What was your worst PC disaster?

[eco2geek]

Or your most memorable one? The one that embarrasses you to even think about? What did you learn? Did you use Knoppix to fix it?

Here's my story.

One summer day in '92, we bought our first PC. I wanted a Mac, but the wife insisted. It came with Windows 3.1...and if you think Win3.1 was a dog, you should have seen Win3.0. Anyway, after we set it up, I sat down to play, and she left on an errand.

I knew next to nothing about Windows 3.1 besides how to use the GUI, and I soon uncovered an intriguing drop-down dialog that would let you change the graphics card driver (the list was in the form "Graphics card X - Screen resolution Y - Bit depth Z"). I didn't stop 'n' think about what might happen if I chose one corresponding to a graphics card that I didn't have...and soon I was staring at a black screen. The first day, and I've already BROKEN THE COMPUTER! What will my wife say?

I did what any newbie would do: Reinstall Windows. But that didn't help. And the wife was coming home. Tick. Tick. Tick.

I finally admitted defeat and called Microsoft tech support. The tech guy's name was Ray. You could tell Ray was an uber-geek because he said "DOT" instead of "PERIOD". He also refused to give his last name. Wise man. Who knows how many people would drive up to Redmond, look him up in a telephone book, and totally stalk him if he did?

Ray stayed with me past his quittin' time, and walked me through the solution. I was expressing my profound gratitude and saying goodbye as my wife walked in. Whew.

I've had worse disasters. One time Norton WinDoctor decided that all the COM/ActiveX CLSIDs in my registry were invalid and deleted them. Or the three separate occasions I tried installing LILO (once) and GRUB (twice) and ended up with an unbootable PC. ("Backup"? What is this thing you call "backup"?)

But that experience taught me a valuable lesson about how talented I am at screwing up computers.

[Markus]

Well, I once wanted to erase the contents of a directory and while as root I issued IIRC: rm -rf /* (don't try this at home). After a while I started wondering what's taking so long and when I hit Ctrl-C I had already lost /boot, /dev and half of /etc. To make it worse I had decided to postpone making a backup until the install was tuned to exactly what I wanted and I was almost there :D

[nishtya]

hmmm, this is hard one. I have had many mini-disasters in linux. But major, even going back to windows I can't remember one on my home computer. But work, different story.

My first sysadmin job - easy task! reinstall W98 over itself on PC of one of the bosses. I had convinced the netadmin (prev sysadmin, small comp LOL) that that was what he needed for the plethora of blue screens and other assorted windows features he was experiencing. I pop in the CD like I had done dozens of times before, and then. Didn't know what went wrong, at some point an unfamiliar error, and PC no go no more no more. Not past the c prompt anyhow. hmmmm

I called in the reinforcements, the netadmin. He was at a loss, also. At what point HE nuked the boss' data I don't know, but nuke it he did. I may have been unable to reach the OS and I couldn't reinstall it, but I didn't blow away any directories! Then as a last resort he called Compaq. Turned out that starting with like IE4 you could no longer reinstall windows over itself if you had done like any upgrade to IE, it would prevent the system from booting. T'was ugly. The boss whose computer it was was kind of understanding about it...he patted me on the head and said he didn't lose too many years worth of data
:?

[richb]

My first Dell computer about 15 years ago was humming along nicely. I decided after about 2 months to upgrade the bios. I downloaded the file, transferred it to disc, and booted with the disc as the instructions stated. The system got half way through the upgrade and hung, apparently a bad disc. Not knowing what to do I shut down the system and upon restart absolutely nothing happened. Still under warranty I called Dell to be told, sorry your eprom is toasted. They had to send out a service peson with a new motherboard.

Now while I have had other mini disasters, like doing an apt-get upgrade with Knoppix and trashing my system this bios upgrade problem was certainly numero uno.

[metavoid]

Hmm.

Guess it must be dist upgrade on my knoppix.

One line to spoil it all!!

Lucky for me, I played with partimage before apt-get :)

[mzilikazi]

One time I installed windows on a pc. The machine kept rebooting, Viruses and spyware appeared and took control of the machine as if by magic. IE kept giving away sensitive information. It was horrible.

