Classic moments in computer tech....

[pam123]

SITCKY THIS THREAD : You too can be a computer klutz.

I just dropped a small screw into a power supply. The only solution was to dismantle the ps to get it back.
That worked and I heaved a sigh of relief.
So what happened?
I did it again !!!
And now I have a dismantled, and dangerous, power supply spread over the floor.
Laugh all you want but I can't be the only klutz with a philiph's screw driver.
Brighten my day, and everyone elses, fess up to the incredible bungles, screw-ups and memory lapses that afflict us all!!!!
I here by open the official PCMech Screw-UP thread.

[Propain]

other than unzipping programs on my desktop Im pretty clean in the hardware dept .

all I could say Pam is "its funny cause its not me" (Homer J. Simpson)

cheers

bawbee ;)

[Force Flow]

I was going to transfer files between two computers via a slave HDD. The destination computer had a zip drive attached, thus it was the easiest to detach for the transfer. I shut it down, and thinking it went down all the way, I proceeded to uplug the molex connector. Apparently, it wasn't *quite* done shutting down, so when I unplugged the connection, there was a big spark, and it fried the two HDDs below the zip drive. That cost me about $180. :-/

[sheeepy the noob]

other than my disfunctioning friend that cant screw in screws, i dont have much bad stuff happen... alough on my last mod,which was just cutting a hole in a 5.25 cover, and putting a switch in, i cut my finger on the case, cut my foot on a broken floppy drive (kinda irrelevant), hit my head, cut my other hand, sanded down my thumb alittle, tripped on my stairs getting a screwdriver, and nearly killed my cat.

[ghost2003]

Originally posted by sheeepy the noob
other than my disfunctioning friend that cant screw in screws, i dont have much bad stuff happen... alough on my last mod,which was just cutting a hole in a 5.25 cover, and putting a switch in, i cut my finger on the case, cut my foot on a broken floppy drive (kinda irrelevant), hit my head, cut my other hand, sanded down my thumb alittle, tripped on my stairs getting a screwdriver, and nearly killed my cat.
someone had a bad day.

[TwoRails]

I dropped so many screws I can't count them all.... then I switched to a magnetic screwdriver many years ago and very rarely drop them anymore.

My other klutzy things usually fall into the category of being in too much of a hurry. Some times I try to do too many things one time and miss a stupid little step that makes me have to do the whole process (what ever it is at the time) all over again from the start.

[Byte 2.0]

One of the best mistakes I made was adjusting the screws on a hard drive in an AT CASE.

I was using my faithful Leather man tool as a philiph's screw driver.

Guess what I did, I got too close to the connectors to the power switch. Nice Blue Spark.

Maybe I can get a picture taken to show it off. It put a permanent mark on my favorite tool.

It was given to me by my father-in-law the first Christmas I was dating my wife.

**EDIT, it was several years ago when I was a young tech. It was one of the Live and Learn experience.

[DragonNOA1]

I don't do anything wrong (hehe) but the thing that comes to mind is that here on PcMech I told someone that the Floppy Drive plugs in starting with Pin 0. Yeah, Pin 0... you know, that non-existent pin. Might as well have said Pin -34 (neg. 34). LoL. This is the 0 pin... that was funny.

[Panama Red]

None of my stuff is tragic, more like "life according to Murphy's Laws"! Today is a good example. Couldn't get my magnetic screw driver under a case support member to install a motherboard screw. So I took the screw with me to the garage to find a short, thin #1 Phillips. Before I could open the tool box, I dropped the screw on the floor and just as Murphy predicts, it rolled under the air compressor which is under the work bench! Went back in the house and rounded up another screw. The other one is still under the bench.

[PMich]

I once spent five minutes trying to put a RAM module in backwards in front of our sys admin/network admin/ all around IT guy for my department. Of course I had done it dozens of times, but I was a little nervous working around him. We had a pretty good chuckle about it but it is still a little embarassing to this day.

[Jaggannath]

Though it wasn't on a computer, in my early days I managed to smoke a breadboard by plugging the power straight to groung =(

[RJ]

When I had my PIII 800 system I had a Vastec 235W power supply. Abit BE6-II, 320 MB RAM, 2 hard drives, 3 opticals, graphics, card, sound card, NIC and video capture card.
It didn't run hot (thought an overload would always cause the PSU to run hot) so I installed a TV card in it.
I got random reboots and the next day the PC was dead. The PSU was overloaded, became unstable, and killed the motherboard, one of the hard drives, the graphics card and the DVI port of my monitor.
All parts but the board were on warranty so I could RMA them. The warranty of the BE6-II expired 2 weeks earlier, so I had to revert to my old board BH-6, and compensate the loss of the onboard IDE controller with a new Promise.

