From bricking to fires, water cooling to blood stains, here are your worst computer customization horror stories.
The fans spun and the lights turned on, but nothing else was happening.
I went into full troubleshooting mode and started working everything backwards, only to find nothing.
Needless to say: I am never letting a rookie touch anything ever again.
Carefully installed everything (well, everything else), powered it up, and zap!
AndJsmitty:
This would have been roughly 20 years ago, fresh out of my hardware tech class.
I was so knowledgeable at the time and full of pride.
I could now build my own PC, and spent some time getting just the right parts and case.
Got everything put together and am now ready to power up for the first time.
Almost immediately upon hitting the power button, there was a quick popping noise, and then nothing.
Not necessarily an incorrect statement, per se, but not the full truth either.
Lesson in PC humility learned.
There was blood everywhere and he had to be rushed to the nurses office.
They managed to get an ambulance there and he was taken away and had to get stitches.
Everything turned out fine, but the carpet in that area has forever been a darker color.
AndTek9:
Roughly 20 years ago or so I was replacing the modem in my PC.
This is one of those times where you regret the nice card slots we have in machines now.
The one with the far too tiny case, fromWo0tus:
…I bought a shiny new video card.
I was upgrading from a GTX 430 to a GTX 960.
Which forced me to buy a new case… That brings the price of the build up considerably.
First on their list was to come in to buy everything to build their first computer.
He bitched and whined until I agreed to test the components to find out which components were bad.
Then when I took the board out I found more carpet fibers.
These two A+ certified GENIUSES decided to build their new computer on their living room floor.
Die-cut folders, inserts, collateral, and a CD authored in Macromedia Director.
This was the late 1990s and the gig was, at the time, the highlight of my career.
He contacted me midweek after the presentation.
The disks had a not-very-virulent virusthough a virus nonethelessthat proliferated between definition updates.
When I put the disk in my drive the alert window came up immediately.
Surprisingly, he trusted me to do this.
(Can I send you a new disk?
I promise itll be clean!).
It turned one of my most profitable jobs into one of my most expensive.
The one where theypulled a Whitson, fromStizuner:
Two machines back I built a massive water-cooled beast.
So the next machine I wanted to do the oppositeZ97 in a mini-ITX case.
I got it done and it worked well.
One day I noticed a small drip leak from the reservoir… Few random drops here and there.
I shut down down and cleaned up.
Ordered my new fittings and waited for it all to come in.
Here we are a few days later and I have all my parts.
Install everything and its looking good!
Do a leak test and everything is good!
Turn it in on and get to benching.
About an hour later I notice a slight drop on a fitting so I start tightening things.
Mind you the machine is full on running!
I pull the hose out, screaming, and yank the power plug.
I know Im ruined.
I disassemble everything and remove all the blocks.
Dry everything and clean it all with alcohol.
Wait a day to verify its all dry.
Reassemble with standard cooling test each part.
I havent water-cooled since…
The closest computer store was a mom and pop shop most of an hour away.
And she wanted to build her own computer.
There was just one little problem.
Her power supply had a floppy power connector.
Her computer
did not
have a floppy drive.
It did, however, have a fan header on the motherboard that was the exact same size.
As you may have already figured out, I plugged the tapes power supply into the keyboard jack.
A loud pop immediately followed.
Upon autopsy, I found the silicon was blown clean off one of the chips on the motherboard.
Everything is quiet, cooling is magnificent.
I dont notice a difference in speeds.
But the OS is on the wrong drive, and its really, really driving me crazy.
Andtechcore2:
A former friend of mine had me fix his computers off and on over the years.
He always watched what I was doing.
PC was giving POST beeps indicating a bad video card.
He calls me back and said it was working but she needed high resolution to do her photos.
Totally smoked the motherboard.
The one with the Magic Bullet Incident,fromMr.
Snips:
During an epic 3-day Winter-Wonder-LAN my friends neighbor accidentally discharged a .45 pistol in our direction.
There were 14 of us in there playing plus his 2 parents and 4 siblings.
Its still referred to as the Magic Bullet Incident.
A quick hardware swap and my buddy was back in Diablo II like nothing had happened.
Ill study when Im bored of playing WoW.
So I get the order two days later, put everything together, hit the power button, nothing.
Cant figure out why.
Call my friend, who says, of course, Sounds like you didnt seat the processor.
Are you sure you seated the processor?
OF COURSE I SEATED THE FUCKING PROCESSOR YOU ASSHOLE!!
I unclamped the processor, and as I reached for it…
It slid a couple millimeters over and fell into place.
I hadnt seated the processor.
And somehow, I had avoided bending any pins.
I quickly rebuilt everything and of course, it fired up.
I called my friend, apologized profusely, and took him out for fried chicken.
Being an awesome friend, he forgave me.
Most tense moments of my life.
No lights, no beep, no anything.
After fixing the wire, finally, FINALLY my machine booted and worked just fine.
Ordered the case, assembled all the components and put the thing together.
Well, I go to fire it up and it just goes into an endless rebooting loop.
As an IT tech I figure this shouldnt be that hard to fix.
I hooked up just the motherboard and the power switch connection and lo and behold, it fired up.
Ok, so I then proceeded to connect the reset switch at which point it started rebooting again.
Once I reseated the spring everything worked fine.
After removing the clip, I found I burnt out one of the circuits on the motherboard.
Normal thing to do during the day.
Well, I applied the wrong ACL denying
all
traffic.
So, I turn white and look at my supervisor and just mutter the words oh shit.
I tell him what happens and he replies with When is the next flight?
Illustration by Fruzsina Kuhari.
