Worst Tech mistake you have ever made?

[gergy008]

I remember when I was a kid, I really didn't know that much about computers. The inside of my AMD Athlon II 600 Mhz PC was a little dusty so me and a friend opened it up and cleaned it out.

 

We opened it up, like, power supply opening it up. Vac'd the inside of everything and put it back together.

 

Plugged it in, power supply explodes.

Forgot the standoffs rip

[FCHD]

I downloaded GTA 4 from a cracked disk from a friend and he loaded my computer with IP trackers and malware he is no longer my friend. 

[Imbadatnames]

Bought a Fuji XA20

[da na]

I was unscrewing the fan grate on my XP system's PSU without realizing the fan was screwed to the case with the same screws the grate was attached to the case with. So I unscrew the grate, fan falls back into the PSU. I can't get it out without taking the whole PSU apart now 

[Error 52]

As a kid I managed to fuck up the family computer so badly with malware that when you booted it up it apparently showed animal porn. Windows XP days were wild.

[da na]

Almost bought CD/DVD burning software for an old system before realizing my drive wasn't write capable. Spent like 30 minutes troubleshooting on the trial version before it hit me that I was an idiot. Not easily replaceable either, system will only take IDE optical drives and I don't have any write capable models on hand

[WhitetailAni]

IDE writers aren't too expensive from what I've found.

[da na]

1 minute ago, FakeKGB said:

IDE writers aren't too expensive from what I've found.

Perhaps it is time to upgrade since this one thinks it's an OG Xbox and won't open unless you slap the top of the PC above it a few times

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, Mel0nMan said:

Perhaps it is time to upgrade since this one thinks it's an OG Xbox and won't open unless you slap the top of the PC above it a few times

The optical drive that was cursing my Power Mac only opened if I:

1. Booted the machine

2. Spammed the open button until it chimed

3. Counted to 5 after it chimed

4. Flipped open the door and pressed the button on the drive directly instead of through the lever thingy

 

If you didn't do that, it would not open at all.

[Lacrima]

Choosing a Gigabyte mobo over Asus

[Mister Woof]

I flattened a motherboard front panel USB header pin by plugging the connector in backwards.

 

I was able to straighten the pin out, but when plugging in the USB connector, that one pin snapped off, stuck in the connector.

 

I shrugged, plugged it back in, but the front USB seems to work still.

 

I just wanted to whine about it and ask about the last time any of you ruined something...but it still worked out okay.

Edited March 24, 2022 by LogicalDrm
Prepare to merge

[Kid.Lazer]

Back on one of my old AM3 platforms, I somehow managed to bend 2 pins on my Mobo's Ethernet port. I straightened one, but of course the second broke. Luckily with auto-negotiation, it worked fine, albeit at 100mbps rather than 1000. Once I got a proper NAS though, I had to install a PCIe NIC to get my transfers speeds back up.

[Mister Woof]

Just now, Kid.Lazer said:

Back on one of my old AM3 platforms, I somehow managed to bend 2 pins on my Mobo's Ethernet port. I straightened one, but of course the second broke. Luckily with auto-negotiation, it worked fine, albeit at 100mbps rather than 1000. Once I got a proper NAS though, I had to install a PCIe NIC to get my transfers speeds back up.

I wonder how that usb port will work out long term. The only things i've plugged into the front panel 

 

 

It was the bottom right VBUS usb 3.0 header pin.

 

 

[Kid.Lazer]

How many front panel USB ports do you have? If only one, maybe you're lucky and broke the pin not being used. (There is one VBUS for each of 2 possible ports.)

[da na]

Those old Intel stock coolers with the clips, I broke one yesterday. Learned they aren't good to use on testbenches I need to swap equipment on frequently

[Bad5ector]

@Mister WoofSir, I did something similar on my current build. Needed to remove my Crosshair Dark Hero board to a new case and when unplugged the USB3 front panel header, I ended up bending a pin. While trying to straighten back, it fell off. I normally would have just done like you, but I was already recovering from some bad hardware failures and didn't want to go for a hat trick. (Had a CPU fail on me, during my troubleshooting of that I broke a chip off my HTPC's motherboard and had to replace that too...). 

 

So I've been living without front panel I/O (cept for USB-C) lol. 

[bmx6454]

when i was like 11(i think) didn't realize motherboards required standoffs, put motherboard in new case without standoffs and fried everything..

[Mister Woof]

1 hour ago, Kid.Lazer said:

How many front panel USB ports do you have? If only one, maybe you're lucky and broke the pin not being used. (There is one VBUS for each of 2 possible ports.)

it has 2

 

https://cdn.thepcenthusiast.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/NZXT-Source-S340-Review-08.jpg

 

It's an old S340 build for living room duty - I don't really care that much as it only needs one usb port to work for the wireless keyboard/touchpad thing.

 

Really low priority system made with leftover old parts mostly

 

 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

I had a screw with a slightly off threading with the rest of my box of case screws. Now I have one motherboard screw that will just keep spinning but will never come out. So the board is essentially stuck there pretty much forever. 

 

TLDR: 

 

[AudiTTFan]

I had never inserted laptop memory before this, but I was upgrading an old laptop and the metal clips scraped several resistors off the edges of the SODIMM. Naturally, this happened around the time DDR2 was getting more expensive, so now that laptop only has 4 gigs of memory because I can't imagine spending a bunch of money fixing that ancient thing

[LogicalDrm]

On 3/23/2022 at 6:42 PM, Mister Woof said:

I flattened a motherboard front panel USB header pin by plugging the connector in backwards.

 

I was able to straighten the pin out, but when plugging in the USB connector, that one pin snapped off, stuck in the connector.

 

I shrugged, plugged it back in, but the front USB seems to work still.

 

I just wanted to whine about it and ask about the last time any of you ruined something...but it still worked out okay.

Merged to megathread of same premise.

[Bitter]

17 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

I had a screw with a slightly off threading with the rest of my box of case screws. Now I have one motherboard screw that will just keep spinning but will never come out. So the board is essentially stuck there pretty much forever. 

 

TLDR: 

 

Just need to remove all the other screws and spin out the standoff with the screw.

 

[da na]

15 hours ago, AudiTTFan said:

I had never inserted laptop memory before this, but I was upgrading an old laptop and the metal clips scraped several resistors off the edges of the SODIMM. Naturally, this happened around the time DDR2 was getting more expensive, so now that laptop only has 4 gigs of memory because I can't imagine spending a bunch of money fixing that ancient thing

Is laptop DDR2 priced differently or something because desktop DDR2 is cheap asf, even a 4x2gb kit. 2x4gb is really the only exception

[Mister Woof]

19 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Merged to megathread of same premise.

Oh if we're going with "worst" I got more interesting stories than this

[GetLifty]

I was using a friends computer to test some hardware when I decided to check his BIOS to make sure everything was ok (the PC was running a bit slow). I noticed the ram was at half speed and enabled XMP... Turns out my past self (when I helped build it) had not enabled it as his board didnt support the speeds.

 

Cue a VERY stressful 10 minutes of trying to get his PC to boot again...

(Luckily a quick CMOS battery reset worked)