Also, when I was a couple years younger and had my P133, my friend and I wondered how fast a CPU heats up. So we removed the HSF and put our fingers on the CPU then fired up the PC. After only a couple of seconds we had to remove the fingers because the CPU was hot. We shut the PC down and it became cold just as fast as it became hot.
This was in 1996. . . thinking about it now, we were quite lucky that it was the prime time of the first generation Pentiums. . . not the Athlons. . .

Oh, and one time I forgot to pull the cord of an ATX system and a screw fell onto the board. It caused a nice small spark but didn't damage anything. Well, at least I believe so. I know that the FAN1 port doesn't work, but I don't know if it's somehow related to that spark.

And another time when I was doing something in an old AT machine (I think it was my friend's P75) I accidentally touched the power switch from inside and got shocked. Since then I always remove the power cord on AT systems, too.

RJ

[yellohut]

I was trying to push one of the metal dealies that block unused pci slots out of the way. it wouldn't budge, so i pushed hard on it toward the inside of the case.
it eventually snapped off, ramming my finger through a very sharp metal slot.

needless to say there was a lot of blood, and I left a trail to the bathroom where I went to clean it up.

that took almost a month to heal.

[Byte 2.0]

I have to post one more about myself, Back in my early days of PC building. I worked in a small shop and was the main tech. I was the only full time tech and we had 2 part time techs.

Normally I would build the systems in the morning and lets the part time techs do the setups, OS installs, extra software. Stuff like that as I would move toward doing the repairs people would bring in.

One week we had several more orders then normal. So I had one of the techs helping build systems. Normally I would check out each system before Power was connected to the power supply.

This time, we had built a system. I knew I started it, then I got called alway and ask on of the other guys to go ahead and finish it. They where both pretty good techs. But between us, we forgot one important part and didn't realize it until we had the system up and running.

We went though and installed win98 from CD, not an image. Installed the system monitor and found the CPU was near critical. We had left the CPU fan/heatsink off of an AMD 350 K62. I was amazed it did not fry the CHIP. Turned it off, and corrected. Fried it back up and it run prefect.
I remember we throughly tested that one, During the 24 hour Burn in we always did, I put Seti at home on it for 24 hours. we reformatted and reinstalled to make sure. It was solid.

After we delivered that batch of systems and setup the network, we never had any major service calls, other then helping them with printers. I know that system was still in service at least 2 years later when I left that job.

[cypher1919]

My first computer build, Redo40 was supervising me, and I dropped the processor on the floor. I haven't lived it down yet.

[HAL9000]

Originally posted by Byte 2.0
One of the best mistakes I made was adjusting the screws on a hard drive in an AT CASE.

I was using my faithful Leather man tool as a philiph's screw driver.

Guess what I did, I got too close to the connectors to the power switch. Nice Blue Spark.

Maybe I can get a picture taken to show it off. It put a permanent mark on my favorite tool.

It was given to me by my father-in-law the first Christmas I was dating my wife.

**EDIT, it was several years ago when I was a young tech. It was one of the Live and Learn experience.

Ya... I did pretty much the same thing once... I got lotsa blue sparks and smoke.. totally fried the switch and actually burned a 1/16th in gouge into the side of the screwdriver.... remember to disconnect power... remember to disconnect power.. remember to disconnect power :p

[Redfallon]

hmmm, dumbest thing I have ever done was just a slight overlook/assumption on my part. Bought a used thermalake HSF for a socket 370 PIII, upon receiving it, I looked at it, it appeared clean and hardly used, installed it, and realized the fan was drawing air through the heatsink, not blowing it through. I assumed (got no manual for it) this was how it was designed, as the fan appeared to be facing the right way. Put it all together, computer kept locking up and rebooting. Thought fan must be on the wrong way, so I opened her back up, removed fan, and low and behold, the thing was almost 100% clogged with dust. I cleaned it all out, then still not thinking, reinstalled the fan the opposite way. Plugged it all back together, fired it up, the fan was STILL blowing air up, not down into the heatsink, the look on my face must have been a classic. Finally my brain kicked in, and I realized what was wrong. Never considered the dust had completely blocked the airflow. Reinstalled the fan a third time and thankfully the machine runs better than the day it was born with a RAM/CPU upgrade also!

**edit** Panama Red, I bet if we got together and cleaned the screws and parts from under our workbenches, and everyone else here, we could assemble a space shuttle or something! ;)

[Panama Red]

Panama Red, I bet if we got together and cleaned the screws and parts from under our workbenches, and everyone else here, we could assemble a space shuttle or something! ;) [/B]

Bet you're right! The problem with space shuttles tho' isn't building them, it's bringing them back. :(

[TwoRails]

An easy way to get those "lost" screws and stuff is to put a magnet on a stick, then a shop towel around the magnet. "Sweep" under the bench (and other places) untill you've retrieved what you want. Then, over a box or coffee can lid, pull the shop towel off the magnet, and all the little parts will fall into your container -- also, it keeps the magnet clean this way :)

TwoRails

[FLG]

well yellowhut stole my story..lol

I was trying to push one of the metal dealies that block unused pci slots out of the way. it wouldn't budge, so i pushed hard on it toward the inside of the case it eventually snapped off, ramming my finger through a very sharp metal slot.

