Worst Computer Problem Ever

[vun]

I plugged some molex stuff into somewhere it shouldn't and my mobo died. It took a while before I got a new one.
But the worst thing was probably to not downclock my factory-overclocked 7900 because now it's gone completely fritz and it's too late to fix it now.

Sometimes I consider throwing my PC out the window and just get a Mac. It can't run that many games, but it can run Diablo 2, Photoshop and tablet drivers so I'd be perfectly fine.

E//
You'll have to excuse my writing, I feel like crap and can't type coherently without checking and rewriting every word at least 3 times.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

Ok, let me think...

*Strokes Macbook*

ill have to get back to you on this one.

there is the large amount of unpublished exploits and holes in mac osx, they tried doing a month of mac bugs, stuff that's been submitted to apple to fix, and release one bug/exploit a day with the fix but apple put a stop to that by suing the ppl who did it

not sure what my worst one to happen to me is, i've been pretty good with my pc. tho i've dealt with tons of other isses, i think my record was over 3k worth of spyware and virii found on someone's pc

 

[Emmitt_Nervend]

The worst thing I've ever experience was deleting an Ubuntu partition without fixing the boot loader. It's fun not being able to load up windows.

I'm also very surprised my HDD hasn't died yet. I've re-formated and partitioned the damned thing probably over 100 separate times.

 

[crabman]

My only real problem is the drivers being suddenly inaccessible for some reason, as well as the hard drive becoming essentially crap. Boy was that annoying. We tried to back everything up before we got a new hard drive and reinstalled XP etc, but of course the external hard drive we bought was useless, as it needed drivers to work.
Most annoying about that hard drive though was the 40+ minutes it took to turn on the computer, with each attempt being a hope that it would indeed turn on eventually. Press the button and pray...

 

[00exmachina]

If I get bonus points for self inflicted problems:
When adding a hard drive to the old family computer I had to remove the IDE cable, got the hard drive mounted plugged both drives into the cable and noticed that there were 3 pins missing from the cable plug in the mother board.

Found 2 picked up the case and shook it and didn't hear a rattle so I figured it fell out of the case, replaced the pins with 3 form an unused cd drive, turned the computer on.

The cursor blinked once on the screen, no post, beep, nothing just a blank screen.

Turns out I just lobotomized the family computer. Happy days ensued.

 

[BlazeTheVampire]

I know in another thread we've discussed CAD and how some of you don't like it, but all this talk of Vista reminded me of a good comic Tim did when the upgrade came out: http://www.cad-comic.com/comic.php?d=20070331 I had this posted on my dorm room door and every day there were at least three arrows on my message board pointing to it and saying "YES!" or some statement of agreement, lol.

 

[BustaNinja]

My monitor would display a really weird green pattern then my whole comp would crash. Took out the card, cleaned it, worked fine, then had a host of driver problems, re did all that work and I now have a PC that runs faster and at a higher resolution then before. Took a couple days though, oh and I have two keyboards running at once. Thats always fun.

 

[hobartuk]

blue screen of fucking death

 

[Blayze]

The worst problem I had that didn't stop me: My PC was *filthy* on the inside, a side-effect of not opening the case for two years. I went to a LAN and two of the regulars opened the case to have a look at the hardware, coming face-to-face with a wall of dust. When it was all cleaned out, the PC started only booting once every five times. Back then, I could tell you exactly where it would stop in POST each time.

Now? Windows Update recently killed my Vista, trapping it in an infinite boot loop. Last night, I managed to figure out what it was that killed it (Something to do with "ATK0110") and hid that download from sight, hopefully forever.

 

[TheFreeGus]

My computer wont turn on without the motherboard disk or a windows install disk in the CD drive.
Its been like that for over a year. I have a spare CD drive plugged in so it rarely bothers me.
I forget what the error it comes up, was my motherboard disk just stays in there permanently.

Vista was annoying at first until i disabled most of the "You do get access to this" functions.

 

[WingedFortress]

Ok, let me think...

*Strokes Macbook*

ill have to get back to you on this one.

Great, your macbook is in your hands.

Now try doing summat with it.

Like installling somthing that FUCKING WORKS!

but I jest, if you want a games machine, get summat that runs Windows.

*You want somthing that'll drive you round the fucking bend while getting shit thats works on windows without all the fuss, get a mac. *(my brothers opinion)

End of the day, from what he's told me, Windows has got me sold, at least it tells you why it's crashed as oppposed to the mac whic just goes "lockup for no fucking reason, youre fucked".

Before this switches to a ridiculous mac vs pc debate, both of you, don't be so fucking stupid.

You know where this is going, and that shit has gotten TIRED.

