Worst PC Build Screw Ups - Page 4

Last message on previous page:
I once spent hours completley dissasembling and reassembling my first DIY PC for a lack of posting. I figured i wouldnt bother disconnecting the silly floppy drive. Still not having any luck i laid on the floor and stared at the thing, then it began to smoke. I joined it.

i just remembered another one of mine on a very expensive 19" CRT monitor, i had just got the thing just before my 18th birthday party, of course since it was my 18th a big pissup at my house was in order on my birthday a full day of drinking and me and a few of my mates where messing about on the computer when i knocked one of my cans of larger off a shelf just above the monitor, the larger hit the monitor and soaked the insides, the monitor didnt explode thankfully but it did go with a loud POP. i was devestated thankfully i managed to get a replacement by cleaning it up and just teling the guy at the shop that i didnt know what happened to it.

another wierd problem not a mishap or screw up but my old pc didnt used to work unless there was a floppy drive attached to it. the worst one was definatly setting the computer alight(found on page 4 of this thread )

My first pc was an 386sx33 - turbo button and all... The good old days when you could actually increase the game speed with the push of a button. 30fps, flick, 100fps. Nowa days, it just slow right through...

My worst experience was a.) founding out the hard way that intel's thermal pads and a netburst cpu are quite fond of each other, hence the bend pins and b.) tideness can actually save one alot of money - one of my cats hairs got sucked in by my front fan, and it landed very nicely on the PCB of my imported 1800XL - short on the one transistor and a small bond fire and plenty of good old smoke.

I'm still doubtfull as to the hair causing a dead short, but something shorted that bugger. But the saying goes: everything electronic works with smoke, once it's out it doesn't work anymore...

LMAO

As die mense maar net geweeet het wat jou naam beteken

Ja nee, jy sal my nie glo hoeveel kak gee hulle my op SA forums nie... Vir een of ander rede dink hulle my nick is ongepas - ek meen, dis 'n band!!

One of my first builds, I was in a rush and forgot to put thermal paste before mounting the heatsink...it posted, booted, and ran just fine for about 10 minutes, but then I heard the inevitable 'POP' and caught a whiff of cooked silicon...ahh yes, that smell always reminds me of frying capacitors in electronics class...

Another time, back in the day, I was WAY into Starcraft and used to get all smoked up, meet some buds, and play for hours on end...this one time after hours of playing and getting my ass handed to me (my bud finally learned how to use the Zerg special abilities against the Protoss) I got pissed off and punched the CRT...HAHAHAHA...cracked the screen and watched smoke fizzle out the back...it was brilliant...and being all baked all I could do was laugh and grab the bong...

This is not really a PC screw up but its a biggie.

Years ago I was 'watching' whilst a techie was commissioning the cabinets for a large Air Traffic search radar and their associated computer controllers in a military air station in the UK. It was a tense day as 'things were not behaving as they should' so we started opening cabinets and testing contacts and a whole heap of voltage readings.

Bear in mind that these cabinets work at some fearsomely high voltages, we never the less took appropriate precautions.

Comes the point. Techie X was seen flying backwards in a graceful arc to land in a snotty heap on the other side of the concrete block room, all the while there were a few 'Large Blue Sparks' coming from his body and a distinct burnt ozone/flesh/component smell. He was alive and very dazed when he came round in hospital later that day and has a livid scar running in and out of his skin from his right hand down to his foot. The screwdriver he was holding ended up embedded in the wall on the other side of the room where he THREW it.

On testing afterwards we discovered that the voltage between the 3 phases of the supply was absolutely spot on and the voltage to neutral was also good but the cabinet chassis was for some reason hovering around 115,000 volts to ground. Not good.

We traced all the phase lines back and all connections were good, as were all the neutral lines and so was the earth strapping. Puzzling.

Eventually we traced all lines back to the substation and transformer that had been installed specifically for this new equipment. Curiouser and curiouser - all was correct but still neutral was floating at 115,000 volts.

