Worst Tech mistake you have ever made?

[NickB]

17 hours ago, GaIaxy said:

Please do not report me to the local authorities, that would not be swell.

 

When I was thirteen, I stole over $500 worth of RAM out of some old school computers, because I thought they'd never be used again. As it turns out, those very same computers were going to be shipped to MIT's technology department...in which they would run CAD programs that needed 16GB of RAM or more to run....

 

Feeling very bad, the RAM "magically" appeared back on the teacher's desk within two weeks after an investigation to find the culprit began, but it was certainly an exciting thing to do....

Were you caught during the investigation 

[Fetzie]

18 hours ago, Moonzy said:

my story 1: laptop was overheating, cracked it open to clean the cooler, broke the motherboard somehow (i was grounded and all) and sent it to get fixed

 

my story 2: got the laptop back, still overheats so i cracked it open again and applied thermal paste, motherboard did the same sht again so i had to send it back in (again)

 

conclusion of both stories: i got it back, it was still overheating and cost me 1/3rd of the laptop's price for the repairs

My brother had a similar issue with his Dell Inspiron laptop. Constantly overheating and crashing, at least twice a day (more frequently in the summer).

 

He took my dremel to the bottom of the laptop shell and cut it some air intakes. Instantly resolved the problem and it hasn't crashed since.

[UselessBlueprint]

Soldered the motherboard while it was plugged in...

[GeekJump]

*raises hand* Is PS3 a computer? (Patrick Star ref right der)

 

My bro's PS3 yellow ringed and was completely abandoned (he bought a new one instead of dealing with support). I decided I wanted the HDD in it and tried to professionally remove it myself. 2 hours of striped screws later, I grab each end of the glossy cases and PULLED. It was like breaking a clam open...After that I just said 'f*ck the salvaging' and tore into it like an animal. Plus side - got the HDD out w/o damage to it and turned out there was a game still inside the disk tray. Negative - It was the early 80GB size and the rest of the PS3 was scrapped...

 

It was fun sending the pictures of the 'remains' to all my Sony fanboy friends

[ddrkreature]

My first attempt to use thermal paste. Mistakes were made and the motherboard didn't survive

[ThinkWithPortals]

On my first build, I didn't put standoffs on the mobo, I just screwed it down onto the mobo tray. It survived, and still works to this day.

 

Oh, and I bought a fan controller for an external 3.5" slot and got upset when it didn't fit in my internal 3.5" HDD mount

[LordPresidentMuffins]

I put a DDR2 ram stick in a mobo that only supported DDR3 and fried the board. Fortunately i salvaged everything else.

[Virus__]

I picked up an MSI laptop for $100 a couple of years ago, had a totally borked screen, which wouldn't turn off & was smashed to buggery. So I decided to remove it, in the process I broke the WiFi card's antennae which ran around behind the screen, rendering it useless until I bought a USB WiFi card.

[potatoproduction]

My sister unplugged my computer while I was rendering and using photoshop, all my data was corrupted

rip

[DRGSaber]

both of these take place at where I work.

 

1. We had this one Tesla compute card that just would not work, We had it tested and they said it was fine, but every time we got it back it just would not work. spent like 3 months trying to make it work, with my boss breathing down the back of my neck. The day we finally get it work my boss sends out an email that says we are upgrading. I took the card and went down to the basement and cut the card in half with a saw. 

 

2. One time when repairing a system that kept crashing, because of who had this system I would have to stay till it was done. They simply refused to use another system unless absolutely necessary. Having stayed till 2:30am without success, I took the motherboard out and salvaged what I could. Then I broke the board in half over my knee.  

[Telan]

I did this particular thing twice. Gave one of my computers to an old girlfriend. Gave another to my idiot brother in law. These are two people who barely deserve to sleep in a structure.

[Godlygamer23]

On 4/17/2016 at 6:41 PM, niofalpha said:

Accidentally took the Motherboard out of an AIO,

You mean the logic board? 

