Worst PC Build Screw Ups

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Well, no, it wasn't. Seems she managed to force the power connector into it's socket turned ninety degrees clockwise somehow and (as later investigation showed) the main graphics chip, which was soldered onto the mainboard and so unserviceable. Lesson learned - don't assume that because it's only meant to go one way that you can't make it go another.
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Sage advice. Corollary to the lesson. If it is a zero force socket and you have to force it to close, you may have just broken both the socket and whatever you put in the socket.
 
I was reading through some of these posts and some were so funny I have to share my own experience. Its more of a prank then a screw up but I think its funny as hell.

Well i was over this nerdy kids house on new years drinking with a bunch of people because he had thrown a party. He only had a couple drinks but somehow managed to get so drunk he passed out but during the whole party he was bragging about how good the computer his rich parents had bought him for chrismas was and it could own any of our computers. So I had suggested a couple of funny things to do to his computer to make him think it was broken or something but then this other kid says he had a even better idea. So he disconnects the computer and brings it into the bathroom then comes out and hooks it back up. Then I start to smell something nasty and I relieased he had taken a shit inside the computer! so we all just leave the room and start partying again and didint tell him about. A couple weeks later I go to his house and he has a brand new computer that looks even cooler but didnt say a word about it and he hasnt had a new years party since.
 
Oh, yeah.. and you can drag out the old ZORK series. Maybe the old ASCII version of 'Star Trek' while you're at it. 😀

"Mouse? We don't need no stinkin' mouse! We have a TURBO button.. One push of this button and I go from 8Mhz to 10Mhz!! Just call me 'Speedy Gonzales', eh senor?"
 
My worst mess up is relatively mild to some of these ones.

I built my newest system into an old atx v1.0 case. The screw holes on the backboard are in the same configuration around the rim of the motherboard, but there were no holes that lined up with the the mobo in the center of the board. I was affraid of putting too much pressure on the center (causing it to flex) so i screwed a stilt into one of the slots that was near a hole in the mobo but not quite. There were no components there, so i figured it would be harmless and just hold the mobo up. Well somehow I managed to scratch the film on the outer layer of the pcb when i was putting the board in, so the metal stilt was shorting across two pathways.

Needless to say, I was trying to diagnose the problem for quite some time. I was getting no POST beep and no video: the most ambiguous problem I had had in awhile. What was worse, it was not visible so I complete forgot about it. I tried just about everything. The last one involved taking the the board out to reseat the cpu (my cooler has a backplate so I had to) and I noticed the scratch.

Ill never make that mistake again :)
 
I was reading through some of these posts and some were so funny I have to share my own experience. Its more of a prank then a screw up but I think its funny as hell.

Well i was over this nerdy kids house on new years drinking with a bunch of people because he had thrown a party. He only had a couple drinks but somehow managed to get so drunk he passed out but during the whole party he was bragging about how good the computer his rich parents had bought him for chrismas was and it could own any of our computers. So I had suggested a couple of funny things to do to his computer to make him think it was broken or something but then this other kid says he had a even better idea. So he disconnects the computer and brings it into the bathroom then comes out and hooks it back up. Then I start to smell something nasty and I relieased he had taken a **** inside the computer! so we all just leave the room and start partying again and didint tell him about. A couple weeks later I go to his house and he has a brand new computer that looks even cooler but didnt say a word about it and he hasnt had a new years party since.
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haha that reminds me of the time we pranked my roomate. We used the old desktop snapshot: alt+print screen to take a shot of his desktop with no apps open. We cut the start menu off and freezed his start bar to visible right? Then we moved all of his desktop icons to a folder and replaced his wallpaper with the screen shot. He thought something was wrong because he couldnt use any of the desktop "icons" but everything in the start menu worked. After letting him freak out believing it was a virus, we finally let him off the hook.

Oh, we also disassmbled his computer chair and reassembled it in the bathroom (the door was too small for it to fit though). Imagine watching a desparate computer science student try to wrestle his chair out of the cramped dorm bathroom for 10 minutes. Ah the memories...
 
