Worst PC Build Screw Ups - Page 5

not sure if it counts as screw up...


I worked at a computer shop, which taught me a lot, even tough i knew more than my boss oo, we had this client that complained about his old old computer, bitched that it was always shutting down or failing, that it ran slow and that no matter what we said it was bad and we NEEDED to fix it, becuase since it ran, it MUST had a fix

the thing is , i tested the computer for hours, benchamrked it overnight, it never locked up or anythin, yet the guy kep coming back, for refund/guarantee abou the machine still beeing slow/restarting

the guy was rich, but DIDNT want to buy another one, becuase even tough it was faulty under his eyes, it still worked


what was i to do.??


pry the cpu out from its slot1 while it was on....


the guy happy to proove that the machine was failing, laid down the cash for a new one, convinced that his old one didnt boot anymore, becuase as i explained, capacitors and circutry where starting to fail and this was bound to happen any moment....

<...< my boss was happy to sell the stuff, the client was happy cause now his new machine had no trouble at all, and was convinced his machine died by natural causes....


>...> then no harm done

=)) it`s more like a fry party

I have to say that this is one of my all-time favorite threads.

Personally, I've only really been into computers for about 1 1/2 years. Until we got DSL (Feb. 2k5), I thought that computers were only for games (Need for Speed, Sim City, and Roller Coaster Tycoon), and the occasional school project.

Anyway, I started getting into computers when my (admittedly refurbished) HP m1050y started randomly shutting down about a year ago. But before I tell that story, I'll tell how I got the computer.

Two months after we got DSL, my computer (Dell Dimension 4400) was totally f^cked up from viruses and sypware. I didn't know about viruses and spyware, because, prior to then, we had never had internet worth using.

My friend's dad (who works for HP) was in town, so I asked him to come by and take a look at my PC. He came by, and suggested that he take it back to Colorado with him. A couple days later, he called, told me what was wrong, and gave me two solutions:

1) A new HDD
2) A new computer

I (stupidly) took the second option, and he found what appeared to be a great deal. It was an HP m1050y media center with the following specs:

ASUS proprietary mobo (915 chipset, I beleive)
P4 540 Prescott (eew; a Prescott)
1GB DDR400
X600 PCIe
250GB SATA hard drive
DVD burner
DVD reader
SoundBlaster Audigy 2
TV Tuner (I never used it, cause we don't have cable)
WinXP MCE 2004 (I think)
A sh!tload of bloatware
HP case
300W Hipro PSU (19A on the +12V rail!)

I beleive it was a refurb, but I'm not completely sure. It was built in June 2004, when Prescott, PCIe, and SATA were just coming out. The quote from HP said $3000, but my friend's dad got it for $625 off of uBid (of course, I had to pay him back for this).

The Dimension 4400 was treated to a HDD reformat, a Windows reinstall, and became the family computer. It, too, has had its share of problems since then (June 2005, which is when I got the HP), but that will be the subject of another post.

I got the HP in June 2005, and it worked fine for a couple of months. However, I was always wondering why this "great new computer" seemed so slow and unresponsive.

Around November 2005, the computer started to shut off randomly. It got so bad that it would turn off 5 minutes after I turned it on.

So I call a friend of my dad's, an electrical engineer from University of Michigan. He comes over, looks at the computer, and says that there's a heat problem. So I ran it with the side of the case off for a while, and that worked, but only for about a month.

The computer continued to shut down, so I replaced the case and CPU cooler, but it didn't make a difference.

Eventually, I just got a new CPU (A64 3700+), motherboard (DFI nF4-DAGF), and power supply (Thermaltake TR2 430 watt). There wasn't anything wrong with the other power supply, but I didn't trust 300 watts to power my system.

This worked for a while, but then the mobo's USB and NIC failed. So then there's the fun of RMAing the board for a new one. I don't want to go into the details, but at least newegg is good with those things.