For simplicity you can think of neutral as just another earth but grounded at the transformer not at the building. All the neutral lines come back to a 'star point' and then connected via a metal webbing strap to a big stake in the ground. Someone had forgotten to link said 'star point' to said stake 10 inches away with said strap, so the whole system was floating at national grid voltages.

The computers controlling all this equipment never bliped even once and this particular search radar has been in use ever since.

Dear... God.
That is the Number 1 Power Supply Screw up....
Have this

Back when, I was trying to impress the boss by promising to upgrade his computer by installing a new motherboard, cpu, and memory. He always purchased 'big name' computers due to reliability concerns. I assured him there would be no problems and the machine would be much faster at half the cost of purchasing a new one.
All went smoothly during the upgrade process execpt for an occasional interruption from my little kids. I delivered the computer to him at work satisfied all his data was safe and Windows worked as it did before.
Later that evening I received a phone call from my boss. He turned on his computer and all he got was a blank screen. I went through the normal troubleshooting tips (power switch turned on??) but to no avail. 'Bring it back' I said and would look at it. When I got the computer home, I hooked everything up and the computer worked fine! I called my boss and he was shocked. He asked me to bring it to his house and set it up. I agreed and when I got there the computer would not work. I was so embarrased and promised to track down the problem. But it was no use. The damage to my reputation was done. The next day, he ordered a new 'big name' computer.
I asked to keep the computer for testing and would retrieve his data for the new machine (trying to save face). After two days of troubleshooting I decided to give up hope and disassemble the machine to return defective parts. When I removed the motherboard from the case, I heard a metal clink sound. I looked down at the bottom of the case and there was a penny! How in the world....
During the upgrade process I was discussing with my wife how important it was for this to go smoothly. 'With luck' I said, 'This will get me the senior lead tech position'. It was during one of those little interruptions from my kids that my daughter decided to give me a penny 'for luck'. Concentrating on the task at hand, I asked her to set it on the table and I would get it later.
To this day, I don't know how it managed to get into the case. During transport, the penny was sliding underneath the motheroboard and only manage to cause problems when at my boss's house. I'm thankful all it did was short out signals and not hit a power trace. With the penny removed, the computer worked fined.
Unfortunately, the reputation damage was done despite my presentation of the working computer. I didn't get the promotion I wanted and eventually left for another company.
Such is life.....

I dropped my newly built pc down three concrete steps, watching in horror as the crappy plastic case splintered and cracked. vc was snapped in half, the HD wouldn't work.

I salvaged the cpu, tho...
-cm

Ooooooh.... damn.
Taking it to a lan party?

Didn't punch thru the crt, only hit it hard enough to crack the glass...hours in front of a makiwara ensured no injuries to my hand...

Well,the biggest mistake i made was on my first upgrade. I had a P200 and was installing a new MB and a P233.

Somehow i managed to screw up the connections to the tower,and was rewarded with lots of sparks and magic smoke and the interesting smell of burnt electronics.Quite a learning experience.

After that i always doublecheck everything before i connect power.

Well this was another screw up on my new build...

Ive been running a machine on this UPS for years... so I decide to run my new computer on it... and it works great...

Well all of a sudden I go into ATI-Tool and test for artifacts... I hear a beeping sound... I thought, ohh no whats wrong with my computers... I jump online and find a forum saying that others have experianced this, and that it was fixed by replacing their videocards, or Power Supply, etc...

The machine was running, and I wasnt positive the video card was bad... since the only time the warning came on was when 3-D apps where running...

Drove me NUTS!

Then I noticed that UPS was blinking a orange color... and that the sound was coming from that...

Well turns out that the ATI power would push the UPS over its limit... and it would warn you of impending doom!

BTW: Belkin UPS's are great... It was just too small (400-450w Powersupply, not 500+) But dont buy a UPS online... too expensive too RMA and ship... Also I did end up RMAing my ATI-Card.

