Biggest Screw Ups... Hardware Frying, Or just plain Stupid Mistakes we made

Haha, me again what do you know! https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2000/09/1.gif This was after my 486 days... but I had a 233MMX system and a POS AT Case... after a couple months the pwr supply fan starting making grinding noises. It had me so annoyed one night I could not sleep (computer in my bedroom). I had to get up early the next morning and I was doing a big download. I ended up sticking a screwdriver in the back of the pwr supply to stop it from spinning. https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2000/04/1.gif The next day, I noticed my entire case was more warm then usual. I felt the back and almost burnt myself! Then I realized I had forgot about the screwedriver... fortunately no damaged was caused by this, so far... When I pulled the screw driver out It arc'd across something inside the pwr supply and it made a nice loud POP noise, freaked me right out, I unplugged it, and got the screw driver out, but the pwr supply was toast! (I was only 16, so not too bright!)

Customer brings in there computer telling me, “It turns on and off by itself” The person took apart the computer and put a rosary inside it saying that it was possessed by daemons (hinting towards evil). I turned off Advanced Power Management and they never came back.

Customer brings in a computer saying its been acting flukie for 3yrs now and he can’t take it anymore. It has an ASUS motherboard with bios revision 1.0, I go to ASUS’s website and check out the bios updates for the motherboard, threw the bios revisions it lists resolved conflicts with almost every piece of hardware he has inside the computer.
I flash the bios and it won’t boot up, what did I do wrong? I used the wrong flash utility from ASUS. Oddly the utility didn’t tell me otherwise, and there was no boot block L. I tried flashing another chip to the ASUS chip but they have some ID/function call in their bios chips to uniquely identify the chips to the software and I couldn’t flash it. So what did I do? Sold him a brand new system.

I work in IT support for a large engine design/manufacturing firm.

When I was on holiday, a user complained that she couldn't get her PC to boot up. Sadly, instead of telling IT about this problem, she told one of the maintenance people. The maintenance guy thought it would be a good idea to flip the voltage switch from 230 volts (what we use in the UK) to 110. Apperently there was a loud bang followed by some smoke.

When I returned from my holiday, I found a PC lying on the floor of my office with a notice on it: Joe - I think it's broken. Please send back to manufacturer.

Fortunately, only the PSU needed to be replaced.

Made this mistake once on my own system when I was trying to overclock it. (instead of leaving well enough alone...)

I forgot to plug in the power connection for the cooling fan. (it had been a long day)
5 minutes later the system starts locking up constantly. I have a look at the main board and sure enough the fan wasn't spinning and there was a funny smell coming from the CPU. Just about burned my hand when I checked to see how warm the heat sink was.

Fortunately after letting the cpu cool down for a bit and plugging the fan power back in the system worked fine.

The best screw-up I've recently performed recently was forgetting to replace the cmos jumper on a machine I was Upgrading for a customer. After 2 hrs of changing and rechanging Cpus, Memory, and Jumpers, I remembered Disabling the cmos jumper when I changed Cases and cpus. Were I Alone when this happened It would have been a lot easier
to forgive myself for being such an air head.
Unfortunately My partner and an employee were
there to witness it after putting up with years of incessant teasing on my part for there continuing follies.

Holy scrws !!!! I wonder if that tech worked in Calgary ALberta Canada
Heres my story of my friends poor PC
It is Nov. 97 and my friends PC goes belly up, He can't access his hard drive, I am a newbie with my Packard Bell so I can't help him
He takes it to where he bought it,and they have another company that does their warranty service fix it for them
Well two weeks later he finally gets it back and he goes to set it up
He plugs in the phone cord to the modem and the modem falls into the case , it hits the sound card ( thankfully it is not on )
My freind had to take the computer apart to get the phone cord out of the modem
He finds the CPU fan unplugged and it is genrally a mess
They return it again and I guess a tech lost his job
The computer is returned with a dead sound card but a new modem, My friend was ticked off
Then his drive failed again!!!
That was the last straw, Off to future shop for a huge 4.3 gig Quantum
That worked OK till it started acting up
I came over with a 1.2 gig drive and we backed up the system, I connect my drive correctly and the system won't boot
I look at the ide controller and find the ribbon cable was on backwards at the controller and the 4.3 gig drive
And a tech installed that cable, I was learning a bit at this time
Well we got it working good, set the bios correct for his drive but the system was never the same after the first time back when the modem caved into the sound card
This set my friend and I on the path to learn about PCs and service our own ( And when I get employed, service customers PCs using screws on reassembly ) https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2000/03/1.gif

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Originally posted by Hippie_Techs:
This one was not mine but a fellow tech's.
He had just finished replacing a warranty part in a Compaq Presario (POS's if you ask me.) and put it all back together. The customer picked it up, took it home, and proceeded to take it downstairs to his computer room. He watched it slide out of it's case and tumble down the stairs. Apparently the tech hadn't remembered to put the screws back in the case. The customer was happy when he received his brand new machine.
It doesn't end there. A week later the same tech replaced another warranty part in another Presario. This time one of our salesman was delivering it to the customer. When he started down the stairs, lo and behold it started to slide out of the case. Luckily the salesman was fairly nimble and caught it before it slid all the way out. The tech no longer works for our store. We can't afford him.