[Cuddles]

This really isn't a "disaster" technically, but it was rather costly...

Working for this company as a Computer Tech., Network Tech, Backup UNIX Sys Admin, and terminal ( dumb ) repair... We didn't have that many PC's, the company manufactured CAD / CAM software, and at this time, MAC's were a major proliferation...

We had a dozen or so of the MAC Plus', or what has been come to know now as the "Mac Classic" - problem was they only had half the memory in them, and the company wanted to "beef them up" to all the memory they could handle... Upon doing research on the subject, I found we only had on SIMM card, where we could have four, in every single MAC Plus in the whole company... So, I wrote up the requisition, and the company bit the bullet, and bought more than $1,000 worth of memory chips. It was a time where SIMM's were pretty pricey...

My package arrived, one big box, of more than 100 256K SIMM's, the idea was, to take all the "old" SIMM's out of every MAC, pool them with the new ones, and then MAX OUT all the MAC's with 1 MB of RAM. In a specific order, the "big guys"; president, vice, and then down the line, to the "public" ones. I did further research to find that these "Mac" SIMM's are extremely static sensitive, so, I used a hundred or more of the money, to buy static matts, wrist straps, static pads, and even a complete suit, to keep any "rogue" transmissions from getting to these little chips...

The day finally came, and I looked like someone who was working in a clean room, in a room that was specifically set up for this task. I had all the matts, pads, straps, and myself, linked to a common ground, and a clip that would ground the chassis of the MAC I was working on. The removal went well, cracking open each MAC, I removed each SIMM from eavery one, and placing them in the pool of SIMM's I was going to use for installing. Each MAC was grounded, the SIMM was placed on the static matt with the rest. Then came the install. Taking the first MAC, making sure it was grounded, then placing four cards inside. I then removed the ground, and test fired it up - The MAC showed the, what is commonly known as the "Blue Screen of death" to a MAC, the "unhappy" MAC icon...

Figuring that the MAC could have had another problem, I went on to the next MAC, and thought I'd come back to it later, when I am done with this memory issue. To make a long story short, all the MAC's exibited this same "unhappy" MAC Icon, when I was done... My first thought was that "maybe" we got some bad memory cards. So, I took one, and started removing, and exchanging the memory, to try an isolate which one could be the culprit. All of them, the new cards as well as the old ones, were bad.

The company decided to bring someone from the "outside" in, to get this working. They walked in, saw how much work I had done to isolate static, and began laughing. They reached into one of the MAC's, tore out the memory, and replaced it with four fresh ones they had brought, no static anything on, in, or attached. Turned the unit on, and it was happy. For the next three weeks, at "consultants" pay, four guys, came in, and did the same thing, to each and every MAC. To save my status within the company, I came to find out that "maybe" a few of the chips were bad in the first place, but, that these memory cards were a lot more "robust" than anyone would tell me, and that by doing all of this, from what I heard, the "right" way, I was trashing them.

What hurt the most was the cost... Initial purchase of the new SIMMs was garbage, four "consultants" at "top pay", and there cost of the SIMMS, which the price had gone skyrocketting during this time frame. Not to mention, being humbled in the company, and the going joke was: "Don't let 'so-and-so' work on your MAC". The only good thing to come out of this, was, that these "professionals" had the "widget" that cracked open those MACs, it was one of those "seamless chasis" units, and they had a tool to get inside the seam, and break it open, the nice way. So, the units didn't look like someone took a screwdriver and tried to pry the thing open ( unfortunately, most of them did, because thats what I did)

[OErjan]

eeeh. you mean like:
setting fire to a powersuply (shortcircuited it when making some fan conection).
having lightning strike disable computers (5 computers on 4 occations), hmm, otoh that is no fault of mine.
the dumbest i thinks was when i pluged in the wrong powersuply to my laptop. it used a 12V DC unit but i had a unit looking alike, only diference was that one lable said 24V~ and the other 12V =
oops nothinbg works, wonder why??? what is that smell.

[eco2geek]

LOL, Cuddles. Ouch.