And speaking of cats, I had someone ask me to make one running computer out of two old systems they had sitting around holding up their printer, he failed to tell me that he had left the side covers off for over a year. His cats had pissed all over the computer inards, the smell was horrendous.

I refused to take the stinkiest parts and told him I would do what I could, turns out that the caps on the MOBO had already bulged and the cat pee had shorted out the vid card. I was only able to recover the data from his 200meg HD.

Not a build story but I had a friend who singed off one of his eyebrows after he used nearly a whole can of air to blow out his dust bunnies, then went poking around in the case with a lighter to see if he'd missed anything... THAT was funny.

Mine's not nearly as funny but it took me about a week of troubleshooting to figure out why my brand-new PC would boot up only if I had the Win98 CD in the drive--turns out I had my first boot device set to HDD0 in the BIOS but I was running a raid card at the time--D'OH SCSI FIRST BOOT YOU NUB.

I remember being so frustrated at that, and it was such a little and simple thing to overlook.

ive had small stupid stuff happen - ribbon cable not pushed in all the way - card not seated completely - stuff like that

never once anything major (finds some wood to knock on)

but just last week my neighbor was hit with a bug to clean out his computer

he took off the heat sink cleaned the goo off his processor (stock heat pad)
he thought the goo was a bad thing and reinstalled the CPU and heatsink with no thermal paste... i know what you are thinking now

well his computer refused to boot (nothing at all)

turns out he put the CPU in totally wrong, 7 pins were broken off and all the rest of the pins were bent - think about this for a second - in order for all the pins to be bent, the processor wasnt even in the socket, hehe

so i let him borrow a 2.9ghz celeron (i installed it for him of course) so he has a working system

Almost wish i could figure out how to put the 7 pins back on this CPU just so its usable, without taking it to a jeweler or somethin like that, anyhow....

later

And it still survived? Good Grief!
Number 1 Water Damage story.
I've been gone only for a day and look how much its grown! I've created a monster. Keep them coming.

EDIT:
Thank you everyone. Not just to those who post their stories but the veterans that respond to the posts that I don't see or have the oppertunity to answer. Wusy, verndewd, greenjelly, ches111, Clue69Less, StrangeStranger, angry_ducky and exit2dos, not to mention whoever I may have left out in my haste, thanks so much.

heres one ,
i was messing round w/ some older (lol)p3's a few weeks ago and having a few beers 8) (1st mistake) i have a collection of like well now 3 p3's and a assotment of old hp mb's had a system up and runnin (2nd mistake -shot of jack d) ok i thought tear it down and put in case give to poor needy person.
re assembled powered up ,ok all good celebrate with a few more beers.
take to needy persons apt above me (ok at this point had like 6 or 7 beers and a few shots)
he thanks me with a beer
hook up pc hit power and a LOUD pop happens and nothing im like wtf ,
open case and precariously "perched" on mb was(what was left of a ) a 2nd p3 with pins touching all kinds of small solder spots on mb...

the lesson here is beer + good idea = loud scary noise

I personally havn't screwed up too bad. Just the usual little mistakes, most of which have been mentioned by someone else.

but i'll never forger my first computer repair class in 7th grade. we had to fully disasymble some old crappy computers then reasymble them. my group's did fine. but the day that we had a sub (big guy bout 6' somethin and bout 390 8O ) another group somehow forces a small wire where it shouldn't have gone and smokes the wire. our sub freaks out and unplugs the computer tells everyone to run outside and takes the computer with. when we're outside, he says to us "I just saved your lives in there, you should thank me." i'll never forget this big guy freakin out about a little smoke.

by the way, do those anti-static wrist thingies really do anything, because i never used one in my life and i havn't killed anything yet. maybe just dumb luck

--------------------------------
there are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

wtf? I had done the same thing in my 6800. I heard the beeping, I immediately knew I forgot to connect the extra power cable, then switched off the pc, connect it and boot up and everything was good. How did you fry yours? scary!!!!!!