Hey all,

My worst screw up was 21 years ago, I was 15 working as a developer for a company in my summer holidays.

They had written a large system in Apple Pascal (running on III and IIe) for the largest shipping company in the world. I was sent along to retrieve a copy of the live system, for some amendment off-site.

So in I goes, box of floppies in hand, sits down and gets to work.

The filing system used volume numbers (#1, #3 etc), so I set about blanking the floppy in the drive. Got the volume number wrong. Completely erased the live system, no backups (early days those).

They sued the company who sent me in, the company folded.

My first, and luckily my worst, mistake.

S!KO
 
Now there are mistakes, like the one above, and then there are 'mistakes' that are all about revenge.

Like the company that said I was there to make call and that they didn't care what I knew about my computer. So the email that I 'accidentally' (seeing as I know nothing and don't know better what this email saying that a co-worker loved me was) opened that happened to have the Love virus in it spread all through the building for the day. Had I had my brain engaged, I probably would have recognized it for what it was and alerted the IT guy. Oh well.

Or the company that told me on my last day that they wouldn't give me the reference they were going to give me after I resign to move to the UK with 4 weeks notice and trained my replacement. I accidentally wiped the network drives of all of the company cataloge data files and sales databases in my last hour after the IT department went home (I was in CS/Sales). Oops. Oh well, see you all in the funny papers.

edit: And welcome to the forum MrSisko!
 
I was reading through some of these posts and some were so funny I have to share my own experience. Its more of a prank then a screw up but I think its funny as hell.

Well i was over this nerdy kids house on new years drinking with a bunch of people because he had thrown a party. He only had a couple drinks but somehow managed to get so drunk he passed out but during the whole party he was bragging about how good the computer his rich parents had bought him for chrismas was and it could own any of our computers. So I had suggested a couple of funny things to do to his computer to make him think it was broken or something but then this other kid says he had a even better idea. So he disconnects the computer and brings it into the bathroom then comes out and hooks it back up. Then I start to smell something nasty and I relieased he had taken a **** inside the computer! so we all just leave the room and start partying again and didint tell him about. A couple weeks later I go to his house and he has a brand new computer that looks even cooler but didnt say a word about it and he hasnt had a new years party since.
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haha that reminds me of the time we pranked my roomate. We used the old desktop snapshot: alt+print screen to take a shot of his desktop with no apps open. We cut the start menu off and freezed his start bar to visible right? Then we moved all of his desktop icons to a folder and replaced his wallpaper with the screen shot. He thought something was wrong because he couldnt use any of the desktop "icons" but everything in the start menu worked. After letting him freak out believing it was a virus, we finally let him off the hook.

Oh, we also disassmbled his computer chair and reassembled it in the bathroom (the door was too small for it to fit though). Imagine watching a desparate computer science student try to wrestle his chair out of the cramped dorm bathroom for 10 minutes. Ah the memories...

That reminds me, I've done this many times before too. Its so funny when there like "wtf why can't I click on anything?" The funniest time was when I did this to all the computers in the computer room before class started, so everone was like "I cant click on anything, the computers broke!" So the teacher starts messing around and can't get it to work either. So they call down the head tech and since I did it on every computer in just that room, he thinks its the network and starts messing around with the network plugs. When he can't get it to work, he calls the head disrict tech guy and he happened to be in the area. I guess he finally figured it out because the next class they made it so you couldn't change desktop pic somehow. But hey, it got me out of doing work for one class.
 
Reminds me of the time I was in my javascript class and there was a student there that was a volunter firefighter. When ever i got bored, i'd call his phonee and hide my number so he thought it was a call from the station.
Good times
 
Reminds me of the time I was in my javascript class and there was a student there that was a volunter firefighter. When ever i got bored, i'd call his phonee and hide my number so he thought it was a call from the station.
Good times
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your good very good
 
Well, no, it wasn't. Seems she managed to force the power connector into it's socket turned ninety degrees clockwise somehow and (as later investigation showed) the main graphics chip, which was soldered onto the mainboard and so unserviceable. Lesson learned - don't assume that because it's only meant to go one way that you can't make it go another.
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Sage advice. Corollary to the lesson. If it is a zero force socket and you have to force it to close, you may have just broken both the socket and whatever you put in the socket.

