What are your worst computing mistakes?

[Arceles]

Burned a native Parallel port from a compaq 5253 while programming in C with it (Kids... never plug a DC motor without proper isolation to it), plus deleting 50gb of data, the former was never fixed while the other was fortunately fully recovered.

[Dot Matrix]

I installed Windows XP.

[ambiance]

deltree /y'd the wrong directory which happened to be all my music. Using DOS for so long sometimes you just type with muscular memory instead of thinking. Went through those three stages mentioned before.

[John S. Veteran]

Worst mistake? Bought an IBM 486 over a Macintosh Classic in 1990. I thought at the time the IBM would be more useful since it had both a 3.5 and a 5.25 floppy drive. :laugh:

Took me a dozen years to realize my mistake and finally switch to a Mac.

[thomastmc]

On the first box I built from scratch, I screwed the board down directly to the case, without studs, tight. It powered up and then back down like turning on a light and the bulb goes out. I RMA'd it... defective.

Recently had a problem in a server box after a 17 hour day. When wrapping it up I plugged back in the 24-Pin connector, not noticing that the 4-Pin part that snapped onto the 20-Pin main piece wasn't snapped on anymore, and powered it up. I've seen many threads that argue whether or not a 24-Pin is necessary or a 20-Pin on 24 is possible, but this fried the board. Maybe it's just my luck.

Around 10 years ago or so when they started putting a lock at the end of the AGP port a Gigabyte board snagged the end of a card so that it was at a slight angle into the slot... fried the board's AGP port rendering it useless.

I've killed many OS installations while experimenting. That used to be a really bad day, before I heard of Ghost. Acronis is great.

Of course, like many, many, many others, I've corrupted a partition in one way or another several times and lost all my data. But that hasn't happened since 2006 :D

[Guest LiquidCrystalMeth]

I installed Windows XP.

Do you have belittle every OS other than your precious Windows 8 which you bang on about like a Nazi

Yes Windows XP was a mistake, thats why it is still installed on a couple of million PC's *sigh*

Time to lift the needle onto a new track mate

[Pam14160]

Do you have belittle every OS other than your precious Windows 8 which you bang on about like a Nazi

Yes Windows XP was a mistake, thats why it is still installed on a couple of million PC's *sigh*

Time to lift the needle onto a new track mate

He was cracking a funny. . .why so serious. . . :)

[...w.K...]

Refuse to pay a little more for better spec then regret.

$200 more for lighter weight laptop.

$80 more for bigger size monitor.

$50 more for better MB.

$80 more for a better casing.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

I've sat here for 5 minutes trying to think of a costly error, and I can honestly hold my hands up and say that I don't think I've made one. Don't get me wrong, I've made small mistakes, but nothing that has cost me or a company any time or money. Maybe dropping a hard drive once. Either I'm super clever with computers or I'm not pushing myself hard enough to screw up.

[Manarift]

Deleting my entire back up hard drive by mistake without even realizing it till later

[abysal]

I got ****ed off while working on my old d620, and slammed my fist into the palm rest = dead head drive.

I got ****ed off while working on an hp laptop and slammed my fist into the palm rest = dead hard drive.

Luckily 100 to 320 GB 2.5" drives were cheap at the time, but I think I've learned my lesson, twice.

I also occasionally delete photos from a memory card without copying them first = get out the old and trusted sector/file recovery software.

Oh Almost for got the best one:

Bought 4 IBM Death Star 20 GB hard drives and setup 2 Raid 0 Arrays; several months later both died and I lost all data.

[Haggis Veteran]

Nothing Major that i can think of

I backed up all my wifes photos onto my external drive and formatted her computer then deleted them off my drive withouth putting them on disk for her lol

she was raging

[neo1911]

None as I remember. I am always very careful.

[Guest LiquidCrystalMeth]

I got ****ed off while working on my old d620, and slammed my fist into the palm rest = dead head drive.

I got ****ed off while working on an hp laptop and slammed my fist into the palm rest = dead hard drive.

Luckily 100 to 320 GB 2.5" drives were cheap at the time, but I think I've learned my lesson, twice.

I also occasionally delete photos from a memory card without copying them first = get out the old and trusted sector/file recovery software.

Oh Almost for got the best one:

Bought 4 IBM Death Star 20 GB hard drives and setup 2 Raid 0 Arrays; several months later both died and I lost all data.

+ Sympathy for being a former Death Star owner

Hmm DeathStar, the only way to ensure reliability was to not apply power to one.

That you RAIDed them ...bonus infinity sympathy points

[Teebor]

Accidentally connected the audio line in jack on my BBC to a mains power lead as didn't realise it was live and in a bundle of wires that I shoved out of the way

It was fixable though, they don't make them like they used to

[The King of GnG]

This one, thus far.

[abysal]

+ Sympathy for being a former Death Star owner

Hmm DeathStar, the only way to ensure reliability was to not apply power to one.

That you RAIDed them ...bonus infinity sympathy points

Yeah it sucked. A few years later I received a class action suit letter, I was eligible for a measly $12 or so (if I remember correctly) provided I could offer proof of purchase. I think only the lawyers made out on that one :/

I've also avoided Raid 0 until recently. And after the Death Star incident I've been religious about backups in multiple places.

[mps69]

Back in the day when I really didn?t know what I was doing, not I that I know much more now.

In a moment of drunken stupidity, tried install a dual boot XP and Ubuntu, thinking it was simple. In my mind "what can go wrong". Without backing anything up I proceed to format the complete drive.

I lost years? worth of music, documents and pictures. To say it was a very sobering experience is an understatement.

Moral of the story if your drunk stay away from your PC. :D

[Zodiarck]

1 - Format my PC (Pentium III 800 Mhz) without having a OS for re-instaling

2 - A year ago, at work a error occurred at the production machine, so i had to replace some of the data , by accident i erased 1 Bill ... a great day to work ... i had to ask other teams of the company for "remains" of the data , but the problem was solved at the end of the day

3- last week i upgraded my PCI card .. when i got home to retrieve my old one i forgot that besides the screw , all boards have a plastic "thing" to hold the PCI card , short story , my board does not have one anymore :rofl: , and when i was installing the new one , it didn't fit on the chassis , so i had to remove all components from that chassis to my old one

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Using MS-DOS 6.2 DriveSpace! It borked my entire computer!

[cooky560 Veteran]

Upgrading my OS, and deleting my data partition instead of the boot partition (d'oh!)

I've always kept my data on a network since then

[Detection]

Upgrading my OS, and deleting my data partition instead of the boot partition (d'oh!)

I've always kept my data on a network since then

Rename the partitions / drives ;)

[Jose_49]

Guys, guys, guys, come on... No saving constantly is the most disastrous thing all of us have gone through :p

[+Warwagon MVC]

Wiped a hard drive for a customer. The son brought it in, and said wipe it and clean it, so i did, the mother came in to pick it up and asked where her 3000 pics were. :(

Did you tell her "Oh sorry, but it will be ok we we will just restore from your backup!" :laugh:

[djdanster]

I removed RAM from a powered on machine and it came up with a blue and white checkerboard on the screen. It killed the RAM instantly.

I didn't exactly intend to remove it from that machine... I just happened to be fixing an identical PC next to the powered on one and I didn't look to see where the leads were going....