What is the stupidest thing you have ever done to your computer?

Catnip · May 26, 2025

I am talking about doing physical damage or corrupting your OS or something similar by having a complete brain lapse and doing something without thinking.

I have a wee story to relate in the spirit of example:

In my very early days as an electrical engineer, I was tasked with repairing a computer. I narrowed it down to the 24 pin connector and one of the wires was slightly broken at the metal part in the connector. I removed the wire from the connector and proceeded to solder it to the metal connector while holding it over the motherboard. I wasn't really good at soldering at the time and it was very difficult.

I put the wire back in and powered up, only to be greeted by sparks and smoke. Examining the motherboard with the power off, I noticed a big splash of solder on the motherboard with burn marks all around it and scorch marks in other places on the motherboard. In my lousy soldering attempt, I had dropped solder onto the motherboard and didn't notice it.

The end result:

- Two lost hard disks
- Blown motherboard
- Blown graphics card and other peripheral cards
- Lost my job

Let's hear your tales of foolishness and have a laugh.

antspants · May 26, 2025

“I am incredible”

I forced the CPU into the board upside down and bent a heap of pins

Recently I tore the battery cable from a laptop when repairing the battery. Not worth fixing, I held a street procession and we sang kumbaya and poured lighter fluid on it then lit it. The police came and to cut a long story short, people were shot and the rest of us got locked up. (The part about the battery cable is a lie. People did get shot)

Scannerman · May 26, 2025

The fact that I was on pain killers from a failed gall bladder operation when it happened has no bearing on this. I blame the hardware. Somehow that nasty fan header persuaded me that it was a USB header and it just had to be plugged in. Please don't ask how I managed it. As I result I successfully destroyed a USB stick and learned a valuable lesson. Bad fan header!! Bad, bad, bad!

Helmuuth · May 26, 2025

ha! i remember quite recently when i had my daughter and hubby over holidays..their daughter somehow got on amazon and bought over $245 worth of stuff. i forgot to lock my pc as i always do. and since amazon already have my card info embedded in their system well...a recipe of a disaster just waiting to happen. lesson learned

Edwin · May 26, 2025

Vacuuming inside the case while the PC was running!

jvickers · May 26, 2025

A motherboard shorted from static electricity because someone wasn't grounded properly! Stupid hardware!

antspants · May 27, 2025

jvickers said:
because someone wasn't grounded properly!

May I suggest Zen meditation?

PerpetualCycle · May 27, 2025

Out of many a build:

Damaged a memory slot with too much force once.
Irretrievably bent one of those crappy USB3 motherboard headers. Luckily it wasn't a necessary pin. OCD bugged the Heck out of me though.
Sure others I have blocked out.

MrPig · May 30, 2025

Bought a new 30MB hard card remember them!
Excitedly remove from anti-static bag & almost have a cardiac arrest from the static discharging through my arm into the PC.
Failed to boot, I sent it back DOA & they replaced it!.

As a side note my degree is in electronics, I spend all day wearing anti-static gear! Hangs head in shame.

Scannerman · May 30, 2025

MrPig said:
Bought a new 30MB hard card remember them!
Excitedly remove from anti-static bag & almost have a cardiac arrest from the static discharging through my arm into the PC.
Failed to boot, I sent it back DOA & they replaced it!.

As a side note my degree is in electronics, I spend all day wearing anti-static gear! Hangs head in shame.

I used to do electrical work out in the oil field where everything is double grounded and explosion proof. Sooner or later we all get tickled. If this is your first time consider it an initiation rite.

Catnip · May 31, 2025

MrPig said:
As a side note my degree is in electronics, I spend all day wearing anti-static gear! Hangs head in shame.

As someone with equivalent credentials, I think I can say without doubt that we have all done that at one point or other. I keep forgetting my heel grounder and getting hell for it. I wonder why I always get zapped.

SmokeMe · May 31, 2025

Back in my Windows XP days I was installing XP on another partition & the installer asked if I want to format it, I clicked ‘yes’ & it formatted the whole HDD, I lost some data that was irreplaceable.
I hate it when that happens

I tried several data restore apps but none worked for what I missed the most.
I removed the HDD & put it in storage incase a restore app comes along that might work.

Scannerman · May 31, 2025

SmokeMe said:
Back in my Windows XP days I was installing XP on another partition & the installer asked if I want to format it, I clicked ‘yes’ & it formatted the whole HDD, I lost some data that was irreplaceable.
I hate it when that happens

I tried several data restore apps but none worked for what I missed the most.
I removed the HDD & put it in storage incase a restore app comes along that might work.

You may wish to look into MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate. It isn't free but I'm quite impressed at what it is capable of rescuing from formatted hard drives. You can purchase a life time license for around $150 and although that sounds steep I have to say that I have saved so many people's personal data with this program that it actually paid for itself. I'm retired now and I only do recoveries for people as a personal favour to a friend type-of-thing but I still have the software to do it.

dencal · May 31, 2025

Uninstalled the Bios....no excuses whatsoever....

SmokeMe · May 31, 2025

Scannerman said:
You may wish to look into MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate. It isn't free but I'm quite impressed at what it is capable of rescuing from formatted hard drives. You can purchase a life time license for around $150 and although that sounds steep I have to say that I have saved so many people's personal data with this program that it actually paid for itself. I'm retired now and I only do recoveries for people as a personal favour to a friend type-of-thing but I still have the software to do it.

Thanks for the suggestion Scannerman.
I just ordered a license for your recommended version.
Now I can try out this USB3.0 Hard Drive Adapter Converter, hoping it'll work so I don't have to pull out the clunker ooold desktop w/ a IDE connector.

RazorKat83 · Jun 2, 2025

A few months ago, i was drinking, and I decided to do a fresh install of Windows. . I have a 1TB M.2 Drive, and I had it split into 2 partitions. I used one, obviously for my OS, and the other half for documents, website files, and software. . . Well, I wasn't watching what I was doing and accidentally deleted the 2nd partition. . . I'm thankful I had most of my Serial Numbers to software backed up.

RazorKat83 · Jun 2, 2025

MrPig said:
Bought a new 30MB hard card remember them!
Excitedly remove from anti-static bag & almost have a cardiac arrest from the static discharging through my arm into the PC.
Failed to boot, I sent it back DOA & they replaced it!.

As a side note my degree is in electronics, I spend all day wearing anti-static gear! Hangs head in shame.

I've never had static issues, but I always work on computers on my kitchen table, or my glass desk. . NEVER on the carpet. . lol

Helmuuth · Jun 4, 2025

I recollect that one time i forgot the actual timeline..when i had an HP pc...it was going through a system update. At same time i was talking on phone with a friend in trouble and absentmindedly shut off the pc causing a bsod event. Never get distracted while pc is updating, focus on one thing at a time

Cyrax · Aug 3, 2025

This is an easy one for me. I went to the Darkweb using only Windows.

DJNelson · Aug 10, 2025

My most recent mistake was bricking a 2TB SSD by forgetting to ground myself before touching it. Not even enough static to make a spark, but it doesn't take much.

What is the stupidest thing you have ever done to your computer?

Have you ever done something stupid with your computer?

All the time.

Only when I drink.

The only thing stupid that I do is let the kids at the PC.

I never do anything stupid.

I am incredible, it is the hardware/software's fault.

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