Doesn't the "Insertion" part in Zero Insertion Force only pertain to actually dropping the chip in? You actually want it to have some resistance when you close the lever I think.. Sorry to nitpick :)

That said, I absolutely loathe the LGA sockets Intel uses these days--I feel like I'm going to damn near break the mobo in half just trying to get that infernal contraption to close...
 
One more, I might have posted this somewhere else but not here..

I managed to corrupt my bios during a flash and so my mobo was toast, and also past the return, and I hate RMAs because I'm an instant gratification sort of person. So, in my infinite wisdom, I went and got the exact same mobo, popped the bios chip out of the new one, put it in the old one, and presto, my system was restored. I even managed to flash it OK this time (I think the first floppy I used was bad).

Fast forward a few months, and a friend of mine heard what I had done and wondered if we couldn't resurrect the bad bios chip somehow. We actually managed to hot-swap the chip at a key step in the bios flash and get a clean flash on it! I can't tell you how nervous I was, pulling and reinstalling out the bios chip on a powered-on PC. 8O 8O 8O

Anyhow, I built a desktop for my g/f out of old parts that I'd upgraded out of and that mobo. Three years later, it's pulling office duties for her dad and still working flawlessly with a 2.6ghz P4 and 2gb of DDR400. Even has a 9700 pro. :) 8)
 
I'm not so sure that this thread is an appropriate place to describe "pranks" that one has pulled. Especially the sort than can lead to prosecution and/or civil lawsuits.

Given that most of the pranks fall into the category of "What were they thinking?", I suppose there is a tangential relationship to the original theme of the thread. Unfortunately, most of the "pranks" described so far fall into one or more of the categories of mean, abusive, vicious, abuse of public systems and resources, and not really funny. There's funny and then there's "funny".

Jerking a firefighter (even worse that it was a volunteer) around, by making him call his station to check if they had called him, is lame. One can get into very serious trouble for that. It is almost the same thing as calling in false alarms. You were causing the station phone system to be tied up with the equivalent of spam, potentially preventing a real fire alarm or emergency call from getting through. Leading to a possible loss of life. Not to mention potentially damaging the individual's reputation and thereby affecting his promotions to higher levels. This leaves you open to possible criminal charges of interfering with an essential public service, as well as possible civil lawsuits relating to slander, lost pay due to delayed or lost promotions, etc. And how do you know that your victim isn't technically savier now, and may have read your post? More critically, how do you reconcile bragging about such behaviour in your "younger days" with the opening post of the thread you started with the title of "What we need to remember"? Ya can't have it both ways.

As for buddy who so gleefully recounts the tale of the New Year's party defecation into the host's system, all I can say is that rich people may be individually stupid, but they for sure are unwilling to put up with (in this case literally) sh** from the proles. They can afford more and better lawyers than you can. They are also networked pretty tightly. Pray that your buddy doesn't know about this forum. And if you doubt that enough money for lawyers is all that is really necessary in the USA, I refer you to the O.J. Simpson "trial".

The pranks described so far indicate that the posters are, by and large, potential Darwin Award candidates.

Can we stay on topic?
 
Oh christ, cant I share my silly pranks without getting preached to? You dont need to write 3+ paragraphs to illustrate to us how annoying you are.

But I will agree, we did get somewhat off of the original intent of the thread 😛.
 
I was reading through some of these posts and some were so funny I have to share my own experience. Its more of a prank then a screw up but I think its funny as hell.

