Worst PC Build Screw Ups

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Hi, I'm new to this forum, I was reading this thread and thought I should participate.

1) I had one pretty long problem with my 2nd PC, an IBM Aptiva Pentium 133mhz with 16mb of RAM (which later I got upgraded to 24mb hehe)
If anyone has known one of that, they have a soundcard called MWave which is soundcard and modem all in one ISA card.

The computer came with Win95, and the time came when I wanted to upgrade to 98, so I did... but the MWave drivers were nearly impossible to get working right (installing them was difficult too)

Well I finally could install them, and had sound, midi (it loaded .wav samples from the hd) and modem in Win98.
The card itself had horrible performance, I could'nt play FIFA 98 (which required a Pentium 75mhz) because of the sound being processed by the CPU (if I disabled the device, it worked smoothly).
Also every now and then the drivers would "break" and the computer would not start windows (it froze before loading the desktop). The fun part is: if I moved the mouse (in circles or randomly) while loading windows (when it shows the cursor alone) it did not hang up! It wasn't sporadically, it was 100% sure.
How did one thing relate to the other, today I am still looking for an answer.

2) I built my next computer with help of a friend, a K6-2 500mhz. It booted, but failed to install windows. Every time with a different error message. So after several hours of trying to get it working, we give up and get it to the store where I had bought it. It was the heatsink which was badly positioned. Luckily it didn't burn out!

3) This is another more recent problem I had with a friend's computer. He asked me to help him rebuild two of his PCs (mainly changing the motherboards).
The first thing I noticed was that the new mb missed some writings near the pins (POWER or HDD LED). So I connected them tracing back each wire, and when I turn on the power, the power led does not start... So I turn it off again and notice the cable was close to melting and there was a bit of smell... No harm done...

4) Another friend of mine who recently bought a new PC apparently annoyed by the fan noises, disconnected the PSU fan, the case fan AND the CPU cooler!! When he told me that I couldn't believe how it was working!!! He said that the motherboard shuts down automatically on overheat. Still I wouldn't take that risk!

I also have anecdotes of people walking over microprocessors, inserting RAM modules half in half out, but nothing so drastic hehe.

This is a great thread (altho I've only read 10+ pages)

Bye

Ferow2k.
 
I used to work as an IT specialist about 3 years ago for a large telecommunications company in my country. There are 2 main buildings and I usually worked in the building with 110v mains (building1). A colleague of mine who worked in the other building with 220V mains (building2) went on vacation so I took over his responsibilities. One of the workers in building2 had a problem with her PC that required a rebuild, so I took the PC to my office in building1 switched her PC to 110v and did the rebuild. Of course I took it back to her desk and promptly plugged it in without setting the PSU to 220V 😳 . There wasn't an explosion, but the distinct smell of burning circuitry gave it away!
The joke was, after waiting a week for the replacement PSU, I installed the PSU on her desk and plugged it right back in, this time it was accompanied by a very loud *PAX*! 😳 😳
I never did work in building2 since. 😀
 
110V in one building, 220V in the other... you living in a country with two electrical grids?
Click to expand...

Our country is 110V. The power guys at building2 decided to run 220V for computer equipment back in the day.
 
My friends Dell pc got a browser hijack this weekend. (5 family members use it). Now say's he has to get a new one. "Huh?" I say. :? He said that's what he did last time (2001) when his win98 90mhz got one. He never told me back then. I thought he was replacing the p.o.s. 90mhz machine.

I think I'll tell him Dell PC's get way more viruses than other brands and he should by a new HP, Compaq or Acer. :twisted:
Click to expand...

My conscious is clear. (for now anyway). I visited him Tuesday and cleared up his problems. He's blown away now that his pc doesn't take 4+ mins. to finally finish starting up. It had twelve icons in the lower right task bar & lotsa junk in the registry. Only 4 icons now.
 
