QOTD: Worst Thing to Ever Happen to Your PC?

[buzznut]

[citation][nom]jack64[/nom]The worst for me was my wifes cat (a male) hopped up onto my desk and sprayed the inside of my computer (the side of the case was off) and got my MB, my PSU, and my GPU. MB was an X-58 Skulltrade, the PSU was a Thermaltake toughpower 1000W, and the GPU was a 8800 GTX. Cost me 650.00 to replace the parts.[/citation]

That would have been one dead kitty in my house.

 

[rooket]

I RMA'd a 75GXP deskstar 40gb drive because IBM said since it had a few bad sectors they'd replace it. So I got the advanced shipment and went to transfer my data, had the old drive out of the case. It touched my PC case and i saw a spark and the computer completely shut down. I powered back on and heard "clicking" Actually the "clicking" was the BIOS chip arcing to the case of my Plextor CDROM drive. So that IBM hard drive which obviously grounds to the case (why? that is STUPID of them) not only fried the hard drive I was sending back but it also took out my plextor drive. I RMAd the plextor drive (why do they allow you to RMA a drive this way is beyond me, however I see a lot of people post on the internet about RMAing water damaged AMD cpus which is pretty ignorant as well). The plextor I got back was a piece of crap but it worked. I never bought a plextor or a deskstar again. Both suck!

Oh and speaking of hard drives, I find it rediculous stupid how NexStar 2 and NexStar 3 USB external bays have exactly the same power connector but the +5V and +12V are in different locations in it! I've probably accidentally fried at the LEAST 3 hard drives at work due to that. It got to the point where I was grabbing an old 1.2 gigabyte Fujitsu hard drive and plugging it in to make definitely sure that I had the right power supply at times. I know how to tell now just looking at the label but yeah... that is pretty crappy of them to redesign the pin layout but keep the same connector. Luckily I'm not liable for the damage for some strange reason.

Other than that well, every Asus board I've ever owned has had to be replaced either with a new one or an RMA. I bet my brother's Apple ][gs still works, whereas these flimsy Asus computers hardly even make it beyond 3 years which is very, very sad. Is an Apple ][ better than a Pentium 3 or 4? Maybe.........

 

[Guest]

I Was hooking up some LED's and apparently calculated the Voltage wrong and set my desk on fire...

 

[ph3412b07]

Logic board on my hard drive fried. I plugged it into a external adapter to diagnose it, and all the plastic chips on the PCB started smoking.

 

[mdillenbeck]

Right now that's a tie...

Way back when I first learned to build my own system, I learned what proprietary meant. I had a Leading Edge system that I had to toss when trying to upgrade the video. Fortunately, the place I was buying at offered a no labor charge "do the work yourself" bench. I got the new motherboard, video card, memory, and case together and booted up and I was immediately rewarded with a *pffffssssssst* *POP* as the defective video card suddenly pulled a Human Torch. ('FLAME ON!!!')

The up side to that one - I was working on the bench and they saw me, so they know it was a defective card. They felt so bad they gave me a better card for the price of the cheap one that burned up.

The match to that? A hose that got carelessly laid in a basement window sill burst and put a 1/2" water on the floor in the room where I had a server sitting on the floor. This happened just this afternoon.

The up side of this story? I went on vacation 2 weeks ago and turned everything off downstairs, then clicked the power strip off. I hadn't gone back down there yet as I was experimenting upstairs with a Solaris self-propelled cordless electric mower - so I think my server might have survived its swim.

 

[krazynutz]

Antec PSU shorted. Took the hard drive with it 🙁

 

[crymsonpheonix]

My first build had a pentium 805 D in it. It's still probably the best overclocker I've ever had, except for trying to cool it. anyway, one day my machine would boot, and get about as far as the splash screen before it would shutdown. finally figured out that it was hitting about 100 C in about 20 seconds.