Well i was over this nerdy kids house on new years drinking with a bunch of people because he had thrown a party. He only had a couple drinks but somehow managed to get so drunk he passed out but during the whole party he was bragging about how good the computer his rich parents had bought him for chrismas was and it could own any of our computers. So I had suggested a couple of funny things to do to his computer to make him think it was broken or something but then this other kid says he had a even better idea. So he disconnects the computer and brings it into the bathroom then comes out and hooks it back up. Then I start to smell something nasty and I relieased he had taken a **** inside the computer! so we all just leave the room and start partying again and didint tell him about. A couple weeks later I go to his house and he has a brand new computer that looks even cooler but didnt say a word about it and he hasnt had a new years party since.
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As a former "nerdy kid" and now a full-fledged geek, I can't say I approve of this... there are much better ways to get a one-upper or braggert to shut up than to shit all over his stuff, regardless of where he got it. I hope you've since made amends for not taking action at the time, or speaking up about it afterwards. Sheesh, way to thank a guy for having a party and letting all of you into his house.

Ok, back on topic...
 
My first build: I was in a high school class for building PC's. Sure I had fooled around with PC components before, but i was not ready for the plastic packaging that the CPU came in. Sure enough I opened it the wrong way and out dropped the CPU bouncing, not once but twice, onto my build table. I caught it before it bounced again. As if that wasn't enough, I could have Static discharged the F*** out of it because I was holding it by the pins when I caught it.

My instructor was like, "and look how you're holding that processor" obviously not caring that I had accidentally dropped it, but more so that I was handling it wrong. :lol:

I was shocked to find out that it was not cracked at all and actually worked (to my knowledge) just fine, not showing any errors in the burn in process. 8O
 
I'm not so sure that this thread is an appropriate place to describe "pranks" that one has pulled. Especially the sort than can lead to prosecution and/or civil lawsuits.

Given that most of the pranks fall into the category of "What were they thinking?", I suppose there is a tangential relationship to the original theme of the thread. Unfortunately, most of the "pranks" described so far fall into one or more of the categories of mean, abusive, vicious, abuse of public systems and resources, and not really funny. There's funny and then there's "funny".

Jerking a firefighter (even worse that it was a volunteer) around, by making him call his station to check if they had called him, is lame. One can get into very serious trouble for that. It is almost the same thing as calling in false alarms. You were causing the station phone system to be tied up with the equivalent of spam, potentially preventing a real fire alarm or emergency call from getting through. Leading to a possible loss of life. Not to mention potentially damaging the individual's reputation and thereby affecting his promotions to higher levels. This leaves you open to possible criminal charges of interfering with an essential public service, as well as possible civil lawsuits relating to slander, lost pay due to delayed or lost promotions, etc. And how do you know that your victim isn't technically savier now, and may have read your post? More critically, how do you reconcile bragging about such behaviour in your "younger days" with the opening post of the thread you started with the title of "What we need to remember"? Ya can't have it both ways.

As for buddy who so gleefully recounts the tale of the New Year's party defecation into the host's system, all I can say is that rich people may be individually stupid, but they for sure are unwilling to put up with (in this case literally) sh** from the proles. They can afford more and better lawyers than you can. They are also networked pretty tightly. Pray that your buddy doesn't know about this forum. And if you doubt that enough money for lawyers is all that is really necessary in the USA, I refer you to the O.J. Simpson "trial".

The pranks described so far indicate that the posters are, by and large, potential Darwin Award candidates.

Can we stay on topic?
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....... This is on topic. This is my thread. I deem it on topic so therefore it is. I did not flood the station, just his cell phone. Any unlisted call could do the same. As for what I tell about my past and what I do now...
 
Worst screw up was an old P 166 MMX.. blah, junk machine running windows 98! I took the case off of it because it was 'running hot' before i had any concept of how anything works in a computer. I then, while playing starcraft.. spilled my coke into the rig... It didnt smoke.. It didnt spark.. the carriers just stopped.
 
I'm not so sure that this thread is an appropriate place to describe "pranks" that one has pulled. Especially the sort than can lead to prosecution and/or civil lawsuits.

<cut>

Can we stay on topic?
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....... This is on topic. This is my thread. I deem it on topic so therefore it is. I did not flood the station, just his cell phone. Any unlisted call could do the same. As for what I tell about my past and what I do now...

If you say it's on topic, then so it is. And I didn't say you had flooded his station. I just pointed out that emergency response authorities take a dim view of the sort of prank you described. And "annonymous" cell phones can be traced in real life, not just on CSI.

