What did you do to your computer that gave you a heart attack?

[Milesqqw2]

I personally have two things that I did recently that made me panicked beyond belief.

 

1) I “slightly” overlocked my CPU and it was not booting after resetting. By slightly I mean by I think about 700MHz  mem clock speed, small by some people’s standards but quite substantial to me. But I cleared the cmos and booted into safe mode and changed the settings. Just to clarify though, it was still well within the recommended settings for the cpu.

 

2) I still haven’t fixed this one quite yet but, I accidentally deleted most of not all of my drivers  because I thought I was opening the amd graphics drivers but instead it was a ddu, don’t know how it deleted the mobo drivers too but anyway, I didn’t think twice when clicking through the pop ups and restarted and then, what do I see but I booted into safe mode and see no drivers. I am fixing it though, I am going to download the drivers onto a flash drive and get them onto my pc that way. 
 

Anyway, I am curious to hear about your mistakes so, tell me.

[GuiltySpark_]

4 minutes ago, Milesqqw2 said:

booted into safe mode and see no drivers.

That's pretty normal for Safe Mode. 

[Milesqqw2]

1 minute ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

That's pretty normal for Safe Mode. 

Just making sure, I mean device manager and also no network devices either. Also is it normal to boot into safe mode without it telling me that it is until I actually put in my password for windows, and then I see the safe mode thing in the corner?

[LMGcommunity]

When I was much younger, I wanted to know if my case could fit an NH-D14. I removed my side panel and used a metal ruler to reach in and grab a measurement. My computer was still on. I touched the mobo, and something shorted and sparked. Nothing broke. It was a miracle.

[GuiltySpark_]

29 minutes ago, Milesqqw2 said:

Just making sure, I mean device manager and also no network devices either.

If you're in safe mode, at least normal Safe Mode, you will not have any network adapters as no non-essential drivers are loaded. That's the whole point of Safe Mode. 

 

You can select Safe Mode with Networking if you choose. 

 

Quote

Also is it normal to boot into safe mode without it telling me that it is until I actually put in my password for windows, and then I see the safe mode thing in the corner?

Ah, I don't pay a ton of attention and would have to do it again real quick but I think so. 

[ItTakes2ToMango]

I set a couple of my linux servers aside to work on an update, breaking them away from the monitor so I could focus on a different machine. Needed to reboot the machine I was working on only 2 minutes later, and pulled the whole extension cord from the wall, unplugging all my machines....

 

Both linux servers died and needed to be re-built from the ground up..... I stopped working on all of my machines for a week+ out of spite for myself lol

[GuiltySpark_]

As for my actual answer, I still think about how I lost my RAID5. 

 

So in the 2011-ish timeframe, I put together a RAID5 with a Dell PERC5i hardware raid card and 4x 2TB disks. At some point in that systems life a drive died but being a RAID5, it still worked... so I left it that way out of laziness. 

 

A few weeks later I got a new drive and followed the instructions on some forum somewhere to swap it in which took forever. 

 

Once it was complete, ALL of the data on the array was corrupted. Apparently I waited too long and shouldn't have been using the array as much as I was while it was in a degraded state. 

 

Could it have been avoided or looking back could the data have been recovered? Maybe but I haven't put too much thought into it and just prioritize replacing dead drives quickly now.

[atxcyclist]

Most recent: I was installing Windows onto a machine with two drives, I accidentally quick-formatted my data drive instead of the drive I intended for the OS. I realized this and didn't actually install to the wrong drive, but I spent the next 20 minutes watching it install so that I could see if my drive rebuilding software would work, which thankfully it did.

 

Previously I can think of one specific instance: I had built a computer that ended up as a workstation at my office, though I never intended it to be. This machine had to run a 3D render for a project I was working on, and so this thing was at 100% processor for over 24 hours straight. That was when the weakest link in the machine presented itself: The power supply included with my Antec case decided it didn't like this task anymore, and caught on fire in spectacular fashion, sending who knows how many volts to the other components in the machine destroying them instantly. The only thing that survived the ordeal was the case itself, which now has my office server residing in it over a decade later. Don't go cheap on a power supply is the lesson I learned.

[Milesqqw2]

2 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

Most recent: I was installing Windows onto a machine with two drives, I accidentally quick-formatted my data drive instead of the drive I intended for the OS. I realized this and didn't actually install to the wrong drive, but I spent the next 20 minutes watching it install so that I could see if my drive rebuilding software would work, which thankfully it did.

 

Previously I can think of one specific instance: I had built a computer that ended up as a workstation at my office, though I never intended it to be. This machine had to run a 3D render for a project I was working on, and so this thing was at 100% processor for over 24 hours straight. That was when the weakest link in the machine presented itself: The power supply included with my Antec case decided it didn't like this task anymore, and caught on fire in spectacular fashion, sending who knows how many volts to the other components in the machine destroying them instantly. The only thing that survived the ordeal was the case itself, which now has my office server residing in it over a decade later. Don't go cheap on a power supply is the lesson I learned.

OH MAN, that sucks. Good thing we all can learn from your mistakes though.

[BrandonLatzig]

My computer bluescreened after updating iCue

[GuiltySpark_]

1 minute ago, BrandonLatzig said:

My computer bluescreened after updating iCue

That's how you know its working. 