Ditto...still have the scars from the skin that peeled back.

Other then that ive been shocked a few times. That hurts for awhile.

Cant count how many times ive got my finger caught in fans.

[pam123]

Originally posted by TwoRails
An easy way to get those "lost" screws and stuff is to put a magnet on a stick, then a shop towel around the magnet. "Sweep" under the bench (and other places) untill you've retrieved what you want. Then, over a box or coffee can lid, pull the shop towel off the magnet, and all the little parts will fall into your container -- also, it keeps the magnet clean this way :)

TwoRails

This I have to try.
Given my current "butterfingers" status with screws I think I'll need it.

[TwoRails]

Ya, It's pretty handy trick for getting those hard to reach items under the bench and such.

Here's my latest blunder: Earlier last week I mailed away for a rebate. I'm doing some office work, and guess what I just found in my scanner? The rebate reciept that was supposed to be in the envelope I already mailed out! :eek:

I guess the bright side is it was only a $20 rebate and not a $70 rebate....

[Panama Red]

Originally posted by TwoRails
Ya, It's pretty handy trick for getting those hard to reach items under the bench and such.

Here's my latest blunder: Earlier last week I mailed away for a rebate. I'm doing some office work, and guess what I just found in my scanner? The rebate reciept that was supposed to be in the envelope I already mailed out! :eek:

I guess the bright side is it was only a $20 rebate and not a $70 rebate....

They'll probably send you a notice that no receipt was included and you'll get a second chance to mail it in. I get rebate rejection notices from Office Max over 1/2 the time even when everything is right. Got to the point now that I just take my saved copies back to the store and make them correct the problem!

[TwoRails]

That would be nice if they did. I did (re)mail it shortly after that post. It's late now, but maybe I'll get lucky :)

[TeenPcknowit]

I was too foolish to buy a UPS and a surge hit the line, it ruined my modem, Power supply, and hard drive.....still using that same mobo....and that computer acts goofy...

[pam123]

Originally posted by TeenPcknowit
I was too foolish to buy a UPS and a surge hit the line, it ruined my modem, Power supply, and hard drive.....still using that same mobo....and that computer acts goofy...


I bought a surge protector for my first computer because everyone insisted, not because I understood.
Then we had a great year for storms and power surges.
Even a newbie can get lucky, I read up on surge protection after that.
My lesson was cheaper than yours, but we all have to learn it.
Welcome to the "Been there, done that" club.

[bailey]

there is nothing that can protect you from a direct hit, but a ups will put the odds in your favor

[homer15]

i've dropped many a screw before... i know it's not computer related, but once i was installing speakers in my camaro and i dropped a screw down the vent right below the windshield... my friend was like "just leave it" jeez, that guy was lazy.

as far as computers go, i had built many computer before... lots of 286-486 machines, but never a pentium class machine. so my first real build, i was putting together a duron 800 machine... i didn't see any reason for thermal paste or anything, so i just threw the heatsink right on. i posted here about how my computer kept freezing up thinking it was software, but it was really because i was too cheap to spend a buck on some arctic silver.

[mystvearn]

Install first PCI card. First time ever open the case of a pc to place in a Vodoo 2,in 1996/97? before that was onboard graphics.
I & my friend did not sleep the whole night playing games and "wow" great great graphics I have not seen.

[Werewolfdaddy]

Back when I was still relatively new to computers, I was having troubles with my soundcard. I checked everything--the audio options in control panel, the software that came with it. I even turned off the computer to make sure it was firmly in the PCI slot. I rebooted about 3 times and I was about to uninstall and reinstall the drivers and as I went to unplug the speakers to take the card out, I found that my speakers were not plugged in. D'oh.

The biggest goof up I've committed isn't computer related but with my lawnmower. The mower had been sputtering like crazy and acting like it was trying to cut off. I wanted to hurry up and finish mowing the yard. When I noticed that the spark plug wire had come off, I bent down real quick to reattach itself. To paraphrase Hal, "remember to turn the power off." It sent a shock up my arm that I can still feel to this day.

[Computer Hobbyist]

The worst thing I ever did with a computer was incorrectly plugging an AT power supply into a motherboard. Fried everything. It was my partner's computer. I thought I would save a few bucks doing a simple AT power supply upgrade. That very day my ISP and my regular tech came to the office and were present when I was diagnosing the extent of the damage. They were both good sports about the problem and didn't tell my partner. I was really embarrassed. I told my partner that the problem was the cheap power supply he had purchased. Of course, we have all switched to ATX since. It is much harder to screw up with ATX.

Anyway I got him a new computer that afternoon. Thank god for backups.