Finally, more than a year after I first got this POS, it works. I don't overclock, as I'm happy to have this crap working at stock speeds.

Also, since my dad doesn't trust me to fix my computer (I'll thank him for this when he's dying), all the work was done by his friend.

I see this whole computer experience as a mixed blessing: On the one hand, I wasted more than a year and $600+ making this thing work. On the other hand, I learned a lot about comptuers, from websites and forums such as this one.

Here's the cost rundown from this experience:

Original computer: $625
New Case: $50
New CPU: $220
New Motherboard: $80
Shipping Costs: $30
Labor Costs: $250+
Total: At least $1005

No smole or for that matter losing any parts. Just a few really stupid things.

Only one worth noting and that was on this build (the comp i am now).

I had already built a computer before so i was not new to buildming computers, however unlike my last build i decided to do this build in one day on the floor of my basement (which is kinda dark) by just kinda throwing everything together in no real thought out order (and for the most part not reading the mobo manual carefully). Well i get everthing together fine but when i go to hit the power button on the front of my case nothing (read: absolutly nothing) happens.

So i spend my sunday kinda freaked out about why it isnt working (because i built this one with my own funds). I get back to school on moday and some of my computer freinds ask me the standard questions and make the standard suggestions (is the PSU on). One of them asks if the little plugs that go to the on of switch and the power light are connect and i say "yes". So i get back home thinking about what could be wrong and open my case this time looking in it with my flashlight. Then i notice that the connector for the on of switch is in the wrong spot on the mobo. I move that to the right spot and the computer has worked fine ever sense.

7800gt
AMD 3700
Asus A8N-E
160gig Seagate SATA
Cooler Master Centurion
1 gig DDR400 Patriot Mem


Thats worth quite alot back in november 2005 on a teenagers pay (aka almost nothing). Since then i have added a second 250 gig hard drive, an Audigy 2, and another gig of ram. Luckily all of those have gone flawlessly.

I had an Athlon XP 1700+. I tried to overclock it about a Ghz..... It worked for a minute or two, and now I have it sitting in a collection of dead pentium 1 and duron processors.

Hey, sounds like my story:

First build, read the maunal from front to back, and put my MB in without brass standoffs because ASUS didn't bother to put that in. However, my PC worked for a year until I upgraded my GPU, thinking that the GPU was causing all my game crashes.

I put the new GPU in and had more problems. While working on it, it would turn on by me walking past it! Finally, I hit the power button one more time: a bright light appeared and I thought...oh sh**. Smoke rose from my MB...

When I was building my first PC (This one) I didn't know that the motherboard was supposed to be elevated from the case with the standoffs. Every time that I put a new screw in, the motherbord bent terribly. Looks like this is a common mistake, and im glad i decided to give those brass things a try before turning the thing on.

This one caused some colourful outbursts.

Built an Athlon system and had everything running great...
Put the case on the floor.. ran fine for a YEAR!

Then one day I dropped a pen off the back of my desk...
as I was trying to reach it I pulled the case forward slightly by nudging the PSU cable... BIG mistake finally revealed.. I had forgotten to put in the screws for the PSU.. snapped HSF retaining clips, radeon 9700 and sound card! :x

Also got a nasty bump when I slammed my head into the bottom of the desk and landed flat on my face as my wheeled chair flew across the room behind me.

Reminds me of a PC death I witnessed... Back when Mac vs. PC wars were going strong in the workplace, it must have been around '01. One of the more vocal PC proponents put together an expensive rig and was taking it down a stairwell to show it off to a team of Mac lovers. Anyway, with a half-flight of stairs left, he started yelling out about his hot new machine and how it was a Mac-killer. Then he lost his footing and that brand new box LAUNCHED out into space. He watched with a horror-stricken face and it bounded down the stairs and landed on the cement floor. He'd used some kind of monster generic server case and the whole front of it was plastic. Plastic bits flew everywhere, one of the doors popped off. He'd custom-made a big aluminum CPU HS and had a big fan on it and all that momentum caused the mobo to break like a potato chip. It was a horrible death and to rub salt in the wound, the most outspoken Mac devotee stood up from his Mac and applauded and then told the PC guy that it didn't look particularly fast. Fanboys can be so cruel!