 

[eskimo_1]

Worst thing to happen must have been updating from microsoft.
When i updated my computer with windows update on vista 64 bit for the 2nd time because my old HDD died. I installed all the available updates after a week of getting my pc back in order. I followed the typical restart after installing updates procedure and it basically disallowed it to boot my HDD. Not even doing a repair or system restore were possible.

...And then i had to do it all over again, biggest pain in the ass ever!

 

[brando56894]

Heres the two worst problems that I can remember:
I was trying to reflash my bios awhile ago and something went wrong and I was left with a (nearly) dead computer, after about a week or so I finally figured out that to get a video display I had to cold boot the computer with the VGA cable unplugged and when it beeped after checking the memory I had to do a warm reboot and reconnect the VGA cable. I managed to successfully reflash it and everything was good.

A more recent problem left me without a computer for about a month. I took apart a Thermaltake Polo cpu heatsink that I had because the fins were covered in dust and compressed air wouldnt get it all out. When I put it back together I didnt realize that I put the tensioner bracket on upside down so that it put extreme force on the cpu when I attempted to remount the heatsink. I had a DFI LanParty board at the time and the POST lights kept telling me that it was a problem with the memory when in actuality it wasnt. The computer would just beep at me when I had the heatsink attached and secured, but if I completely removed the heatsink the computer would boot up perfectly but shutdown within 60 seconds because the cpu got too hot. If I placed the heatsink on the cpu but didnt secure it, it would boot up but still get pretty hot. I bought a used motherboard of the same kind off of someone on ebay and the same thing was happening, but I figured it was fried since they said it had been in their basement for about a year. I ended up buying a brand new motherboard of the same type and the same thing kept happening, I finally realized that I had broken the cpu.

 

[doomtomb]

Nothing too horrific, but um let's see...

Liquid cooling leaked on my motherboard but luckily I wiped it up (non-conductive) and it's fine but it was kinda scary.

Stuck a ruler in my computer while it was running (laziness). I thought the ruler was solid wood, I was measuring some clearance for adding a fan to my motherboard. There was a slight piece of metal along the edge of the ruler and I saw a spark run across my video card. My screen flashed green and was really f---ed up and I rebooted, everything was fine but then whenever I played a game it flashed a lil green. Playable but was bad. RMA fixed it.

 

[berk98]

AX4C Max. Coolest P4 board I ever owned, paired with a fancy 3.2ghz pentium 4 and 2GB ram. I was amazed by its AGP8x. Then one day I plugged in an old IBM Deathstar drive. Never worked since. I didn't think a hard drive could kill a motherboard, but I couldn't pin down any other reason.

 

[Bigbootie]

PC + Biloxi, MS x Hurricane Katrina

 

[FSXFan]

A few years ago I bought my boss's used X850XT with an Arctic Cooling HS on it to replace my X600. Well since I had already painted the inside of my case black the big metal plate on top of the card just didn't look right all bare, so it had to be painted. I still don't know what the heck I did wrong but that card never did work right again. There were artifacts all over the screen as soon as it booted. I had to use my old X600 again for about six more months and I was so bummed I pretty much quit playing games altogether. Just didn't seem worth it.

I also burnt a couple el-cheapo PSU's in my friend's computer while stress testing after upgrading it. He wanted a faster CPU, GPU, more memory and HDD, but didn't want to buy a PSU. So it just quit after an hour, no fireworks, no smell, nothing. He bought another (crappy) PSU from a local shop and it was dead the next day, this time with fireworks and smells, and it sounded like a .22 gunshot went off in the thing (and no refund from the local shop). Somehow everything else in there lived through it all and that convinced him to get a decent Thermaltake and it's been running great ever since.

 

[Cuddles]

Computer before this one. The AC went down and I took the case cover off. Next thing I know my cat is whizzing on my computer, so I went to grab the cat, my foot got wrapped around the power cord and tipped the computer over, the cat got shocked, and my computer burst into flames.

