[SOLVED] What's the dumbest thing you have ever done to or with your computer?

punkncat

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I have a couple of tales to tell on myself.

My first laptop, back when they were REALLY expensive, was a Dell of some sort....The easy chair I sat in had a small walkway between in and a coffee table to the front door. Wide open to the other side. I sat my computer down for a second to readjust and my daughter promptly walks on it, through the narrow spot between my chair and table. Cost almost half what the less than a month old machine cost for Dell to replace the screen. They were cool and left my warranty intact for the rest, lol. (I used it later)

Back years ago one of my friends was, at that time, a computer enthusiast and not yet a professional. He opted to clean out a computer closet prior to a move. He gave me a half dozen various PC that I was somewhat familiar with, and a couple of big boxes that to this day I am not sure exactly what they were, maybe a server, IDK. Anyway...one of the PC in particular was a pretty good AMD processor for it's time but the cooler was damaged or missing. One of the big box things he gave me had a ThermalTake tower cooler with two fans, probably 8-10" tall, four sided copper monstrosity of a cooler. It had this big metal plate that went across the back of the motherboard. Obviously was not made, nor a direct fit for the AMD PC. In it's "native" box, it sat upright, and was going to "hang" inside the PC sideways like that form commonly is/was.
I took out the cooler, it's bracket, did some modifications to it all and installed this giant cooler on the motherboard, got it screwed together some way or another. One of the cases I got in the deal was HUGE and tall enough inside to hold the cooler. The case was all metal. Between it, the drives, cooler, power supply I seriously think the whole rig weighed 60+#. I set it up, got it running and it was AWESOME. Up to this point I had not owned anything beyond the Celeron/Sempron type processors of it's time, whatever was cheap. I couldn't afford to go with the Pentium (which I had previously rented from a furniture place, lol). I was ecstatic for all of a week or so. Pretty much immediately I started having various issues with memory and other aspects of mobo to CPU communication. I talked to my friend and was telling him the issue and he told me right away to pull that cooler. Unfortunately the damage was already done. The motherboard had a big and fatal crack around the area I had modified the mount. DED, dead.

What about y'all?
 
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When troubleshooting on why my PC wouldn't boot, I teared down then rebuilt my system only to realize at the end that I plugged the HDMI cable onto the wrong port. Another time would be when I first installed Linux and had some repair guys said the reason I wasn't getting internet (mind you this was a wired connection) as due to not having the appropriate network drivers. Needless to say, it wasn't due to any driver issues, it was due a faulty ethernet cable.

vjekoslav

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Oct 6, 2014
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Uh, in 2005. If i recall it was Athlon64 3000+ and Nvidia GT6600. For that time it was a decent mid range gaming build.

The PC was 1 year old (or so)
I was an uni student and I was gaming a lot back then. My most played game was America's Army haha

Anyways, it was summer. I opened up case for better temperatures. One day whilst I was gaming, I was eating oranges. I peeled one orange, but in middle of gun fighting and shooting, one peeled orange just disappeared. I could have sworn I didn't eat it. About a week later i started getting BSOD-s while gaming. So I went to inspect my PC, and found a half rotten and half cooked orange sitting on my 6600GT.

I cleaned it up, everything was OK again. BSOD's stopped and mystery of a missing orange was solved. Next time you have BSOD, check your PC for an orange
 
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Rogue Leader

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Hmm Mid 90's I had a Cyrix 486 DX4 100 or it may have been later when I had a Cyrix 6x86, so long ago I can't remember, but It had this dinky little heatsink and fan, thats basically when the concept of actively cooling your CPU in a consumer system had just started. Previously CPUs never had a heatsink or cooler, and most 486 didn't.

Anyway I was doing something I probably shouldn't have been inside the case while the computer was on and somehow ended up sticking my finger into the cooling fan which both messed up my nail and snapped a blade off!

It still worked but now the fan was off balance so it made a horrible noise. However I discovered if I gave the back of the case a solid hit it would knock the fan back into alignment for a while. So i did that.... for like 5 years!
 
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When troubleshooting on why my PC wouldn't boot, I teared down then rebuilt my system only to realize at the end that I plugged the HDMI cable onto the wrong port. Another time would be when I first installed Linux and had some repair guys said the reason I wasn't getting internet (mind you this was a wired connection) as due to not having the appropriate network drivers. Needless to say, it wasn't due to any driver issues, it was due a faulty ethernet cable.
 
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