What was your worst PC disaster?

[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...

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... opps... 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... ... 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.