Incidentally, a Mac tech friend of mine got me a Mac Classic (http://www.lowendmac.com/compact/classic.shtml) for my birthday that same year -- one that had been smoke-damaged in a fire. For some reason, Apple wanted the case back (maybe cuz it had the serial number on it), so my friend rigged it up in an old PC case he scrounged somewhere. The thing looked like Darth Vader. Later he managed to scrounge a real Mac Classic case for me. (My friend still has the "case cracker" tool and the long Torx screwdriver you need to get to the screws in the handle.)

So those suckers are actually pretty hardy. It still works, too, all 4MB RAM and 40MB hard drive of it. Even if it does think the year is "4" and not "04".

[firebyrd10]

Well once I over loaded the motherboard and killed the processor fan connection, effectivly melting the processor. Second on an older computer, it had an option to up the clock speed of the CPU. While working the in menu I accedently upped it by 200mhz (it was a 300 machine) and the blew the entire motherboard.

Yea, lots of fun. :roll:

[CrashedAgain]

Worst computer disaster: Fire.

Worst linux screwup: had a link to /mnt/hda1 (Windows) in /home/user. Tried to delete the link with right click & delete from Konqueror while /dev/hda1 was still mounted....

Dumbest move: Was using a early PC laptop (DOS) at work, computer was specially purchased to program our industrial PLC's. Screwed something up (don't remember what) & crashed the system. Next boot had an error message about damaged files and 'do you want to recover lost files'. So I said yes and entire system was turned into 000001.rec, 000002.rec etc files. We had no backup disks....

[kevstar31]

On a mac i set a ram disk to use 100% of the drive.

[j.drake]

Grad school - C64 as a word processor, working all semester on a paper that would constitute my entire grade for the semester. Filename was "215". C64s were not upgradable, so you had to chain files together for long documents.

All semester long, filling in my outline with text and research references and saving file "215" to SSSD floppy on shutdown. Then I hit the C64's memory limit, saved the file to "215", cleared the document, and started working on file "215/1". After two sentences, got tired, decided to go to bed, and saved to "215", as per usual.

Now, all my semester of work was replaced by two sentences, and I had no backup. Took an incomplete that semester, after explaining to an understanding professor, and rewrote it.

jd

[plener]

but in a pci and the mb started to smoke--i learned about what hey meant by toast!!

[jjmac]

A couple :) ...


While using a piece of material as a dust filter,
over the tray door of a cdrom drive. A semi
paper textile material used to make patterns in
tailoring. It was a dusty environment. Wins
auto eject fired up and damaged
the tray
mechanism. This resulted in a high frequency
squeal being produced whenever the cdrom was used.
I had to put up with that for about a year or so,
and it nearly gave me a break down.

Somewhat related to that, i found that, when one
jumps up and down on a mouse, they will break it.

Also, exploratory surgery performed on a cdrom device,
will unfortunatley, result in the patient dieing.
I think their manufactured that
way

:)

jm

[chris-harry]

i once got my foot caught around the mouse cord (without realising), and then accidently ripped it from the computer... didnt do it any good....

i also accidently *cough* put me foot threw the front of me computer... on the day i really needed the computer... opps... :D

and this one is a winner.... not that it wins anything

any way... I noticed that one of my 3.5 floppy disks wasnt really working... so i got an old computer out of my cupboard and took the 3.5 out of that... anyway, that went ok. Then i started to take the broken 3.5 out of me computer, which took half an hour due to poorly designed casing, lots of fustration... and ANGER AND THE DARK SIDE OF COMPUTERING!!! any who... i finally got it out and placed it next to the one that was perfectly fine...

feeling angry and fustrated, i decided to cool off by going out side for half and hour to play hand ball (the hand ball with a tennis ball). eny whom... after about 1 hour, i came back to realize that both 3.5 were identical... yes identical, and i had forgoten which one was which... opps...

took me two weeks to figure out which on was broken... (btw, if you want to know how i figured that out here it is...) i was using knoppix, and one of the drives started to smoke... :mrgreen: opps... :D anywhom... thats me story... hope you like...