This is not a big screw up, it's more like "a series of unfortunated and annoying little to medium screw ups (tm)"

I was building my second rig from cheapazaki parts (except the CPU, I got my Prescott 2.8 GHz at rip off price thanks to a typo in an ad) and everything looked great. So I started by laying my parts on a large wooden workbench after opening my marvelous I-nick-your-knuckle case and setting the Mobo standoffs I screwed the MoBo in place.

After that the woe began...

As I was setting the ram I pushed too hard on the holding clips and popped one off, it's ok, not too bad let's keep working, ok now the turn for the processor. Proc went cool "Zero insertion force" is great I think but the HSF... OMG the HSF... It was too hard for me to set so attempted to use a screwdriver and BOOM! 8O 8O say hello to mr. crushed puny transistor 🙁

There I go to return the DOA MoBo, you know the story: -Hey my MoBo arrived damaged, it even has a loose ram clip. -Don't worry sir, we can fix that (pop! the clip snaps right in place) there you go!. -But it doesn't even boot!. -Did you checked the CMOS jumper sir?. -What? Do you take me for a noob? Of course i checked the jumper!. -All right, it looks like it got mishandled, please take a replacement from the rack, have a nice day.

Cool! I got away with it! back to the build up thingy.
So, rinse and repeat MoBo in place, memory set, proc set and the HSF... OMG the HSF again! It was too hard to place, so i go for the darn screwdriver again and... yep, you guessed it CRRRREACK! I busted the last arm of the HSF clip. I was too frustrated and angry to attempt another DOA scam. Oh well, 3 out of 4 will have to do.

All right, everything is (sort off) perfectly set let this baby rip! Click, buzz, beep... Why! Why! WHYYYYY! It doesn't displays anything!. Ok, maybe somethings loose, unplug and plug everything. Nothing. Check the case's connectors. Nothing. Daaayyyumm a whole weekend and this thing still won't work. Take it easy, call the (not) techie friend. Ok, dissassembled and assembled everything again and let's go! 8O 8O 8O

To make things short: ended up taking the whole mess to the retailer and payed $15 for an in-store assembly and test. Luckily the tech supp dude saw the broken HSF clip and blamed the front desk for not handling the customer's property carefully and made the dude pay for a brand new one for me. I felt bad for about 7 seconds :twisted:

So after a year and a half the rig's working fine, let's Overclock it!

Ok, so first thing is to update the Bios right? guess, rig's busted again. After two weeks of research at last it got restored.

Moral. If you've seen how a PC is assembled, if you know the principles and how-to's, if you are a PC power user, still, get the dude that has actually built a PC to help you :wink: . Knowledge is not power, experience is!

Saludos
 
Here is a mantra I drummed into my appie's head. She can now quote this verbatim (after nearly two months)

Take it step for step, work slowly, carefully and deliberately, and check, double check, and check again.
 
HHMMmM...Not gonna look at laptops anymore, managed to bend the chasis a bit (mobo had idfficulties going in) so decided to gently bend the chasis to make sure it fitted, thought it would be ok, bend it a bit and then gently hammer it back in.

All went ok with the bending and the fitting, but the bending back is becoming difficult...I guess it's not ment to be manipulated in such a manner.

Wil have to hit it with a hammer.
 
ARE YOU... *splutter*

please, please tell me you're only kidding around, because if you're serious, what you describe is incredibly painful to read. And the thing still switches on and boots?!?
 
With an incredible delicate operation I managed to kinda fit it back to how it should look. The hammer works 😀 will try that again sometime.

Yep, don't worry, not gonna look at laptops, never has success with them, only look at networking, desktops and servers...Some other stuff, but not laptops...They look too delicate...Besides, I'm sure all of these mistakes will come back to bite me quite soon... 😳
 
Just give me some warning, at least a week, should you ever decide to visit south africa. I'll need the time to organise some heavier casing armour and assign robotic warriors to guard all of my computer installations... [/evil warlord]
 
Well to date I've (with help woth a mate too...The first screw up)

- broke half the pins off a P4 when trying to remove HS...Still works,
- Fried a projector board,
- cut off brackets that secure laptop screen to front panel,
- and finally, 'manipulated' a laptop chasis...