[Latvian Video]

Probably would be messing with bios settings on my laptop, then it not booting and needing to reset them. Happily the laptop is very easy to open

[Biohazard777]

I once accidentally flashed the wrong vbios onto a laptop GPU. I didn't fully brick it, but no display output...
To make things worse I didn't prepare a bootable recovery (something that would automatically flash a known good vbios on boot).
So instead I spent a whole day working on it blindly.
As in I'd start the laptop, log in blind, open up CMD blind, run a command blind and pipe the output to a usb stick so I could read on another laptop how far I've made it and which errors were popping up...
Fun... skipped half an hour of proper preparation so I could waste a whole day fixing my screw-up later. 

[GuiltySpark_]

1 minute ago, Biohazard777 said:

I once accidentally flashed the wrong vbios onto a laptop GPU. I didn't fully brick it, but no display output...
To make things worse I didn't prepare a bootable recovery (something that would automatically flash a known good vbios on boot).
So instead I spent a whole day working on it blindly.
As in I'd start the laptop, log in blind, open up CMD blind, run a command blind and pipe the output to a usb stick so I could read on another laptop how far I've made it and which errors were popping up...
Fun... skipped half an hour of proper preparation so I could waste a whole day fixing my screw-up later. 

That's wild. 

[wONKEyeYEs]

Was working on my PC removing the new $320 Seagate 300MB HDD.

What I didn't realize was that it was powered up.

Killed the drive.

[wanderingfool2]

Mine:

Deleting a file from my computer using windows Explorer, click on the large file, hit delete, and hit enter enter; anticipating the, are you sure you want to delete the file is too big for recycling delete all.

 

Turns out Windows 11's explorer is buggy as ever and thought my last click was on the folder on the left panel instead of the highlighted file.  As a result my entire base folder was deleted and the thing was I was deleting the file so I could back up the folder (since the file was too large, and I had needed it there for a while).  So lost a week of work.

 

 

Another thing that had me grumbling in a panic, W11 explorer pop up while I am typing (if you can't tell I hate W11 for the amount of buggy things that never existed before).  I hit delete and nearly deleted my working file.  Honestly, the explorer was perfected years ago, I get changing it up but it should never be allowed to exist in the state it currently is in.

[Karthanon]

Happened yesterday. Went to lunch. Came back, system was off. Which was fine as I was working on the work laptop, not gaming during the day (nooo, who does that?).

Went to turn it on. Heard a audible 'click' from the back of the computer and my UPS started screaming with an error message. Check out the error code, unplug everything, remove plug from wall, reset UPS, plug everything back in, turn on PC. Same thing. Kind of panicked hoping my MB/CPU/RAM/GPU wasn't toasted as well. 8 year old Thermaltake 1200W W0133RU power supply decided to bite the dust. Tested by pulling it out, plugged in a single device for a load, and tried powering on by shorting ATX pins. Same result. Dang it!

Put in the EVGA 1300G2 I had in the basement spare system (which I was going to do anyways, once I get my cablemod 90deg cable for it for the 4090). Everything works.

Learned a lesson that I shouldn't take lunch breaks.

[NobleGamer]

1. Turned on my spare 8 year old PC - Power supply made a pop noise, small puff of smoke, PSU dead. Decent PSUs that I'd want at 750W as a replacement are $100+, so I haven't replaced it yet to know if non-PSU components were fried or not. Lesson learned: Replace your PSU when the warranty expires (my Antec HPG-750 was 3 or 5 years?) if you want to mitigate risk of an old PSU dying catastrophically.
2. Accidentally let GPU power plug hit a GPU fan, and it made a brief grinding noise. The EVGA 3080 is still fine. Lesson learned: GPU power cable management is important!

[Milesqqw2]

Not really related to the other posts, this is just good news for me. I finally fixed my second heart attack causing problem. Yay!

[ToboRobot]

Didn't attach the water cooling tube securely enough on the first install and it popped off and hosed my GPU.

Had to sell the custom water loop including a prototype storm series block from Cathar before I ever got to test it because I needed money to buy a new lower model GPU to have a working computer.

 

 

[Milesqqw2]

Just now, ToboRobot said:

Didn't attach the water cooling tube securely enough on the first install and it popped off and hosed my GPU.

Had to sell the custom water loop including a prototype storm series block from Cathar before I ever got to test it because I needed money to buy a new lower model GPU to have a working computer.

 

 

I knew it was going to be bad when I read the first sentence. That sucks.

[ToboRobot]

9 minutes ago, Milesqqw2 said:

I knew it was going to be bad when I read the first sentence. That sucks.

It sucked, but it was a good way to learn to be careful and more patient, and plan and test things better.  But teenage me was just angry and sad.

[Milesqqw2]

Just now, ToboRobot said:

It sucked, but it was a good way to learn to be careful and more patient, and plan and test things better.  But teenage me was just angry and sad.

Well I think we all can agree when it comes to pc building, no patience no PC.

[Erioch]

8 hours ago, Karthanon said:

Learned a lesson that I shouldn't take lunch breaks.

But lunch is in my top 3 meals of the day.

[thrasher_565]

killed my storage drive by hooking up molex backwards... old pics, music everything gone...

tiryed buying a pcb for it but dont think i got the right one.... LESSON LEARNED

 

my dad has had back luck with pcs and killed just about all of them...