[plener]

alwasy happen when chaging hardware of installing software on a friday night

installed video card and totally corrupted hd
could not format it

all files got deleted and could not be undeleted

had to fdisk and destroy all partitions

[chris-harry]

friday the thirteenth? wow... a scary night... :D... i have another one... not about me, and its one of those stupid ones...

anyway... one of me friends was playing around with his computer... and anyway, he put the cord which connects to the hard drive, in the wrong was... so when he turned on his computer nothing happened... he was about to throw away his computer, when i came along... and i fixed it... i felt so proud

pritty silly...

[Flash00]

always happens when changing hardware or installing software on a friday night
Actually, any day after 6 PM is the time of maximum danger. This applies to any home project.

I once plugged my speakers into the wrong hole after tinkering with my computer. After a week of trying all kinds of things like reinstalling the sound drivers etc I took a look at the back of the computer and saw what I had done wrong. Fortunately no harm was done to anything but my pride.

[Refugee]

Refugee's Computer-Tips-Learned-the-Hard-Way #344:

Never erase the BIOS on your mothrboard--no matter how curious you are. :oops:

[chris-harry]

well... has anyone eletricuted themselfs? luckily i havent... :D now that would really really damage your pride...


C-H little story

Bob- (trying to replace a graphics card in his computer all the while his girlfriend is watching).. Its as easy as (gets severly electricuted when touches mother board and screams like a girl).

Bob's Girl- Next time, make sure the power is off.

now... bob was owned... really owned...

[chris-harry]

plus you could do worse then that... you could do this

http://www.rot13.org/~dpavlin/pics/burn.jpg

*singing* burn baby burn

[gnarvaja]

The worst one I had to recover from was actually from a customer. Hundreds of thousands of dollars daily transfers depended on the system. It went like this:

RECEIPE FOR DISASTER
Ingredients:
1 Power cable going accross the floor in the middle of a path where people walk constantly back and forth
1 Old/slow PC with insufficient HD space
2 Unexperienced PC operators
1 Limited budget
1 Dusty environment

Preparation
1. Define procedures to purge backup and purge DB to avoid the *disk full* syndrome. Make sure backup procedure is fool proof, for example, use Hanoi Tower rotation of disk sets always storing and extra blank formatted disk. This way if you don't have today's backup, you'll have yesterdays, or 4 days ago, or a week ago and so on. The Hanoi Tower rotation avoids using the same disks over and over again until you can see through them. For performance reasons the purge is done with no transactions, hence the recomendation to make a backup before doing it.
2. Due to budget restrictions, there weren't always disks available to complete the sets, so the users would use the disks of set C to complete the backup of set A among other transpositions Not necessarily registering the order of the disks.
3. Here you have 2 alternatives:
a. Since the operator is in a rush, skips the backup and goes on with the purge. Since the purge is taking some time, decides to reboot the PC before it ends.
b. Kick the power cord while the purge is running.
4. The oeperators are in a rush, so they don't report the error messages until the system doesn't work anymore.
5. The backups are performed every morning on the corrupted databases, with the disk permutations, effectively ruining any chance of getting reliable data.
6. Did I mention that the disks where often lying around in a dusty environment?

Presentation
Call the programmer to fix the problem telling him that due to budget restrictions they don't really have the money to pay full fare.

Note from the consultant: They were in wine country, so the location had other perks :wink:

[crazygopedder]

Well once I over loaded the motherboard and killed the processor fan connection, effectivly melting the processor. Second on an older computer, it had an option to up the clock speed of the CPU. While working the in menu I accedently upped it by 200mhz (it was a 300 machine) and the blew the entire motherboard.

Yea, lots of fun. :roll:

ROFL

That's great

[benjamin1254]

the worst pc problem i have ever had was when i got my vary first computer... oh thoes were the days.. it was referbished but to me it was new... running windows 95. For the fist cupple days it was ok ... we did some basic training on our new computer we had just goten (for free i might add). But then the internet came around. Man i remember i was downloading like crazy. I dident even reslize how much space i had on the hard drive. 1 gig was all i had and back then i dident know the size of things and how fast they could go. I continually downloaded more and more untell i was left with nothing. no space at all. I dident know why we were having problems with the computer starting up it just wouldent start up like it did. ane even then we werent protected ... no firewall was there to stop anything from coming in or going out. no filter not even antivirus. so a cuppl times we lost the computer.. and we would have to re instal alot of times. then i just got tired of reinstalling windows and made the biggest mistake i could ever not think of. what i did was when the computer came back to us i was really cheezed by restarting it takin it out to be repaired and what not. so i compressed the hard drive. needless to say windows never started again! now flash up to a few years ahead when windows ME was big. that was my second worst mistake ... getting a windows me computer. needless to say after it tickin me off i moved over to linux.. and so far i have never had any problems with it!