 

[Novajam]

This isn't really the worst thing that happens to my computer, It normally chuggs along just fine, but nonetheless, I used to have a 40 gig hard drive, and that was plain rubbish (it was a maxtor, coincidentally) so a year and a half ago I bought a new 400 gig one that works a lot better. The problem is that the motherboard can't decide wether it's SATA compatable or not, so to turn the computer on you need to keep pressing the on button over and over until it realises that the hard drive is actually there.

And then there was the time that I tried upgrading the RAM, and ended up breaking the power supply, and then I smelt smoke, and cried.

Regardless I still love the computer, and sometimes hug it when it does stuff without crashing.

 

[ingsoc]

I have had really good luck with computers. I have never seen a blue screen of death nor have I ever had a virus. I have used Windows since 1997 and now am experimenting with Ubuntu. From my personal experience, most people who have software problems brought it on themselves. Most people who have hardware problems brought it on themselves. The only real problem I have had is that the previous version of Ubuntu was not compatible with the mobo in my current machine. My wife's iMac died the week after the warranty expired when the mobo failed. Luckily, the screen and psu are alive and well and I may tinker with it a bit. All in one PS3?

 

[Slingback78]

The worst I've ever heard was someone dropping a nickel into a case and having it make a short circuit. It got so hot it melted into the motherboard and started smoking. Needless to say, that needed a replace.

The worst I've personally seen is my Mom flicking the power switch on the back on and off until blue lightening shot up it and it smoked and started smelling like silicone. She's still convinced it was a random glitch.

As for spyware issues, seriously, AVG + Spybot + SpywareBlaster keeps me clean, and Regcure + Disc cleanup keeps me golden.

 

[werepossum]

Worst I ever had was installing a $1,500 video card, saying "Now for the smoke test", turning it on, and watching blue smoke boil out to accompanying sizzles and sparks. It was around '88 or '89 in a 386-20, and $1,500 was more than I earned in a month, so it was a real sick feeling. Turned out it was manufactured wrong; the old ISA bus had hot pins next to ground pins, and with the spacing on the board not matching the spacing on the motherboard slot, a hot pin was firmly in contact with a ground connector. Anyway, they sent me a new one, I picked out the melted metal remains of the connectors from that slot to clear the fault, cautiously installed the replacement card into a new slot, and was good to go, but I was really sick that first morning.

Prior to that a buddy had a capacitor blow up on a CPM machine, to the point that it scored the inside of the case. No way a board capacitor should have that kind of energy.

 

[kirafaye]

Best one for me happened on my mothers computer. It started getting popups and no matter what we couldn't get rid of them and they became so frequent you couldn't use the computer. Had my computers friends over to play, ran every spywayre/virus/adaware we could possibly do repeatedly. During this entire time freaking out that I have downloaded something that has caused this and not know what punishment will come. Well a couple of hundred dollars later and a complete reformat and just about everything else. Turned out it was the Sony bug. Thats what you get for playing your legally bought CD on your computer to listen too. That sort of behaviour almost has me thinking downloading music illegally is the way to go.

 

[tk1989]

My worst problem with my pc was that the power supply just randomly failed one day. I dunno why it did, maybe it just overheated? It wasnt under much pressure i dont think, but yeah thats the worst problem ive really had tbh.

My m8 on the other hand.... he for some reason liked to open up his pc and look inside it and play around with it or sumfin.... he sumhow lost a cable and broke his graphics card, but im not really surprised tbh.

Anyways, ive not had any problems with my new macbook really Apart from when my brother spilt water all over it, but it survived! mwahaha. I just couldnt use it for like a week.

 

[djmacbest]

ok, had to get registered for this.

I'm about aweful with my PC luck, just bought new stuff, had to trade 2 defect graphic cards before getting a good one, and so forth. not talking about the numerous samsung hdds i fried already.

but this is my favorite: You know the message when you try a BIOS update - "Please don't disconnect the power source". Well, I didn't, intentionally, when I tried a BIOS update on my router to fix various network bugs. But some fuse blew, at exactly that time. Nothing was working, I called the customer service - "Nah, that message is for security reasons, even with a power failure, it's very very unlikely that it does serious and non-resetable damage. The window for that is smaller than a second. Try this..." and some tipps, of course none of which worked. "Well, that's odd. Apparently you are that unlucky. I guess, you'll have to send the router to us and we have to flash the BIOS again." I bought a new one for 30 bucks instead. Having the same unfixed network problems ever since.

 

[Magnetic2]

Turns out while putting in my DVD drive I knocked a capacitor(yes flux at that) off my motherboard. I installed the drive so I could play BioShock and the game kept crashing to the desktop. I thought it was my RAM in till 5 months later the whole pc failed to boot. That's when my bro, after inspecting, found the capacitor at the bottom of the case. How it ever ran for 5 months with only occasional blue screens I just don't know.