Dumbest thang you ever did to your pc?

I tired to power on my pc for nearly 15 minutes unplugging cables etc. When I saw it wasn't plugged into the wall. :-D

And also trying to install Windows 7 on a external hard drive and end up messing up XP boot loader.

As well as trying to boot a PC with no CPU power plugged in.

 

Installed a new video card in my PC to replace the on-board video. Spent at least 15 mins trying to figure out why it wasn't working . . . then I realized I had connected the monitor lead to the same 'ol ON BOARD port and not the new card . . . :-o

One time I was working at a friends house, replacing the motherboard in his PC. Their A/C was out, and it was probably 95F outside, and higher inside. I was sitting next to an open window on the second floor, and had set the new motherboard on it's anti-static envelope on the wide window sill for a second. Somehow - gust of wind, evil demons, I don't know - but board and bag slid off the sill, skittered down about 10 feet of rooftop, and went right over the edge . . . I went downstairs, saying I had "left something in my truck." Happy ending - the board landed on a bush and appeared to be undamaged. In fact I installed it and it worked like a champ - no problems at all. Odd thing is I never did find the anti-static bag.

 

I fried a very expensive motherboard because it was a different format than the one i took out and i had not removed all the old brass standoffs.

 

I spent three hours mucking around with startup repair and eventually reimaging a PC, only to remember that I had changed the boot order to boot from an empty HDD.:-o

 

Oh my, not the X58?:cry

As to my idiotic story, there's really not much there(knocks on wood). Maybe trying to go on the cheap with a PSU counts. I have a Thermaltake 420W PSU and I tried to power a 9800GT with it. Thankfully the PC would not start the first time so I didn't blow anything up! Hmm, I have a couple of quality PSU's in the junk box, time to give them away me thinks.

 

Wow, that is one durable motherboard. What brand was that? :-D

My dumbest thing:

The CPU wouldn't go into the socket. So I did what you do with every other component when that happens: Pushed harder.

And that's how Mimsy learned how not to install processors. :banghead

 

Expensive lesson.

 

Yeah. Intel's Core 2 Duo model was brand new at the time too... :cry

*blink-blink*

Just reading that makes me want to cry... :cry

 

Oops rolleyes

 

For about a week I couldn't figure out why my system settings reset on every boot, then realized I had no cmos battery installed ...

 

Do you still have the CPU Mimsy?

If you just bent the motherboard pins but didn't damage the CPU you should be ok or did you break the CPU?

 

It broke off several pins on the CPU itself. Took me nearly an hour to get the loose pins out of the socket. Talk about insult to injury...

 

I suppose accidentally deleting the partition counts? Or accidentally formatting the computer? Or installing two anti-viruses?

Or spending three weeks trying to fire up a computer only to find out that moving a jumper to start instead of reset mode was all I needed? Yes, I've done some excruciatingly stupid things.

 

copied sda1 onto sba1 only I was using a live disk and result was sba1 and sbc1 (destination that should have been) were now nice and blank.....

Dumber was trusting Ofoto/Kodak with online photos. They deleted them with no email alerting me.

 

Ripping some capacitors off a video card as I was Removing it.

One I always seem to do to this even to this day,when connecting a USB device I feel around the back of the comp blind and manage to jack it into the Lan socket.

Poor Lan socketBut its OK Lan sockets are resilient,tough,soldiers :major

 

How did you get a USB cable into a lan socket rolleyes

 

too much coffee or not enough :-D

 

To add to my dumb today I rebuilt my moms HP pc and I forgot to plug in the 4 pin cpu power and wondered why it wouldn't post. This is the 3rd time I've done it...

 

Slow learner?:-D

 

I am going to upgrade the mother board on my main PC later this week so maybe i will add some more dumb things to the list.

 

Well, drinking coffee and working on my PC at the same time. I poured the hot coffee over an external drive. I was lucky, the drive was only slightly damaged and I could fix it more or less. The most important thing is that I didn't lose any data. But I will never drink coffee near my pc again.

 

I have done SO many dumb things to this poor machine I really don't know where to start! I've done everything from trying to use an IDE cable on a SATA HDD at 4:00 AM. to cussing my poor machine for not turning on when I neglected to turn on the PSU. However, I DID plug it into the surge protector! The list goes on and on so instead of using up all of MGs bandwidth with my stupidity, I'll stop now:-D

 

Don't mean to hijack as this is off topic, this may get some to laugh – which is nice.
This happened when I was was17Yrs old .
Got a call from the then GF. Her moms car was not starting (car was at her mum's work place..)

Gallant as I was - proceeded to check out the vehicle. Ahaa - vehicle parked under no cover/shed (T'was only 41C In the shade, the car was cooking) :-D

Cranked her - zilch response. Plenty of Gas, fuel filters clean, supply to carb unrestricted.

Electricals I thought. Failed Coil, maybe. Pulled the spark cable from #1 cylinder, shoved in a Phillips screw, pointed @ grounded metal. No Spark!

Ignition coils, supply to the distributor in those days were through a resistance. This saved the distributor point from excessive pitting, hence the longer life cycle. Unfortunately the resistance had a lovely apptitude to die and the circuit was screwed.
Ok so it’s electrical- I deduce.. Bypass the resistance. (Screw the point it's not that dainty!!) Ahha we have SPARK:-This was all fine until now.

God alone knows what had me open the Distributor cap and check the point for pitting. Saw a nominal amount and proceeded to pull out rotor arm, and clean with emery paper.

Had no dwell angle meter but knew I could do without it, setting the gap to .5mm is not difficult.


Set it up and crank. DEAD. Crank again and again no life. Could the timing be so out? Not seen this, it can't just happen anyway. Now it’s been 15 mins and I’m physically baking in the heat and the brain is broiling.

At this point I should have checked for spark on the plug cable :zzz

WTF.. This is not rocket science!! No dwell angle or timing light, thankfully I was aware of the mech specs. Had built this kinda engine umpteen times and manually set the dwell angle and timing. All it took was a sip of petrol to spray into the carb. Half self and it would fire up.. :major

So started the process from scratch. Had to yank by hand the crank/water pump belt to get the correct cylinder on compression clubbed with fly wheel position and set the point gap as it should be. This took quite a while and lots of muscle!!

Crank her..NOPE!!

Then I see something from the corner of my eye. The rotor arm sitting aimlessly on the battery. I had forgot to put it back after cleaning the point!! The ensuing profanity at self is unprintable to say the least.

The more knowledge one has about stuff the more ridiculous the mistakes.

Cheers..

@ PC hope you don't mind the OT post.

 

OMG where to begin...
Lets see, there was the time i forogt to hook up the power to my new dvd rom, just the connection cable.
Oh, and the time i installed seven on top of xp. If you thought windows was screwed up now, you should have seen a seven and xp merge!!!

 

Bwahahahaha!!! That must have been interesting to say the the least.:-D

 

Well its pretty easy as a Lan socket is the same width but twice the depth,a Lan into a USB would be more impressive,in fact I'd pay to see someone get an RJ45 into a USB socket :-D