[chris-harry]

lol... getting win me being the biggest mistake... ahahaha I think thats everyones big mistake.... :D

[JeniSkunk]

My worst computer disaster was actually caused by being a Linux newbie.
November 2000 I bought the boxed set of Caldera Open Linux 2.3 and went to install it in the 4Gb area I'd cleared for Linux on my 9.1Gb HD as I wanted to dual-boot Win98 and Linux. At the time I had no idea about the 1024 cylinder limit.
I went through the Caldera install installing everything, or so I thought, then installed BootMagic after the install which hadn't worked. After realising that Caldera had not installed, I went to reinstall it, this time noting the 1024 cylinder limit. That complete install worked well, except for the fact that LILO got writen to the MBR. Trying to fix that mess rendered the 9Gb HD unbootable, and the 5Gb of pre-existing data inaccessible till I could get a data recovery util.


Jenifur Charne

[Seyyapc]

New on overclocking my First overclock was with a Pentium II processor, you 've to block some contacts with solid adhesive tape or nail paint. After some shots finally I was lucky 8) for a time and keep the Overclock for all the night, when I wake up the next night the computer was really dead :shock: .

Removing the processor the contacts, on both the processor and the mobo were burned :roll: , I've to buy a new processor and mobo :twisted:

[pureone]

it all started a month back when my sisters computer felt like dieing. she got a new pc within the last 72hours cost £10. its a old beast


CPU[Pentium II (Klamath) clocked at 233.868 Mhz] Kernel[Linux 2.4.26 i686] Up[-46min-] Mem[-59.1719/60.5234MB-] HDD[-4GB(13%used)-] Procs[-36-] Client[Shell]
(infobash) http://rebelhomicide.demon.nl/scripts/

first night it was working nicely. but the computer seemed to have the same problems as the last computer that died. the monitor wouldnt work right. so my sister went to turn it off with what she though was the power off switch. but turned out to increase the voltage. the pc went bang. i changed the power supply on it(next day) and got it to work agian. but it would not work right (wouldnt boot from cd) so i changed the ide cables and then it wouldnt work at all. well after hours of messing around with differnt ways to put the ide cables i had to call my dad to help me.

my last major lose of data was from trying to install suse with out reading the manual before hand. i really messed up my hard drive that way. i managed to lose all my data i was lucky enough to have knoppix to save my most important data(web sites i made mainly).

[gildedlink]

Worst? I dunno, I've had so many... I'll start with a few.

Scenario 1- '97 (I think...)- My family got our first comp. Twas an IBM Aptiva(555 maybe? It's in my sis' room now). Now I used to be on that thing all the time, and I once learned... tada! how to download! I was restricted to aol, but i downloaded all the games I could from there, well over 40 games, and played them, and the ones that came with the comp (tons, i remember it came with mechassault 2, and Lotus 1-2-3... ok so maybe Lotus wasn't a game, but why not install anyway? :P). After I had downloaded all this in my 56k download-binge, our computer mysteriously started losing mouse function, with windows not detecting it (this later became a historic beginning to the other ones I owned). My mother called IBM, having no clue what was going on, and it was all because of Hard drive space XD. She, being less informed than I at the time, doesn't trust my advice and lets someone 'take a look at it', who installs Win98 and a an ATI video card, makes the speakers built in the monitor not work, etc and charges her a considerable amount on top of that. It is now in my sister's room, devoid of use most often.

Scenario 2- Later my mother bought a gateway. i could download more, but not much out of courtesy. Now here's where I did something that wasn't bad at all, unless you have an mother like that: I changed the properties of the recycle bin so that deleted files would skip it entirely. What is wrong with that you ask? Nothing, except maybe that my mom (the genius she is, god bless her XD) stored legal documents in the recycle bin thinking no one would look there...brilliant.