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Format c https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2004/08/1.gif I'm givin er all she's got cap'in !!! )

[This message has been edited by format c: (edited September 17, 2000).]

Was that the infamous Crow bar lady ?

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Originally posted by Lowen SoDium:
Here are a few.

Did you know that socket 3 CPUs can go in, in any direction. My old cow-orker found that one out the hard way. POOFFF!

A lady brought in a computer that was beat all to s**t. I asked what happened. It turns out that the case was one of the designs were the face comes off and the screws are on the front rather than the back. She was not aware of this and took a crow-bar and tryed to force the case off backwards. It pulled off the backings of all the cards and the motherboard. I don't know about you, but I would have atleast lied and said that it was vandlized or something.


One time the other Tech and I went to lunch and when we got back I sat down to resume troubleshooting the system I had been working on. One thing: I had left the system on when I left and it had gone to sleep. Deep sleep including the fans and all. So, I proceded to remove cards to find the root of the lock ups. The first card I removed let out a small blue arc and the system woke up and procceded to beep. Never did get that one working again.

A lady called up and said that her laptop keyboard was sticking. I said, "well it probley needs cleaning" She replayed, "Oh, ok" and hung up. The next day she came in with her freshly washed laptop (strait out of the dishwasher) and wanted to know why it didn't work any more.

Cliff Coleman

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i had a bad day once. took my computer into work (electronics repair shop - not pc specific) to impress my boss with my mp3 collection and sound quality of my maxi studio isis sound card. after work (2PM on a saturday) figured i may as well do a mini upgrade while i had it there. after installing another 128 meg of ram, (now 152 megs all up) windows refused to boot, and
occasionally in the 10 mins i was troubleshooting it, i'd reboot, and my video card would act dead (like monitor unplugged). after shuffling around simms to try and see if i could get it working, my video card wouldnt come up at all https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2004/03/1.gif . after much tearing of hair, and substituting of cards https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2000/04/1.gif , i remembered video cards need the -12v and -5v rails. in my simm shuffling, i had knocked out one of the AT psu connnectors. figures. in the end i only wound up with a bigfoot 1280, my original bigfoot 2110 (both in the same 5.25 bay) and my original 32 mb of ram. i now have 3.3 gigs of space for my mp3s. yay https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2000/03/1.gif

P.S i left work a 6PM. it took me 3 hours to find that fault (hidden under a mess of leads), and another hour to spray my case black.

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a friend and co-worker of mine was once upgrading a hard drive for a customer, and couldn't get the drive to detect. he tried a different one, same thing. that's when he realized that the electronics underneath the drive were touching a piece of metal on the chassis. but no sparks, no smoke, nothing. then he gets another drive, but drops it off the bench onto the cement floor. we actually managed to RMA the drive though. https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2000/09/1.gif

oh, and once when i was 15 and new to all this tech stuff i was installing this 386 board, and well... i kinda forgot to put the stand-offs in. i sure got to see a spark that time...

everybody has a goofy cousin, hasn't it?
well, mine's once closed my case and forgot one skrew inside. luckily, it damaged only an isa ide controller...

oh, he once connected a psu in-the-wrong-way (if u know what i mean) too, and then the electric wires caught fire over the ceiling, melting it and falling over other client's pc.
luckily again, it was just a minitower case replaced (and we had to give a good sunbath on the cards).

ah, he put a 486 backwards on the socket (everyone on the store but him felt the smell). he's definitely a lucky guy -no damage at all.

coming up:
mine's (we're a cool family)

now mine's:

let me see...
i put on a 486/50 on a 66mhz-configured socket (it built some heat, you can bet)

forgot to take off the cmos jumper (once)

last week i live-connected a b/w monitor on psu's back, it started to make funny little noises as the screen accompanied with funny flashes. later, it was normal...

oh, soury four may bed englisch

coming up next:
client's ones

Agreed, but it isnt just the PC-Chips boards, its also the SiS chipset that they have. And how you have to install the busmaster drivers to see the cdrom in win95. But the busmaster drivers are on a cd and too big to fit on a floppy. Aint they smart?

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Originally posted by klenath:
Oh! This is off-topic, but I find this unbelievable:

My boss (the owner of the store) insists that PC-Chips (in all their integrated glory) motherboards are just as good, if not better than, Abit or Asus or Tyan motherboards. Of course, I've lost count how many of those PC-Chips boards we've RMA'd now...

[/B]

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PC Chips suck

I'm not gonna go into the details, cause it ruins the story, but one time, I ran over my boss. I didn't go to jail and I didn't lose my job.

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Wanna get more power outta your PC? Flip the switch on the back or the power supply to 230w. You'll almost double your power! Anyone eles smell smoke?

This happened to me twice while replacing Acer motherboards. While trying to pop off the heatsink from the old processor I not once but twice popped off a small resistor near the damned CPU socket. I spent about an hour and a half on each one soldering it back on because I didn't want to order a new one and wait another week for the part to come in. Well, in both instances it worked! The system posted and booted just fine after. My fellow techs thought it was pretty damned funny me trying to get this tiny 1mm resistor back on with a big-*** soldering iron and thick gauge solder.


Frostbite.