What are your worst computing mistakes?

By RATiO
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Grand Master

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Posted
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Removing a heat sink from a cpu using a butterknife. (Only thing I had to use at the time....butterknife slipped off the retainer clip, and stabbed the motherboard=dead motherboard) Yeah, I know, I know, lol! :pinch:

  • oliver182 and Mando
  • Like 2
Grand Master

game_over

Posted
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My most expensive mistake at work (i'm a techy) but not entirely down to computers... one of our photocopiers stopped working and throwing errors about waste toner. I popped it open and had a look, found something that looked like waste toner in 4 compartments so i proceeded to empty all 4 of them into a bin, i replaced the units and still wasn't fixed so we called an engineer.. He said 'someone' had emptied the fusing/magnetic something or other material out of each toner unit, which was a costly mistake. It was ?250 per unit and 4 units needed replacing so it cost us ?1000, i seriously thought i was going to lose my job but my manager was understanding. In my defence it's my responsibility when i don't know much about photocopiers at all.

Another costly mistake was not having up to date virus software on all of our machines, we got stund with a dodgy USB disk and it ripped through our network infecting every single PC, it didn't really cost us any money but it certainly took me a long time to fix.

Also when i was just curious as a child i was messing around with the insides of my brand new PC and when re-seating the graphics card i pushed too hard and cracked the motherboard.

Grand Master

simplezz

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I've been quite lucky really. I think the worst thing I ever did was accidentally install Grub to a Windows partition, but that wasn't too difficult to fix. Still I was cursing myself at the time for being so careless :(

Proficient

xfx

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  On 03/09/2012 at 20:22, White Man said:

I once installed Windows 8.

This happened to me as well... luckly it was on a virtual machine so it was an easy fix.

Guest

Posted
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I was getting jiggy with an ex-girlfriend. I put candles all over my desk and someone knocked the door. Quickly got dressed, hit the pause button and eject cd button at the same time by accident. Came back up stairs and smelled something odd. Turned out it had melted my cd drive. In a panic, I pushed it back in. By the time it had cooled, I imagine it had basically turned into a glue totally sealing it permanently.

It was an eMac so I was fairly screwed.

Oh also, the first real PC I had which was around 1998 and I was 12. I knew nothing of computers really. Messing around with all the buttons and everything, switched the voltage on the PSU and switched it on. There was a loud bang and a puff of green smoke. I'd been waiting for six months to get it. It was Christmas day and I'd had it for a few hours. I cried like a baby.

Mentor

myxomatosis

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-Installed Windows 8 :(

-Volt-modded a Radeon 9500 Pro that died after 6 months on a hot summer day (I still have the bookmark :p http://www.xtremesys...=9500Pro%20volt)

-Thought Windows 8 would be an enhanced, better version of Windows 7

-Chose a Voodoo 3 over a TNT2 when I bought my old P3 550MHz. The Voodoo wasn?t a bad card, but the TNT2 was superior

-****** up the line-in jack of a brand new Xonar Essence STX with a bad connector

-Made an ugly scratch on my screen with a? hard disk :|

-Chose to buy 4 x 1GB of RAM instead of 2 x 2GB on my old system, to save money. A year and a ½ later, I had to buy 4 x 2GB anyway

  • Mando, d4rk5ky and +Warwagon
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Grand Master

Max Norris

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Nothing overly dramatic, probably my personal least favorite just because it was my hardware.. had a "derp" moment couple years back, made an ugly short in the eletrical. Figures that I can build hundreds of the things for clients over the past couple decades, and wind up nuking my own.

Dual socket motherboard, probably around $400 or so at the time.

Dual CPU's, maybe $500 for the pair.

That look on my face when I first got a whiff of the blue smoke, priceless.

Neowinian

Jips

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1. Went to fix YLOD on a playstation, thought I could save time by putting it in the oven for a short while, then forgot about it :(

2. Not locking down USB ports on PC's at work - result over 300 PC's and over 100 touchscreens and server farm infected with a virus. 40 hours straight to fix :( (thankfully production boxes were unix)

3. Vista!!! Nuff said

4. Didn't even put a fan on a cpu on a mates PC on Xmas eve. Phooof!

5. Flashed firmware on my Bluetooth unit in the car, and the car went into eco mode and cut power. fried Eeprom

6. Plugging 240volts into the output of my new UPS units, and tripping out my server room - twice!

I really should re-evalute my job

Mentor

Gary2MBz

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Almost bricking a Linksys WRT54G-TM Tmobile branded router trying to flash DD-WRT. Turns out the customer's laptop battery was just defunct and luckily Windows gave a battery warning or else it was seconds away from going off mid-flash and I forgot about it yet I MYSELF worked on it hah!

Grand Master

Hum

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  On 03/09/2012 at 20:46, ChrisJ1968 said:

when I was new to computers, I was fascinated with the inner workings of the Bios chip and messed it up. :/ it was a 386 processor.

^ I'm not sure if it could be called a mistake, but I 'bricked' my netbook last year, while trying to Update.

I did eventually figure out how to reflash the BIOS chip. :D

Grand Master

chrisj1968

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  On 03/09/2012 at 20:49, Hum said:

^ I'm not sure if it could be called a mistake, but I 'bricked' my netbook last year, while trying to Update.

I did eventually figure out how to reflash the BIOS chip. :D

lessened learned from that? I took it into a shop and got a new bios put in. I wasn't meant to touch things I had no idea about

Proficient

xfx

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Was drinking and listening to my iPod (second generation) when it slipped from my hands and felt... unfortunately, instead of landing on the floor it landed, perfectly, inside of my rum & coke glass!

After all these years, it still feels sticky!

xtw3G.jpg

Experienced

Wyn6

Posted
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I did the improbable. Before I knew much about building and repairing computers, I had read somewhere you could make your system faster by installing faster memory. I took some memory a friend of mine had just replaced, which was faster than what I had. I cracked open my case, and popped out the old memory just fine.

I installed one stick and it clicked as I pushed it in and the tabs snapped forward. Good so far. I then installed the other stick which was a little harder to get in. But, with a nice forceful push, I snapped it into place. Put the cover back on the case and tried to boot the machine. The lovely, long, single beep issued from the case speaker and then... I smelled smoke. I panicked, pulled the plug on the machine and opened it back up.

Turns out that I somehow managed to put the memory stick in backwards. I know. I know. The slots shouldn't have even allowed this but I did it. The stick was fried as was that particular channel. Amazingly the board was good and the computer booted up and worked fine with the remaining stick and two of the older ones. I also learned not to mix and match memory after this.

So, it only cost me a channel and a stick of memory. But, anybody that I tell that story to always says, "How the hell did you do that? That's near impossible to do." I am Mr. Impossible.

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