 

[Belardo]

My Personal Worst thing to happen to my computer: Difficult (in no order)
- Installed Windows ME (Kinda worse than Win95)
- A retarded company ran the Amiga into the ground. From within, not Apple or Microsoft. Even thou I've been using "PCs" since the 486/DX2 80 days w/ Windows3.1... Win9x was halfway there and when the PC world wet its pants over WinXP. Its like... yeah, took MS long enough.
- When doing a repair job on my C=128 PSU, it "lit up" in my face. Just a bright light then smoke. Spent $50 to replace it.
- Lending a fellow student my Commodore +4 computer and never got it back. (stupid stupid)

None of my own PCs have been broken, drowned or fried spectacularly.
The closest was on my A1000 when after a thunderstorm blew past, I powered up my Amiga1000 and was using it for about 15mins when a huge thunderclap hit my home. The Amiga was freaked-out, but a power recycle resolved it... thats the only time I sweated.

Things I've seen people do when I worked at a PC shop:
- Split 486 CPU. Customer had mobo on 5volt, rather than 3.3. Boss blamed us for selling non intel CPUs. But we've never had a PC returned because of a non-CPU failure. His stupidity was to replace the CPU for free before I could explain to him why it split... User Error.
- Countless times of having fingers touch spinning fans (ouch, but never blood) or accidentally removing cards while theres still power (never fried).
- Customer killed system when he attached mobo to case while still attached to the foam bottom.
- Boss makes deal to buy dozens of Pentium1 class CPUs for a deal. But neither the seller or himself knows anything. I check them out, more than half are the P60/66 types. Not compatible with Socket 7 used in P75~266Mhz. The CPUs weren't worth much. I left that company fairly soon afterwards.

Horror story I heard, a favorite: Guy goes on site to check an old lady's PC at her home. It has a shot-gun blast to the side. He leaves, quickly.

 

[astrodudepsu]

A rosewill PSU. Oh the ignorance of youth.

 

[Belardo]

MastRCube said He plugged in the SATA cable upside down and the power cable correctly. Then he proceeded to stick a floppy power molex into the jumpers of the hard drive.

Yeah, I'd laugh too. When you HAVE to force a part, you maybe doing it wrong. There are things called "manuals".

plbyrd

I built a top-of-the line system with a pair of Raptor 10K 150GB drives in RAID 0 ~~ Unfortunately, backing up this system to a 1GB WD extrenal HD took over 24 hours!

1GB External? Do you mean 1TB? It shouldn't take 24hrs! eSATA HDs are fastest and cheapest. But here is the thing, is/was that system a Core2 or i7? I have found that ALL intel Core2 systems with intel P/X3# chipsets have horribly SLOW USB/external drive transfer rates. This is on every Intel system I've personally tried this one, desktops and notebooks.

When I backed up workstation data on the AMD64 3800 system, it would backup about 180GB of data in about 1hr 40min (1h 55m with USB2.0). When I upgraded the system to Core2Quad, the same backup took takes over 5hours! WTF!? Even with eSATA, 5 hours! So with simple math, thats... 21~23hrs!

Yeah.... Raptors in RAID 0 for mission critical stuff, not good.

- - - - - -
I remembered some more horror stories.
- My son (when 2yrs old) decided it would be fun to paint his CRT monitor and his mom's LCD monitor and keyboard with white-out. Replaced keyboard, cleaned monitors enough to be usable. He would constantly insert pennies or similar objects into cooling slots on her computer. (my case is a vastly different design). At 3yrs, he took a ball point pen to my high end 19" CRT. which I cleaned off. But at some areas, the pen had scratched the anti-glare coating. Working with photoshop was becoming problematic. I lived with it until he turned 4 to buy a new 24" LCD to allow him to mature. He doesn't abuse/damage anything, not even his own AMD64 Compaq (was moms) and 19" LCD - which he can hook up himself.

