Worst computer disaster?

[wtf8269]

What's yours?

Mine was in December last year. My 3200 ClawHammer blew while I was rearranging my wires. Stupid me forgot to drain the PSU before messing with anything and fried the CPU when I plugged the 20 pin molex back in. It was at a LAN party that I was hosting too! Luckily AMD has the best warrenty ever and I got a new one. I did virtually everything that could possibly void the warrenty and I still got a new one. (Overclocking, not using the stock heatsink, not using the provided thermal compound, etc.) Hell we even played catch with it for a little while, after we were sure it was blown of course.

Although my brother-in-law purchased that motherboard and the CPU off me in January and I got this 939.

 

[gR3iF]

ny worst thing was a broken edge of a barton 3200+ so the die wasent completly
it still runs on 166mgh stable but not 200

 

[zAAm]

How about your hard drive crashing with almost a 1000 hours of work on it?? I was planning on backing everything up the next day, but then when I booted my pc, strange sound from hard drive, never came alive again. Tested in 4 PC's. None worked. Didn't have enough money to send it to a specialist so it's gone forever. Lots of programming source code I programmed. I did however rip the platter out and mounted it on my wall though... Should've made more backups...

 

[gerrynicol]

My old CPU block cracked (Tt bigwater)and shorted my graphics card(6800GT), put the stock cooling back on, took it back to the shop where they tested and verified card was faulty(no visual inspection was carried out hehe) got a replacement then and there
funny thing is that the new card now o/c way better than the old one.

 

[Deleted member 3]

Last summer lightning struck my house. Many PSU's died and most of my mom's computer got toasted. My switch, ADSL-router and some other devices (VCR, alarmclocks etc) decided to die too.

 

[Rule-R]

Roflol, those shopkeepers just know single to shit when it comes to see or a card is messed with.
My biggest accident really was that something was accidentaly thrown @ one of the monitors. The thing was on, and it gave a loud bang. Did not destroy any other part of my pc though. All the lights fell out @ the same time in the house..

 

[gR3iF]

n1 things but who have the "oldest" pc alive? the oldest i have is a k6 266 with 256 mb ram and a ati rage 3d its from 1998 still runs

 

[zAAm]

I have a 386 24MHz with a 256KB VGA card and 170MB hard drive from whenever that still runs. And my Pentium 200 with 128MB RAM and a 2MB S3 Virge card still runs like a dream... (or a nightmare at that speed probably ) Its CPU heatsink is prone to fall off though but nothing too serious...

But maybe you should post a "Old school hardware" thread for something like that. This is a bit off topic wouldn't you say?

 

[15th Warlock]

My worst dissaster was kiiling an Aopen AX6BC motherboard together with a Celeron A 300 Mhz proc while installing a fan to it. I forgot to disconnect the power cable, and when I plugged the fan connector to the mobo, I think I touched something and the PC turned on and then off, and there was a very strong burnt smell... It never worked again after that...
I also killed a Canopus Pure 3D video card, trying to remove a heatsink I had glued to one of the processors , the heatsink came off with the processor attached to it Back in those days, that was the best Voodoo 1 card you could find, with its 6 MBs of video RAM and TV out, all other Voodoo 1 cards only had 4 MBs of RAM.

 

[Halki]

i still remember it like it was yesterday (and i swear it wasn't ) :
i was running an amd 486 120 dx4 a year or so, and my father told me he'd bring som new toy - damn fast p233mmx. whoa, i said, turned it up, started up winamp (for the first time i could hear an mp3 @ 128kbit at full qal and stereo ) oops, i forgot some games on the old one's hdd, sooooo, i used lpt cable to connect them... remember the old saying: "Always touch the case, my son, or the static charge will blah blah..." guess what.. i didn't. and that's the end of the story of one little boy's naivity - i've used that damn slow freezing crappy 486 for the next year... anyone of you knows the feeling, when you're returning to a slower thing? it's the wost thing next to... uhhh... well it's really a bad feeling

 

[Anarion]

i had some 1.6 quantom that died on me with many things on that (coz of some unplug some

cable when pc was on & then some pwr failure)


or my first mainboard , i just pull out some jumpers & move em then, then condenser just do some

volcanic thing...

or my first socket seven MB which i use first water(+ice) cool solution , i use some cire (plaster)

to put on ice right on cpu then i just leave it & my Mb drown , then makeing some smoke
though,

our when my pc was open, naked totaly ,with out any case ! then i just put my feet on it

(consider it i put every thing right below desk )

or my dvd for some spin in issue just toke the lenz in some part ! (weird )

our i cover my case with pc cover ! then after few min it start to smokin ..


& some duron cpu which it was first serie of new amd era & boughten it in(99) , also must consider it

it was NOt cheapo either .@ the first installtion on my room it died due to i unbind heat sink & then i

run a week for it's guaranty


wow . i'm such savior to computer part hence pc though


& many things(i never say ), didn't want sue coz of pc harming issue or Wanted in some

case , which some guys in love of computers ....

 

[Anarion]

Last summer lightning struck my house. Many PSU's died and most of my mom's computer got toasted. My switch, ADSL-router and some other devices (VCR, alarmclocks etc) decided to die too.

some flashy Tsunami ,, huh

How about your hard drive crashing with almost a 1000 hours of work on it?? I was planning on backing everything up the next day,


Didn't have enough money to send it to a specialist

first part happen to me with a change i do back it up then it crash ! in 2 cd



but then last part u said it seem u have some tin there which u didn't want from any body see it

this is becoz ! of that u didn't bring it to a specialist !

