck with slack for my occasional linux use.