Can dual booting damage pc hardware?

[Ashutosh]

I have a Dell Inspiron 7460. I'm planning to install Ubuntu alongside Windows 10. I had done a dual boot earlier but then I blew up my motherboard and hard disk so I have to do it again. 

My laptop went through a lot and these are the top 2 reasons how my hardware could have got damaged.

1. Survived a walk through light rainfall (laptop worked perfectly for a week, then my charger stopped working).

2. Was powered up by a 45W charger instead of 65W at high load (i bought a 45W replacement instead of 65W).

Then the motherboard and hard disk blew up. 

But I have an even dumber question. Can dual boot cause hardware damage in any way? 

[Guest]

No, it can't. Not physically.

[combine1237]

4 minutes ago, Konrad_K said:

No, it can't. Not physically.

Only windows can emotionally damage you. But seriously best of luck escaping the hell that is windows 10.

[AntiTrust]

No, like konrad said. the hardware wont be damaged, but you could mess up your windows OS if youre not careful

[Metallus97]

Youre fine, nothing can happen to the hardware.

But one suggestion about linux: Do you have the opportunity to install a second storrage device?

If possible i higly suggest to do so, becasue then you wont have to fiddel aourund with GRUB.... boy did it give me hedaces and once blew my Win boot sectors up (was able to restore it but yaaaaaa...)

[Ashutosh]

1 minute ago, AntiTrust said:

No, like konrad said. the hardware wont be damaged, but you could mess up your windows OS if youre not careful

i don't care about windows, all my personal data is gone anyway. My laptop is like a new one rn.

[Metallus97]

Just now, Ashutosh said:

i don't care about windows, all my personal data is gone anyway. My laptop is like a new one rn.

so now only Linux?

[Ashutosh]

1 minute ago, Metallus97 said:

so now only Linux?

You can run, but you cannot hide from windows. You need it for one task or the other, there's no option, especially when it comes to gaming and using adobe softwares.

[Metallus97]

3 minutes ago, Ashutosh said:

You can run, but you cannot hide from windows. You need it for one task or the other, there's no option, especially when it comes to gaming and using adobe softwares.

Correct! But i am only using windows to Game. This is written from Debian installed on a seperate SDD

[Wild Penquin]

You can not damage HW, physically, unless it is badly designed and does something non-standard.

 

There was the case (don't remember brand and/or models) that had bad, incomplete UEFI implementation, which could be bricked by a Linux distribution which tried to install itself in UEFI mode alongside Windows. Their BIOS would just hang, and there was no way of doing a HW reset. Sucks, and the manufacturer was to blame. Google can find it, too lazy to do it now (EDIT: Looked for it anyways, could have sworn it was Acer, but seems it affected some Samsung models instead).

 

In theory, some badly implemented feature on a motherboard could be misinterpreted by FOSS software so that something could get damaged, say, due to overheating (fans being constantly off etc.). Or, similarly to the bad UEFI implementation, something being stored to the non-volatile Flash memory in a modern Laptop - but in these cases, it is more like a design fault on the manufacturers part IMHO.

Edited August 5, 2018 by Wild Penquin
Added information about Samsung Laptops

[Metallus97]

1 minute ago, Wild Penquin said:

You can not damage HW, physically, unless it is badly designed and does something non-standard.

 

There was the case (don't remember brand and/or models) that had bad, incomplete UEFI implementation, which could be bricked by a Linux distribution which tried to install itself in UEFI mode alongside Windows. Their BIOS would just hang, and there was no way of doing a HW reset. Sucks, and the manufacturer was to blame. Google can find it, too lazy to do it now.

 

In theory, some badly implemented feature on a motherboard could be misinterpreted by FOSS software so that something could get damaged, say, due to overheating (fans being constantly off etc.). Or, similarly to the bad UEFI implementation, something being stored to the non-volatile Flash memory in a modern Laptop - but in these cases, it is more like a design fault on the manufacturers part IMHO.

Correct but OP should not worry this extremely unlikely