Scenario 3- The first laptop I ever got. It was used, I checked all the info I could that it was a good buy. An older IBM Thinkpad (something 775), priced at $250. Now if you haven't noticed, I have a tendancy to delete very little, and this laptop had a 995 meg drive- bad combination. I load alot of my cd's and such onto this bad boy so i no longer only had them on cdrom, but slowly keys stop working (the 2-3 days after I bought it). I find a hardware solution, considering these were the ones with quick removable keyboard: press down a small wire in the back of it and the keys worked fine. So I use some 'ingenuity' and stick a small folded piece of paper under the keyboard so it'd hold down that wire for me. The next time I reboot, very few of the keys work. Whats the major problem in that? The comp had a bios password when I got it., and none of the number keys i needed to ener that pass were there. What is my solution? I remove the CMOS battery and it works a bit. After awhile, though, for some unknown reason, it just died starting up one day. Now all I had was a high tech night-light, that hung right after shoeing the wallpaper background I had and never fully loaded windows or any of that. I was forced to trash it.

Those are only 3, and I've been through alot more, but thats a bit of history as is. I haven't lost the lessons of all those mistakes to this day, so I'm still optimistic. I have tons more horor stories but those are the historic selections.

[invictius]

Borrowed a friends (new at the time) original nt4 server disc and proceeded to install it on a system with a slot-loading cd drive. About 1/2 way thru the install, the cd shattered in the drive and sent sharp plastic cd pieces everywhere, one of which decided to lodge itself in my leg!!!!! I still have the scar, and the drive/software people each told me to take it up with the other... my friend was *not* pleased...

[chris-harry]

ouch... any chance of you posting a picture of the scar???

well... I always thought Microsoft wanted to be explosive, but i didnt realize that they took it to a physical level (joke)

[chris-harry]

this isnt what i did, but me friends worst desaster....

he decided to be smart, and not wait for the whole thing to cool down after he opened it... put his hand it, and screamed... :D:D hehe... now thats a real shock... :D:D

see the good thing, is i have never been electricuted.... yet....

[jjmac]

It hurts, a lot. It can kill.

jm

[OErjan]

not computer related but electricity related.
I was putting up a lamp in the celing.
monica (love of my life) came in and asked why i worked in the dark, she flipped the switch (something i did not notice).
sadly she did not hear my full reply, she heard me mention lamp and fuse so she then leaves and flips the fuse... OUCH!
lucky I fell of the chair i was standing on, if not... now it only gave me blistered fingers and swolen wrist.

[chris-harry]

ouch... we are learning electricity in physics... its fun, trying to get your head around all the names and funny greek letters, letters like I and Q... and ohm... its fun... :D me friend had to go to the hospital by the way... :D:D got more then blisters and swolen wrist... :D ripped the top layer of skin off... :D

but we can laugh about it now, because we were young then.. :D

[jjmac]

not computer related but electricity related.
I was putting up a lamp in the celing.
monica (love of my life) came in and asked why i worked in the dark, she flipped the switch (something i did not notice).
sadly she did not hear my full reply, she heard me mention lamp and fuse so she then leaves and flips the fuse... OUCH!
lucky I fell of the chair i was standing on, if not... now it only gave me blistered fingers and swolen wrist.


I can relate to that. Putting up a light socket, just got the globe in ... twang, on came the light.

Someone i know had just put the fuzes back in the box ...

I stick em in my pocket now.