This one was my first real attemps at building a rig, it was summer 98 of I'm not mistaken and it was the real war between socket7 and slot1, and I was on a budget. I nearly chose socket7 with ALI Aladdin chipset but if anyones remember these, they really sucked (P2 266 beating a K6 450 with these ALI mobo wasnt surprising)... So I chose a Celeron for good overclocking potential and a brand new chipset from Intel : the infamous 820 series... with the SDR onboard convertor because all these 800 series at the time were using RDRAM Module which costed an arm and two legs... (These board were expensive and considered the future of Intel lineup at the time, just to be removed from market after 2-3 months due to the fact the SDR convertor was buggy.)

I was hoping of reaching sky high overlocking with a Celery 466 in that kind of ASUS highend motherboard which had 100 mhz FSB, So I was building the rig in harsh condition, on the basement ground in a dark room... Ideal for first rig

When everything was assembled, I pressed power button and all seemed good, except blank screen lol. After several checkup, I didnt find what the problem was and I Returned to the shop with the computer. They went to the backstore with it and returned after 5 minutes saying "everything is fine now" you can take it back. I said what was the prob and tech guy said "Oh just a little glitche"... I said to myself wtf and went back, ready for some big time Starcraft game. Pressed power button and... Nothing. I was really mad, as these guys said "all is good" and I had no car at the moment, this shop was at about 40 km from home. So I read the ASUS manual from top to bottom, to find explicitly : "CPU Support P2 - P3"... the fucking board didnt even support Celeron nor 66mhz bus, and my overclocking plan was scraped. Not to mention I never returned at that place... I still remember the tech guy smiling and saying that It just booted fine in their backstore...

PS

I Ended putting a trusty P2-400 overclocked to 500.

Well, I should add that it was on my carpet with the MB grounded to the case...

Well, here's an screw up (not mine)

I have a friend who had a faulty disk, so he gave it to his brother to backup all his data because he was going to buy a new disk, but was too damn busy with college and he didnt had time for the backup.

He calls his brother the next day

Lou(my friend): So, dan, did you finish it?
Dan: err....nope, your HDD is fkd up, it's not on "my pc" and it's not working...

He rushed to his house just to find out that his brother forced the floppy power connector into the master/slave pins on the HDD!

Seriously, I don't know how he could do that......but that's what he tells me

Aftermath: disk burnt.......totally (did I mention data loss?)

This one (borrowd from another forum) was about a guy that was cleaning dust out of his PSU, it was very dusty and he had flu, so he sneezed and a HUGE amount of mucus covered the psu....giving it a one way ticket to the garbage

My only screw up with electronics was when I was 9 or something, I built a classic battery-switch-light bulb circuit with a 1.5V lightbulb, I showed it to everyone til the battery ran out, so when I had to take it to the teacher to show her that it worked and get my grade, the thing didnt work anymore, the battery was depleted, so I borrowd a 9V battery thinking that it would work, to my surprise, the moment I turned it on the bulb EXPLODED, no sh!t xD me and the teacher were O.o!!!

That same year I tried to install an "alarm system" on my house, the instructions showed a square battery and I assumed "oh, it's a 9volt one", I connected it to the battery and a slight burnt smell hit my nose.....a few years later I realized that the square battery was a 4.5 volts one......

Finnally, I must add that I am Mr Conduitivity! xD, one day after a thunderstorm blew my voltage regulator fuse I was going to replace it, when I was putting the new fuse in place I got a discharge, then my arm moved back and touched another regulator and got struck too!! but that's not all, after the second shock my arm moved forward and hit the CPU giving me a 3rd discharge...damn I'm lucky....my hand hurted for 6 hours after that.....

sidenote: my BIGGEST mistake, by far, was having mc affee installed on my pc.....lost it in less than 24 hours with everythng updated and running... either that or that I bough EPSON printers...