Not bad for 7 years expaience in IT.
 
You know I was scheduled to go out to Zambia in SA to help set up a new technical college there. Very nice people I worked with here in the states (NM, and CA). Hope the college is set up now and working great. I feel bad though cause I believe they ended up going with 56k satellite dish and connected with one of the other cities ... forgot which as my South African geography isn’t too hot.
 
To speed up his computer, I removed Norton, SpySweeper, his firewall, stupid windows updates, his ipod software, microsoft office, and unplugged the internet. Now it runs like a dream.
Click to expand...



ORLY?

Damn! I knew there was an easier way than running hijackthis and deleting registry stuff!

"ORLY?" ?
 
I had forgotten about this one.
In May 2005 before I went on vacation Thursday & Friday the tech guy said he'd move the OS & such from the 4GB HD C: drive on to the 80GB D: drive. I didn't think much of it, as I was finishing up my billing work before I left & said why not just get a new one. I come back Monday & the boss is working on it & finally got the D drive partitioned as C: 9.4GB & D: 40GB. So... I lost 30.6GB & mentioned that. After looking up some info on the p.o.s. I found out the bios version only allowed 9.4GB max for C: drive.

Six months later during my review I mentioned that the 450mhz PC I had was really inadequate to do my job because the company's new software loaded tables with 10,000 entries & it took the PC over 3 minutes to do what my P4 3.0 at home did in 20 seconds. Really fustrated me. Three months later, they some how got wind I was job hunting, asked me & I brought up the 8 year old plus PC. A new PC appeared on my desk 2 days later.
 
Sometime in 2001 i bought all the components for my new PC rig. I put them all together, including a Duron 600 and its heatsink on. Unfortunately for me, the case was too crowded and i did the installation of the heatsink in there. Hence i missed the fact that one of the heatsink clips did not attach properly on the CPU socket. I closed the case, stood my case vertically (as it was supposed to be) and pressed the power on button. I managed to get a glimpse of the BOOT screen and then a big BANG and smell of smoke! WTF!?... I put my case down again, opened the case and found the heatsink hanging off...
No need to mention that ever since i always double-triple and quatriple check the heatsink on the CPU!
 
2 screwups. well..only one was, the other one was just me being really stupid.

So I bring my Desktop home for X-mas break, plug in everything , put it in the corner and turn it on...and I get this really annoying beep and a post code. So I go and check through the manual and the mobo's online post-code list and it's nowhere to be found. So I start googling around and find some weird "Bad PCI initialization" topics. So..I unplug all of the pci cards, then the ram, then hard drives...still nothing. So I unplug all of the keyboard/mouse, monitor, power cords from back so I can get ready to unmount the heatsink and CPU...then I notice that the keyboard and mouse cords were switched around. Magically...it boots up! Took me almost an hour to figure that out 🙁

The other messup I had was I was building a desktop for a friends parents. I ordered all of the parts, put it together all nice and carefully, turned it on....nothing. Again. Rechecked the connections...nothing. Then it struck me..the mobo I picked wasn't compatible with his CPU (supported Prescott, but not Cedar Mill). Luckily, I had the same CPU (prescott, though) and just swapped the two. Felt bad, till I realized that I got a 65nm processor and gave him a 90nm.
 
One time was try screwing in the mobo with a screwdriver and i slipped and the screwdriver went skidding across the mobo making a huge scratch...pa..pa..pwned.
 
To speed up his computer, I removed Norton, SpySweeper, his firewall, stupid windows updates, his ipod software, microsoft office, and unplugged the internet. Now it runs like a dream.
Click to expand...



ORLY?

Damn! I knew there was an easier way than running hijackthis and deleting registry stuff!

"ORLY?" ?

you know, the OWL Says: "ORLY?"
YA RLY!
 
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