Worst Tech mistake you have ever made?

[MadmanRB]

Probably my biggest mistake was getting the wrong RAM kit for a PC I was working on for a friend, not entirely my fault as the documentation on that machine was a little hazy.

[Jessica.Fawkes]

Tried to remove an old GPU heatsink to apply new paste. Ended up taking the entire GPU off.

[Teddy07]

1 hour ago, Majinhoju said:

Haha, I did the same thing about 20 years ago.  Luckily I was able to return the board claiming it was DOA and did it right the second time.

I did the exact thing and it was also around this time Also worked the second time

[ConfusedNewby]

This happen about almost 2 years ago IIRC. Anyway, I had my front-panel connectors on my mobo, and for some reason I though "Hmm, what would happen if I put these in a different part on the mobo?"

Long story short, I started playing Doom 2, and about 1 minute in I see some smoke coming from the inside of my case. I pause the game, and look inside, and then less than 30 seconds later, I see actual flames in my motherboard. I quickly yank my power cord out, and take out my front-panel connectors. Fortunately, nothing is really damaged, and I'm later able to play my games just fine.

[Domrockt]

 

me little kid,

13 yr old worked 7 Month with newspapers,

ordered a Geforce 4600 TI,

happy AF when it arrived,

put it out of the Box,

joyfully turn around to PC,

stumbled over Powercord,

it flew trough the Room,

mfw

[lmaobadatmath]

I bought Windows Vista back in the day for my Phenom II x6 instead of WIndows 7 as it was cheaper and boy did I regret that choice.

[Matej101]

I plugged a PCIe network card into a pc while it was on. The slot never worked so I either fried it or it was broken from the start (used mobo in a non-standard case so it was slightly bent)

I wanted to figure out if a LED I had worked so I jammed it into a usb-b cable (plugged into my PC) and managed to short the 5v line into one of the data lines. Thankfully the motherboard has polyfuses so after a restart the port works again.

 

[AndreiArgeanu]

I am not sure if this fits in but when I was younger I opened an exe program with notepad. And guess what, it got set as default so every program was basically a notepad and only the music was working to launch in winamp that is. Because I didn't have the knowledge I had to send it somewhere to get windows reinstalled. I haven't done it since.

[Inelastic]

Once I was trying to screw something in above the gpu (I forgot what) and was too lazy to turn my pc off. The screw driver fell out of my hand and landed on the gpu...zap! There went my gpu. This was long before back plates were common.

[MasonTheTechie]

i forgot to attach my power supply cable for about 15 minutes on my gaming rig

 

PS: it has an Intel i7 8th gen in it which takes a 240v power supply.

[wANKER]

Only thing I can think of was many years ago 

 

PC keep cutting out as soon as it was switched on, spent fucking ages trying to troubleshoot it

Turns out that a molex connector in the back was perfectly aligned with the screw hole for the side panel... So everytime i put the side panel on, it would short out

[Bitter]

44 minutes ago, StrangeOue said:

My friend told me to bring my neodymium magnet to his house. So I did. What happened after that will make me laugh with regret until I do something worse than this.

He wanted me to place the magnet on the back on the case. I did. He then asked, "Wanna turn it on?", I said yes with a slight giggle. It posted for a few seconds and then the motherboard started to make an odd smell, so we looked inside the case and heard some of the circuits make a funny noise, after that, a puff of smoke came out the circuit and we both laughed for a couple of minutes, then realising the motherboard was dead.

This happened a few years ago. So some details might be exaggerated.

[Derkoli]

On 1/4/2019 at 4:57 PM, Big Boi Lime said:

I dropped my CPU in the toilet the other day...it works fine now

how in the flying fuck did you do that. Ive killed 3 phones from a swim in the toilet but a cpu... wth..

[Derkoli]

On 11/11/2018 at 12:08 PM, LukeSavenije said:

Buying a a8-6410 laptop. That thing runns 60 degrees on idle (celcius)

My hp laptop with an amd a8 is like a friggin hot plate on the keyboard.. you can tell where the cpu is lol..

[iKingRPG]

bought optane memory thinking it was ram for my first pc build.

[enigmakahn]

taking out my SLI graphics cards for a cleaning...may have forgotten about the PCI-E lock...so now i don't have SLI any more and that spare graphics card ended up in my media machine, good news is that Mobo is still my daily driver 6 years later

 

I've also fried a bunch of peripherals over the years at work, but that was work equipment so it didn't leave quite the emotional scar as that PCI slot

[Arika]

I actually have a new one and I think most people can relate. 

 

Letting people know I'm tech literate, so now family, friends and colleagues ask "hey my x doesn't do y, can you fix it?" and when ever payment is brought up there is a noticeable hesitation because they were expecting it to be free

[enigmakahn]

16 minutes ago, Arika S said:

I actually have a new one and I think most people can relate. 

 

Letting people know I'm tech literate, so now family, friends and colleagues ask "hey my x doesn't do y, can you fix it?" and when ever payment is brought up there is a noticeable hesitation because they were expecting it to be free

see you still haven't made any mistakes yet, you told people there was going to be a fee, that's not a  mistake...now had you done a favor for that one person that one time...now that would be a mistake.

[Crunchy Dragon]

44 minutes ago, Arika S said:

I actually have a new one and I think most people can relate. 

 

Letting people know I'm tech literate, so now family, friends and colleagues ask "hey my x doesn't do y, can you fix it?" and when ever payment is brought up there is a noticeable hesitation because they were expecting it to be free

My general rule is I never ask for payment if I personally offer to help them fix it. However, if it's not a friend or immediate family, I generally will want some kind of payment for my services.

[Gmoneyinthebank]

Working in Tech.

When I finished college, I could have bought the lawn mowing company where I worked.  I could have been super healthy, spend all day outside, and be my own boss.  Instead of that I've spent years in a tiny fabric prison, struggle to not be obese from inactivity, and work for people who are incompetent.  

 

 

 

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, Gmoneyinthebank said:

Working in Tech.

When I finished college, I could have bought the lawn mowing company where I worked.  I could have been super healthy, spend all day outside, and be my own boss.  Instead of that I've spent years in a tiny fabric prison, struggle to not be obese from inactivity, and work for people who are incompetent. 

Ooh, that's rough. That's super rough.

 

Have you tried to fit a workout into your schedule at all?

[The King of the Undead]

setting my entire hard drive to read only.

[Tamesh16]

3 minutes ago, will1432 said:

setting my entire hard drive to read only.

on this note, i accidentally deleted the wrong pictures file on my external drive and when i saw it said it was too big to put in recycle bin, i had already clicked okay and deleted all my archived pictures dating back to 15 years ago, 

lot some data but had most of it in the cloud, still was very stupid, cant get back what i lost 

and even though i probably could have used some software, at time i didnt know and wrote over it with new data after the incident 

[EldritchMoose]

About 7 years ago, I went on a ski trip with a group of friends. We had cameras with us that were present for quite a few legendary moments. We also had a laptop with us, but for some reason it didn't occur to anyone to use it to back up the photos.

 

Long story short: Brother went skiiing on a day with rough weather. As they drove back, camera was in his lap when the car got stuck. He got out to help unstuck the car and the leading theory is that the camera is still preserved in that glacier as I type this.

[LeSheen]

Forgot to plug in the motherboard speaker with my first build. A few months later I wondered why my computer didn't beep during troubleshooting. I did however find out my motherboard showed the errorcodes with two led numbers as well