Your stupidest computer moment...

[Howard]

Spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out why my PC wasn't turning on, only to notice the switch on the PSU was off.

I'm sure I've done loads of dafter things, but that's all I can remember

[Trash Man]

I managed to kill a MB, HDD, and a PSU, when I pluged in the HDD while the PC was still on :/ This is going back a fair few years ago now.

[Flibb]

I sorted out an RMA on a power supply. Plugged it in to the mains, turned it on at the back no fans turning etc. Strange that considering I didnt own a MOBO at the time. Derrrr

[megah0]

buying and using a Qtec PSU.

nuff said really as it set on fire and took out everythimg except the RAM and the graphics card.

[[GSV]Trig]

Didn't kill it ? lucky boy

Nope its fine, wasnt OC'ing it at the time luckily enuf tho as the extra voltage mite have fraggled it b4 I realised...

[ed^chigliak]

I remember was building my P75 PC during a thunder storm... just got to the into windows installed and was feeling pleased and then the room lit up with a nearby strike. My PC got spiked by lighning and wouldn't boot thereafter.

Building with one of those screw drivers with a socket head and bit that fell off onto my integrated sound chip. Onboard sound wouldn't work had to go out and buy a sound card.

Rattling old CPU fan eventually broke whilst I was in the middle of something unimportant but it annoyed me. Connected the hose from the vaccuum cleaner and ran it like that for the rest of the day. The opposite of a silent computing... my ears were ringing. Great temps though.

[Efaill]

many eons ago i switched an AT psu from 230 to 115 and caboom ,thought it might be why my computer wasnt working right

I've done that to with my very first pc

The other classic I've doen is rebuilt my into a new case and tried starting it up. Just wouldn't start. Spent 1/2 hour tryig to "fix" it. Turned out I hadn't put the front power button on the right connectors

[KDH]

Pushing the voltage button on the back on a chieftec PSU, frying the psu and almost killing the whole PC(and myself, was deaf for 5 minutes from the POP)

[Paul Adams]

Connecting the data cable to an internal 3.5" FDD the wrong way wrong and totally frying it... then thinking "Ah, no problem, luckily I have a spare - I'm smart!"... and then doing exactly the same to that one.

[Rythmic]

Bad, but not a PC: I was fixing a BBC PSU about 12 years ago. Great design - it sits upside down in the case, with the sheilding on top - so you have to move it out to work, then put it back to test. Also theres two live mains connectors near the top about 4cm apart.

Was thrown about 3 foot and my arm didn't stop shaking for about 30 minutes.

[MD]

Sent an engineer out to a call as I had spent 30 mins on the phone trouble shooting it to no avail, engineer got there and floopy disk was in floppy drive. m@ttz = dumbass that day.

Mind you not as good as the other day my colleague trouble shooted a PC over the phone, got it working and started to gloat, 5 mins later and the woman called back, now she was at the machine that WAS actually broken and now she wanted help fixing it.

Oh the joys of tech support.

m@

[petrefax]

Troubleshooting some bizzare Lotus notes problems for abotu 3 hours , only to find I'd speld Domino wrong

my dumbest is fairly recent & similar to mobys - built a PC for a mate from bits that me & a few other mates had lying around, setting up his email account on it i misspelt "freeserve" & typed "freeerve"

poor fella was without email for a week, it was he that actually spotted the spelling mistake in the end

[GreenPiggy]

Left a heatsink with a thermal pad on it out for about a week until it was nicely dry and crispy. Didn't think anything of it until I slapped it on a brand new Barton and killed the thing. Extremely lucky to get a replacement.

[G4Z]

well, mine occured just this weeked, decided to steath the dvd drive on my shuttle with sticky feet and a blanking plate, got the pads on (all 6 of em and one on the button) and wanged the plate in, wasnt quite happy with the way it was sitting so I tried to pull the plate off to stick it back on and.... rip, whole front of the dvd drive came off with the tray bent upwards. tried to take it apart but one of the screws in the housing was awkward and i ended up knacking it so I couldnt get it out. chucked it in the bin instead and wacked a 52X CD in instead. looks nice now tho...




also, worth noting those sticky feet are really fecking sticky!

[Timmy!!!]

The worst thing I've done is get electrocuted, twice lol.
I opened up an old PSU because the fan had stopped and I thought to myself, why on earth do people wait a day for this thing to uncharge, I unscrewed all the parts and put my finger on the heatsink inside to check the temperature (Stupid, I know). That was the first electric shock, the second electric shock was when I dropped it on my foot due to the first shock! Now that hurt!

Ill never open a PSU again without waiting for it to uncharge itself. When I opened it up it was still warm!

[oralpain]

I cut a 3cm long gash in my thumb, to the bone, while pushing out a front drive bay cover from the inside on a case that has some very sharp edges. had to get 8 stiches. The next day I accidentaly stuck my other thumb in my vantech tornado and lost half my nail and took off a fan blade. Oops.