Worst Tech mistake you have ever made?

[Krynis]

Installed the fans on a Kühler H2O 920 both facing INTO the rad, it had been a long day, of course that's second place... first place was touching the headsink on a Power Color Radeon 9800 Pro to see if it was over heating (had no sensors) and burning a grill mark into my finger.

 

 

[EricX2]

I had a brand new Intel 875pbz motherboard that I was flashing the BIOS on. Despite the fact that in big red letters it said 'your system will reboot and beep until it's done' I thought when it rebooted and started beeping there was a problem so I powered it off. Luckily there was a floppy bios recover!

[Kyo_Ma]

Reaching into my computer case to feel the temperature only to get my middle finger nail split in half by a top exhaust fan and having fan blades break of and shatter into the cpu heatsink fan... And then my unstable top fan shook my computer to death.... boy... that was stupid.... well i actually still stick my hand inside my new desktop to feel the airflow.... i broke the back exhaust fan. And i also nearly killed my fingers with corsair sp fan.............. lolol.

[Abnormality]

1. Using a screwdriver to pry out the heatsink from an old HP AMD computer. Ended up pulling out both the heatsink and CPU, breaking the socket pins. :(

 

2. Trying to test a motherboard without realizing that I forgot to plug in the power for my 550 Ti. Had me stare at the motherboard cluless for a good 10 minutes.

 

3. Buying a used motherboard on eBay. Found out that half of the RAM slots were dead and returned it. Ended up picking up a working motherboard on eBay (which was a never used MSI P55-GD85 w/ a Intel Core i5 750 pre-installed) for around $160.

[brandontoner]

One time I though it would be a good idea to take a power supply apart, and then I thought it would be a good idea to plug it in, and then i thought i was a good idea to stick a screwdriver in it when it was plugged in. It made a huge spark, ruined the power supply, and melted some solder onto the screwdriver.  Its probably one of the dumber things I've done.

[BillyCool]

Using glue to stick a heatsink on the motherboard chipset, which eventually felt and fried my motherboard. Old 939 days...

[Bupalooga]

Buying a case with a big shiney attractive power button (CM Stormtrooper) Everyone just has to touch it...

[URMZzZ]

I made a MOLEX->SATA power lead and fried my new DVD drive. The 12 volt and the 5 volt cables were mixed up and the room was filled with the smell of burning plastic.

[ajoy39]

Ironically, getting a power cable from the PSU stuck in its' own fan... The PSU committed suicide.

wut

 

One time I though it would be a good idea to take a power supply apart, and then I thought it would be a good idea to plug it in, and then i thought i was a good idea to stick a screwdriver in it when it was plugged in. It made a huge spark, ruined the power supply, and melted some solder onto the screwdriver.  Its probably one of the dumber things I've done.

congrats on not being dead!

 

Buying a case with a big shiney attractive power button (CM Stormtrooper) Everyone just has to touch it...

I have this case too. Don't have this problem luckily, and I LOVE this case. 

[QcDExtreme]

i fried my old comptuer when i was 8 while drinking soda and plugging in my computer and i sneezed with a mouth full of dr. pepper and the plug made contact with the prong and soda at the same time

[RexinOridle]

I plugged the power wire to the reset on my Motherboard. Then I was chewing my own tongue for the next couple of weeks. The concept of wrong wiring never came in my mind. Then one day I pressed the reset button and it was magic. Booooooooooom.................mind blown.

 

[Bonn]

ESD + $15,000 ( AUD ) custom PCI-E server card... Yeah, beat that.

[Computer Steroids]

Once, my computer didn't give a video signal. OR SO I THOUGHT. After troubleshooting errything, taking out the mobo, re-applying thermal paste, nudging the cpu a bit, taking apart my entire PC - I realised my monitor was set to HDMI instead of DVI.

[crispy345]

Put a metal backplate on the back of my 775 motherboard. Turned on for a sec, and that was that. Both the ASUS MB and the E8500 died on me, BUT luckily it got replaced on warranty :)

 

More things I have done is reflowing a NVIDIA chip, and accedentily bumping into it with the solder still being hot. Couldn't put it presice enough in place, that was that Deskpro EN. 

 

But more, not from my side, a friend came to me with a computer he tried to upgrade, but he couldn't get it to boot. He had already replaced one motherboard (because he thought it was bad) but it turned out he jammed a PCIe power connector into the EPS 12V connector on the mobo. Lucky nothing really happened to the second one.

 

I've probably done more, but that's what comes to my head ATM.