[Hackentosher]

I tried to boot an old PowerMac G4 Cube without ram once. It didn't work after that.

[SuperCookie78]

I have two

 

1) i forgot to screw in one of mobo screws and the io was a little wiggly but i was in a rush

 

2) i tried installing windows 7 onto a pcie ssd (m.2) and it would because there wasn't anydrivers and i had to use one of my ssd's instead 

[DebatED Nothing]

On 18 April 2016 at 2:34 AM, PeloyGeek said:

i once came in my pc (by accident)

 

 

#PoorPC

.............

how?

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, DebatED Nothing said:

.............

how?

Lets just say i headshotted my computer  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[Julian5]

On 20/1/2013 at 9:20 PM, th0rshamm3r said:

Changing out 4 ram sticks while the PSU was still plugged in. Static took care of the motherboard.

The moment when you realized you have been doing it wrong all your life. I just changed the ram stick son my mobo while the psu was plugged in. The computer still posts though #blessed

[DebatED Nothing]

9 minutes ago, Julian5 said:

The moment when you realized you have been doing it wrong all your life. I just changed the ram stick son my mobo while the psu was plugged in. The computer still posts though #blessed

leaving the PSU plugged in but turned off is actually the safest way to do it, as the earth pin is not disconnected when switched off, so touching the case will earth you when tinkering.

[tekgeek1205]

UMMM Lots! I tend to leap without looking. I can also be very careless at times, resulting in large chunks of data disappearing.

[KnightTim]

I exported the full Windows registry from one computer and imported it on another...

 

I'm still surprised that the 2nd computer even booted, I had to reinstall Windows XP on the computer

 

The 2nd biggest would be trying to install my mobo in my first build without stand-offs, I got lucky and nothing was damaged. 

[Kaxlene]

Sticking my finger in my fan to see how fast it was spinning....

 

Leaving the plastic on a heat sync...

 

Forgetting to hook up my gpu in excitement...

 

But the worst one was, again in my excitement, not plugging in the 24 pin power or the cpu power in my most current build when i got the parts

[dditty]

I built my first computer about a year ago. In that time, I have made many mistakes:

1. Tried installing the motherboard without standoffs
2. Tried to reset the CMOS on my system by using a screwdriver on some motherboard pins without knowing which ones I was connecting
3. Plugged in sata power cables to non-sata sockets on my PSU, wondering why my drives wouldn't be detected

4. Ordered airflow fans for a rad
5. Stripped 4 of my gpu screws installing an aftermarket cooler, ended up just drilling them to remove them

6. Left plastic film on the sides of my 4 sticks of ram for one year without realizing it
7. Plugged the front i/o USB 3 cable into the USB 2 port on my mobo, wondering why I was getting crap speeds

I'm sure there are many more I can't remember off the top of my head

[Julian5]

Last week I somehow came up with the idea of ddosing the school, so I did in middle of a presentation. (we have a school with over 800 students and we al have mackbooks)

I put in 24 hours just for testing thinking I could stop it. Thing is I ddosed myself so I could not stop the flood and I had no vpn.

 

Aftermaths:

 

first minute: teacher the internet is not working. (laughing my ass off)

second minute: teacher ok we are gonna wait

fith minute: kids take out your notebooks

10m : (Me) FUCK I DDOSED MYSELF HOW TF DO I STOP

20m: Feeling bad af, goona get caught 

30m: Tech department calling ISP provider etc (I spend most of my time working with the tech department so I was trying to help them but I knew it was my fault)

 

Next day internet was back up and I prommesd myslef never to ddos again.

 

[Julian5]

spraying deodorant in the intake fan of my pc to see the route of the air and later realizing deodorant has liquids, pc works fine though

[Marine_Boy]

I once bought Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite 7.0(T110). I wanted to use it to read manga and stuff, but ended up using it as an alarm clock... It is most expensive alarm clock I have ever bought...