One can be lucky, but, lets not count on it to much :)


jm

[Cuddles]

Incident #1: ( home electricity )
Had to change out the bulb in the bathroom, again. Taking count, it had only been a few weeks since the last change out, and about the same previous... To resolve the "light bulb fixture from hell", I decided to replace the whole fixture, with a nice "shop light" -=- let it try and burn out those bulbs in a few weeks :)

Upon removing the ceiling mounted fixture ( recessed ), it was found that the wiring was so old, the wires had lost their protective outside coating, and all you could see, was, the bare copper wire going straight up into the ceiling. I took a volt / ohm meter to the wires and found they were both grounding to the metal housing fixture. Not having much more to do, I electrical taped both wires, as much as I could, and connected the shop light wires to them. Needless to say, the "hot" wire is still grounding to the housing fixture - but we havent had to replace a bulb in the bathroom for more than six months now... ( as a side note, I had the chance to touch the metal housing while the power was on, and you do get a nice "buzz" from the voltage, not enough to jolt you, but, enough to know something isnt as it should be ) -=- you gotta love "old" houses, and their electrical systems :)

Incident #2: ( combined PC and electricity )
Had a friend who was taking one of those ITT electrical / motherboard design classes. Nice place, everyone had a table, a bread board for designing their "prototype" boards on, and a plugin for any voltage you could ever want; ac, dc, from 1 volt, all the way up to around 240 volt... Needless to say, my friend was working on a "chip" board, like a microprocessor, something like an old PC chip design. When he had gotten to actual testing, he accidently "plugged in" to the 120 ac voltage. The chip got so much voltage, that it not only "popped" out of the silicon casement it was in, but, also shot more that ten feet in the air, and embedded itself into the ceiling. He showed me the "chip" mounting, it looked like all the little wires had been pulled to the point of snapping. The chip itself, still remains in the classroom, probably as a example of "what not to do"...

Ms. Cuddles
-=- Sometimes, when saving the universe from evil, you just gotta take a bathroom break -=-

[OErjan]

sadly this is the kind of fuse that looks like a toggleswitch (black tab sticking out) you just flipp it to reset it.
I would have to use scredriver and undo 8 screws to put it in my pocket.
first the boxcover (4) then unscrew leads (2) then remove the fuse itself (2 more), would take 10 min or so, I now hang a sign there just in case

[chris-harry]

[QUPTE]
Incident #2: ( combined PC and electricity ) [/QUOTE] hehe, man, thats a great lesson... :D:D i can just see that happening.. :D

one time, last year, i volenteared to take part in a physics experiment... anyway... it was one of those ball things, and from then on (for about a week), everyone called me einstine, due to the hair stayed that way... for atleast half a day... i really didnt mind, me hair is always messy.. :D:D

[jjmac]

When it comes to volunteering for experiments. Watch out for the one where they strap all these wires to your head. If so, check out the other end of the table very carefully. If there's a chook sitting there, and it also has the head gear, and your both being piped into a RS6000 mini ... head for the hills fast, (real fast)


jm
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Life skills #137

== Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with. ==

[chris-harry]

hehe... did this today... :D really stupid... but not worst disaster... but hay... you get that...

i was FINALLY get a linux partion on me good computer (the one connected to the internet, aka, the one i'm on now that didnt have linux... (the one in me room did)), any way... you know how you type in your password and confirm it for the first time... hehe, i was on the phone, not watching what letter i was typing in, and i typed the wrong password i wanted... OPPS!!! and the chances of doing that are 1 out of a pain in the but big number...

talk about stupidity... :D:D

[chris-harry]

somehow, in me stupidity moments... i did this...

http://img299.echo.cx/img299/3630/ohshit6ey.gif

yes... there is nothing in there in the controll center, nothing to controll... I GAVE AWAY ALL ME POWER!! and now i am sad...

[knewbix]

Well, I'd been using Windows for ten years or more but believe it or not, I never had any problems serious enough to make it stop working altogether. I have had some "not working at all" moments in Linux though. In regards to general PC use: most stupid/embarrassing moment was coming home from hardware class after learning about how to install RAM (wow!) and offering to upgrade my parent's PC with some old RAM from their old PC. Needless to say, it didn't work. I unplugged the RAM and rebooted, no go. 3 or 4 hours of system beeps later, I worked out I had to re-seat the original RAM stick because I had bumped it or something. Kinda boring but yes, it's just one of those things that happen. I guess you have to be there to experience the shame.

Linux "not working at all" moment is hosing my MBR on several occasions. There's nothing quite as shocking as being a n00b and booting your system and getting "99 99 99 99 99 99 99" etc (or whatever it is). I still get edgy when I install a new Linux.