 

[Polaris573]

Not extremely bad but kind of funny.

I was repairing a computer for one of my parents friends. The thing would boot to windows but the display had some kind of weird, wavy, out of focus effect. During the troubleshooting process I was restarting it many times, and each time it would just get worse until the thing would no longer turn on. Eventually I noticed that every time I pressed the power button a tiny puff of acrid smoke would rise up from the motherboard.

 

[zAAm]

but then last part u said it seem u have some tin there which u didn't want from any body see it this is becoz ! of that u didn't bring it to a specialist !

No, the I'm a pretty decent PC specialist, but one thing I can't do is extract data from a physically crashed drive!! I just didn't have the money to do a complete disk recovery... Not everyone has > $1000 to throw around. And my drive contained lots of programming source code and lots of pictures (nothing filthy or sumthin! Vacation pics) and o'course pages and pages of documents I've worked on for the past 3 years... Mmmm. Building a backup PC at this moment.

 

[Rule-R]

zAAm, ze zeggen dat as je dat ding in de vriezer leg je hem er een uur later uit haalt en hij het dan weer even doet. Dacht dat ze zeiden voor 20 minuten ofzo. Is het proberen waard als je echt iets niet kan missen. Mareh.. verder weet ik het niet.

 

[Anarion]

No, the I'm a pretty decent PC specialist, but one thing I can't do is extract data from a physically crashed drive!! I just didn't have the money to do a complete disk recovery... Not everyone has > $1000 to throw around. And my drive contained lots of programming source code and lots of pictures (nothing filthy or sumthin! Vacation pics) and o'course pages and pages of documents I've worked on for the past 3 years... Mmmm. Building a backup PC at this moment.

sorry , i didn't mean anything , specially "filthy" , we are all have sometin private like .. .. ...... & didn't wanna anybody use them or see! them

& a grant is too far for recovery .. wow ..

 

[zAAm]

zAAm, ze zeggen dat as je dat ding in de vriezer leg je hem er een uur later uit haalt en hij het dan weer even doet. Dacht dat ze zeiden voor 20 minuten ofzo. Is het proberen waard als je echt iets niet kan missen. Mareh.. verder weet ik het niet.

It's like you're trying to speak to me?? I can only make out some of the words because I speak Afrikaans, but unfortunately I can't do anything that you said because I've already ripped out the platter out of shear frustration and anger... But would you just repeat that freezer thing in English? I can't quite make it out... Thanks...

 

[zAAm]

sorry , i didn't mean anything , specially "filthy" , we are all have sometin private like .. .. ...... & didn't wanna anybody use them or see! them

& a grant is too far for recovery .. wow ..

It's cool. But I guess the pics and stuff wasn't what was important. And the companies that do these type of data recoveries all have a privacy policy and they erase whatever data they have of you or else I bet you could probably sue them for it? They're probably covering their asses. And if someone paid me $1000 to not look at their personal files I'd be happy to oblige!!

 

[Hellraiser1981]

About 2 years ago, I ordered a SOYO barebones kit from tigerdirect. It came with a VIA c3 667Mhz Proc. I was so proud of it, I wore 2 anti-static straps and triple-checked everything. I put my HDD, CD drive, Vid card in, and turned it on. It posted and I went into the bios to monitor the temperatures. I saw the northbridge temp climbing, I thought "100 isn't bad". As soon as I noticed that it was Celcius, not farenheit, the computer made a loud band and poured out profuse amounts of smoke from every gap, hole, orifice, button, then went pop,pop and died before I could pull the plug.
I opened the side of the case and noticed the northbridge had exploded with so much force that the little heatsink dented the side of the case. My entire house smelled like burnt silicon for a week. Not only did the motherboard blow, it took the P/S, CPU, my HDD, CD drive and Geforce 3 with it. Only one 80mm case fan survived. I was able to RMA the barebones kit for a new one, after arguing for an hour that there was no power surge, but I didn't have any drives or a vid card to put in it.

 

[Rule-R]

Srry there m8, lemme translate this: zAAm, ze zeggen dat as je dat ding in de vriezer leg je hem er een uur later uit haalt en hij het dan weer even doet. Dacht dat ze zeiden voor 20 minuten ofzo. Is het proberen waard als je echt iets niet kan missen. Mareh.. verder weet ik het niet.

zAAm, they say that if you put that thing in the freezer, and get it out after an hour it works for a little while again. Thought they said about 20 mins. Its worth trying if ya cant miss anything from whats on it. Thats all i heard of it.

Srry for the trouble, keep switchin btween a dutch forum and this one.

 

[Deleted member 3]

Rule-R, the forum language is english, please keep it that way. If people start talking in their own language towards eachother it'll get messy.

 

[Rule-R]

You dont ahve to tell me! It was an accident! A mistake! I know this is an English forum, ive almost always posted in English. (Doh, exept from that one time) Now when i make one mistake ppl just ask me to translate and thats what i do, no complaints. You dont have to rub it into me nose any more, i thank you.

 

[Deleted member 3]

Good.