Your closing thought is interesting, shall we say. Like anyone else, you are free to do whatever you want. Just be prepared to accept the consequences.

Still waiting for the answer to the question I asked you in my post.

On the whole, I find your posts interesting, informative and entertaining, but we all miss occassionally. I too, screw up on a regular basis - hard to believe I know, but true nevertheless.

Stay cool.
 
Oh christ, cant I share my silly pranks without getting preached to? You dont need to write 3+ paragraphs to illustrate to us how annoying you are.

But I will agree, we did get somewhat off of the original intent of the thread 😛.
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Your particular prank - if that is the appropriate term - is one of the few described here that qualifies as genuinely funny. Not to mention displaying a good understanding of the technology and having no signifacaqnt negative impact.

My post was actually 6 paragraphs long. And who actually is the annoying one here?

And some of the pranks that were described leave the perprators open not only to civil law-suites, but to criminal charges. Since it appears that most of you live in the US, you would be wise indeed to keep much closer control over what you admit to.

You may wish to have a closer lok at the recently passed legislation that allows your president to declare anyone an enemy combatant, and assorted "aggressive interrogation techniques" are now "legal". The same sorts of techniques that were employed by, among others, the GESTAPO and KGB.

DaSickNinja's little prank could easily be interpreted by Homeland Security as an attempt to interfere with emergency services. And, in their world, who is it that wants to interfere with the effective opperatiuon of emergency response services? Hint: it starts with the letter "T".

Buddy who defecated in his host's system is actually in much more serious trouble. Feces contains all sorts of pathogens, including fun things like typhus, cholera, salmonella - look up the others. Buddy could, in fact, be (semi-legitimately) accused of attemptint to commit a biological warefare attack. You don't want to go there, no sirree. For sure he could be legitimately charged under various Public Health, mischief and assault rubrics. A really creative DA could try and reamp it up to ADW or worse.

US Homeland Security has demonstrated a dismaying lack of competence, feel free to lok it up. Are you sure you want them looking you up for really stupid things you may have done when you were yopunger and more foolish tham now?

As far as "preaching" goes, I wasn't. I was pointing out the potential consequences of their pranks to the perptrators. The value judgement I made about many of the "pranks" is accurate and correct. That is a cold hard fact in the same category as murder is wrong and evil.

Your comment about the length of my post suggests that your attention span is very short. You may want to consider working on that problem by increaseing your attention span. You would be amazed at how the world will expand if you do.
 
Its cool. Last night, I went off on someone that keep posting on a topic that was in the wrong section eve thogh I keep telling him so. Some one reported e on my last rant against him. I expect a PM from the mods soon.
 
Buddy who defecated in his host's system is actually in much more serious trouble. Feces contains all sorts of pathogens, including fun things like typhus, cholera, salmonella - look up the others. Buddy could, in fact, be (semi-legitimately) accused of attemptint to commit a biological warefare attack. You don't want to go there, no sirree. For sure he could be legitimately charged under various Public Health, mischief and assault rubrics. A really creative DA could try and reamp it up to ADW or worse.
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lol! well maybe it was a bit off topic but i thought it was funny as hell! I don't think anyone would ever get charged with "attemptint to commit a biological warefare attack" for shitting on something, especially with no proof of who did it.

I wasn't acually the one who did it either and the kid got a new computer the next day anyway. But it tought the kid a very important lesson, don't talk shit about people that you barely know (especially when there in your house) and drunk people and computers = no good.
 
Wiz, as off topic as your anti-Bush/US comments were could you also take them elsewhere?

Cmon, Department of HS taking on the defication of a kids computer as Bio warfare? || The Dept of HS taking on a prank phone call?

Get real....

So in your own words can we get back on topic??

By the way since DaSick said it was OK..

The wallpaper prank is much more effective if you also auto-hide the Taskbar and change its orrientation to some other location (not near any of the folders on the desktop, the right side of the screen tends to work well..) (just a hint 😉)... But I would never have done anything like that before.. 😉
 
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