- A client called me, said his PC is making horrible noises. He didn't power off the system when I told him and I was thinking it was a failed cooling fan. The second I walked in the door, I can hear his server/workstation from 70ft away, 3 rooms down. It was louder and worse than fingernails on chalkboard. Yep, his Hard Drive had severely dead and I quickly turned it off. Opening the case, there were metal shavings on the bottom from the HD! He never made back ups (I warned him many times) - but I happened to backup his server the previous week and hid the GHOST file over the network onto a workstation. Bought new drives, RAID card, RAID 1 setup and restored the server.

- A client: A teenage son steals family computer and sells it for drugs. I happened to backup their data the week before upon their request since their "good" adult son's hard-drive failed a week earlier and had no backups.

 

[asgallant]

Do peripherals count? A few years ago, I was moving out of my 3rd floor apartment and accidentally dropped my 20" CRT over the railing of the back stair onto the windshield of my neighbor's car.

 

[AdamB5000]

I dealt with CyberPower's computer support once.

F*** that. I moved on to building my own pcs.

Anyway, I cut my finger once when working on a case. It bled a lot.

 

[marraco]

1- A virus stored itself on my QDI Tomato mother bios. I tried a bios upgrade (booting from 3 1/2 to get rid of him. The mother never booted again.
I even carried the mother to an university guy who had a EPROM recorder, and it supported my bios chip, but QDI denied to give me the BIOS file in a standard format.

I conserved the mother for a year, then trashed it...


2- once, removing a Pentium 4 radiator, the siliconated grease was so hardened, that the processor was extracted glued to the radiator. His pins got bended, and the motherboard metallic holder of the processor did not even retained the processor.

The motherboard was an absolute piece of crap. It was an Intel D865GBF.

I spent an hour unbending the processor pins with a grafite pencil. fortunately, it booted again.

By the way, Intel motherboards are expensive, poor in BIOS, choices, and crammed with lots of hardware incompatibilities. Avoid them like a pest.

 

[broiled049]

Not really about PC's, but...
The first time that I decided to add LEDs to light up my computer case, I didn't realize that you needed resistors, to cut the voltage. Should we say, "Smoke Emiting Diodes"?

 

[starryman]

Put in a new motherboard and missed one of the spacers on the motherboard tray. The spacer being brass or some kind of metal shorted the new motherboard. Went up in smokes - literally. Also fried the sound card. Thanks goodness my then Nvidia 6800 card (was $340 then) was fine.

 

[mcappleman]

2 years back or so, I built a brand new computer. I had it plugged into my home network. I woke up at 5 in the morning to a popping sound (lightning right outside my window), my room completely lit up like day (lightning), and the house shaking (thunder). I closed my windows and went back to bed. When I woke up a couple hours later I tried to turn my computer on, and come to find out the popping sound was the Ethernet cable being blow out of the back of my brand new EVGA 680I SLI motherboard.
EVGA's awesome customer support though had my motherboard replaced so I was happy about that. However, last year on my way back from a big lan party. That same computer of mine was in the back of our truck, and once we got home I noticed something sticky on the side of my case. It turned out someone just happened to put a salsa container right over my computer and it opened and spilled through my cases window fan on the side onto my EVGA 680I SLI motherboard! So I ran inside stripped my computer down. Found out that the salsa just got onto the motherboard. And then I took all of the heat syncs off of it and filled my bathtub with steaming hot water, and gave my motherboard a bath! After that I ran it out to our air compressor, and gently sprayed the water off. Brought it back inside and gently hair dried it down to get the rest of the moister and finally after all that I got it working again. As good as new too!

 

[ahslan]

The worst was probably in '87. I ran a Netware 2.0a server (endless floppy shuffle to install!) and its 200MB HDD smoked. It looked like a resistor near the molex power connector simply fried; the stench was amazing. This happened on a Friday. I spent that entire weekend rebuilding the OS and the most critical data (yes, we had tape) on a 71MB drive, and met the first shift coming in on Monday morning at 6:00a.

LOL! ...the job that I work at STILL uses Netware for their file server...WTF!!!!...

 

[Guest]

A few times I've been overly keen to remove the sink and yanked the cpu straight out of the zif socket along with it. Not too bad though, was always fixable!