[nokturrduk84]

Once I installed motherboard so that, it wasn't in air and it was touching the case's metal surface. Hopefully, my friends noticed it, before turning the PC on :D

[Pyrobits]

When I built the computer I'm using I installed windows on an ahci controlled drive, but I wanted to use Intel Smart Response Technology.  I didn't notice until I had all my drivers and programs installed and saw it wasn't functioning.  No lasting damage, just a time sink.

 

UNLESS you count me jumping out of a moving van with my laptop in a messenger bag as a computing mistake because well..yeah...

[Kiukaz]

Not knowing That the CPU cooler gets stuck on the CPU was my biggest mistake, I just ripped out The Cooler With The CPU Without opening the CPU Socket Lever... so yeah bey bey Athlon you served my well :P

[EvilCrytter]

Trying to help a neighbour get a faulty modem working. Made the mistake of touching it whilst the power cord was still plugged in and on at the socket.

BBZZZZZZEEERRRTT!

Cue one small electrical burn and many clenched teeth to avoid offending the devout catholic neighbours with my swearing.

I told them to take it back to the retailer as faulty, but not to mention what had happened....

[L3773R5a]

When I was younger and I had my first computer (my dads old one) I did something pretty dumb. I would have been 11 or 12 and windows 98 had just come out. I was running out of space on my hard drive and I think windows popped with a prompt that said "you should delete some files on drive C to save space".

So I was looking around and looked at all the folders: windows, program files... I was like ok windows I don't need that, selected it and presses delete. A prompt came up asking if I was sure I wanted to delete the folder called WINDOWS. I was about to press ok when I realized that windows was the name of the operating system and I probably shouldn't delete it.

Thinking pretty highly of myself that I prevented annihilation because of my 11 year old complex reasoning skills I thought i was now invincible. So I kept looking in C drive and opened program files. I thought to myself what's this so I started snooping around and found office, acrobat, Lucas arts entertainment. Not knowing or recognizing anything of use in the folder I felt it was pretty safe to go ahead and delete the program files folder coz I thought wow its so big I'll have so much space!

So yea you can guess what happened after that my program files folder was completely gone and I go to open word to type up something for school and yea all the shortcuts were broken nothing was working so I had to get my dad for help and you know what happens when you know you're in trouble and you're a kid.

dad: "what on earth did you do"

me: "I didn't do anything. Everything just stopped working"

So yea from that little episode I learnt NEVER TO DELETE THE PROGRAM FILES FOLDER.

[Godlygamer23]

When I was younger and I had my first computer (my dads old one) I did something pretty dumb. I would have been 11 or 12 and windows 98 had just come out. I was running out of space on my hard drive and I think windows popped with a prompt that said "you should delete some files on drive C to save space".

So I was looking around and looked at all the folders: windows, program files... I was like ok windows I don't need that, selected it and presses delete. A prompt came up asking if I was sure I wanted to delete the folder called WINDOWS. I was about to press ok when I realized that windows was the name of the operating system and I probably shouldn't delete it.

Thinking pretty highly of myself that I prevented annihilation because of my 11 year old complex reasoning skills I thought i was now invincible. So I kept looking in C drive and opened program files. I thought to myself what's this so I started snooping around and found office, acrobat, Lucas arts entertainment. Not knowing or recognizing anything of use in the folder I felt it was pretty safe to go ahead and delete the program files folder coz I thought wow its so big I'll have so much space!

So yea you can guess what happened after that my program files folder was completely gone and I go to open word to type up something for school and yea all the shortcuts were broken nothing was working so I had to get my dad for help and you know what happens when you know you're in trouble and you're a kid.

dad: "what on earth did you do"

me: "I didn't do anything. Everything just stopped working"

So yea from that little episode I learnt NEVER TO DELETE THE PROGRAM FILES FOLDER.

I've actually almost reformatted my OS drive. I was trying to format another drive. But W7 doesn't allow you to do that.

[GalacticBacon]

Not mine but my dad forgot to remove the plastic cover from his waterblock and was wondering why his temps would reach 100c underload and why it would throttle haha

[CrzyChinook]

just recently accidentally removing the ADMIN account in windows 8... took me a few hours on how to get back in to restore to a eailer version... DUHH!!

[sasiskas]

more than 10years ago, i was cleaning my pc... I removed the cpu and thought that the thermal paste was dirt...so i cleaned it and reinstalled the CPU without paste...dissaster

 

and another story...my best friend tried to clean his mobo using a swiffer duster...asta lavista mobo!

[kev1n]

On my first ever build a year ago , I cheaped out on a non brand psu and case, big mistake when I finally added at gtx 570 and within 20 minutes a large bang and burning smell happened. Was devastated as I trhought Id killed everything but luckily only the psu was dead. Crazy mistake I know but was a total noob and had ran out of cash....

[joelthezombie15]

I havent even finished my computer and i feel like i already made alot :(