You should have tried running larger fans with better bearings at a lower RPM if you wanted the quiet effect. Passive cooling is always the cause of many headaches.
Believe me, I know. For me I'd want the inside of my case to remain at 70F to 80F if I want to consider passive cooling.

gracias patoI'm putting the best stories from the screw ups in the THF blog.

Shoot meant pato...

Note the irony in a thread he started, dedicated to screwing up

Ditto on the good thread comment

Word.

I've got a few; none of them particularly bad, thought.

1) Mucking around with my system, late one night... Couldn't figure out why my serial wasn't working; realized it wasn't fully seated. Body reacted before brain engaged, and I pushed it down (unit still powered on). Whoops. Fat blue spark, gold fingers burned off card.

2) While I was working in retail sales (and did the hardware support for the stored), I reversed the connection on power button on a build. Whoops, nother fat blue spark. Got to quickly source out another power button, which was fun. No other damage, though.

3) Not mine but a customer's goof. She brought in her system, said the memory she bought wasn't working. No idea how she did it, but she had it in backwards. Even though there was the notch/key system to prevent it, she had jammed it in there. Take it out, flip it around, and off she went.

4) Another customer bought a 486 DX2/50 processor to upgrade his Packard Bell. He INSISTED on doing the upgrade himself, even though I offered to do it for free. Turns out on his system, the processor was soldered on. When he brought in the unit, he had snapped off about a quarter of the processor by jamming a screwdriver under the corner and prying up. New motherboard was more expensive than a new system.

5) And my last screwup... My first Socket 775 build, just this last spring. Asus MB had a plastic cover over the socket, with a "Remove This Before Installing Processor" sticker. But it wasn't very specific about what exactly I had to remove, so I ended up removing the whole metal hold-down (instead of the plastic cover). Hey, it came off easy! I realized what I had done while waiting for the local computer store techs to troubleshoot it (I brought it in dis-assembled), and they were kind enough not to call me an idiot...

Clint

How they managed that..... [/joking]

To everyone... the best of the Worst PC Build Screw Ups will be hosted here: DaSickNinja's THGF Blog
Part 2 will be going up later today.

After reading your post, I have come to the conclusion that you did little to nothing in the area of research before you bought your parts.

You would be better off letting somebody else build your computer.

hball

K, another story, again by the guy named "not me" (see Family Circus)

I was working in a computer retail store <cough>Computer City</cough> (second job while in the Air Force) when a guy came in looking for Wordperfect 6.0.

We had a promo copy on sale at the time and I pointed him in that direction. When he saw the price he was a happy camper (only 199.00) for the full retail version.

The fella took the software home and came back later that evening. He was furious that the software did not work and that it totally screwed up his machine ???. I went over to the counter where he had set his machine. Anyone remember the days of the 3 1/2" floppies? He had stuck the first disk of six into the drive (it went in and down to seat itself on the spindle). When the app asked him to put the second disk in he did. When it asked for what he thought was the third disk he put that in too.... He did say however that the third disk was a little difficult.

You see since the first disk went in and down the second fit quite nicely on top of the first.... The third disk (which it was actually asking for the second disk again) went in at an angle and actually fit upon some manual encouragement. So three floppies in a single disk at one time = one screwed up floppy drive + one screwed up Wordperfect install + one pissed off customer.

Management was nice enough to RMA the Wordperfect for him and give him a new set of disks as long as he purchased a new floppy drive and allowed us to install the app for him. Strangely enough he said YES (go figure)!

PS..

He told me off to the side that he was wondering how he was going to get the rest of the disks in...

What the hell. That is why I stopped working at Best Buy. The customers annoy the hell outta me.

8O .... I mean... 8O

Quote of the day.

And so will I,
Finally, a partner in laughing at f^ck ups....