Whats the dumbest thing you done on a pc or peripheral

[mjs warlord]

Yeah ok we all done it but what the hell i am sure this will make you lol.

This first thing was not my fault , i got my first pc just over 20 years ago and knew nothing , i connected to the internet and all the pre-installed bloatware updated itself and then i had a go at surfing , after a while a green box came on screen with a message saying ..... Gator needs to update your profile ... and yes i did " click here " because i thought it might be related to the bloatware updates still running. Then it happened ..... i got my first virus in less than 30 mins of using my pc and i had to do a factory reset on a brand new pc.

I was burning some photos to a cd and the mrs told me to turn pc off as we were going out. The next day i turned the pc on but it would not boot , i tried everything i could think of and in the end i had to admit defeat and take the pc into the store , thank god i had a service contract so no £50 per hour charge , the tech guy said the pc was trying to boot from the disc of photos i had left in the machine.

ZedClampet ...... this ones for you because you answered the question i posted about this.

I tried all sorts of things to try and figure out why my pc would hang instead of shutting down. For almost 20 years i have been exiting steam using the X in the top right corner and never had a problem , i then started seeing reports in the error log saying windows did not shut down properly , sometimes i had to do a forced re-start back to desktop and i could then shut it down properly because the pc would just not turn off. I thought it was related to the game SATISFACTORY because the refusal to shut down only seem to happen with this game. Then somebody ( ZedClampet ) said ..... i assume your going top left instead of top right and doing EXIT. LOL it seems like i been using steam interface wrong for 20 years.

I guess only doing 3 dumb things in 20 years is ok but i guess some will say thats 3 too many.

 

[ZedClampet]

I had serious and quite bizarre computer problems for over a year on my last gaming laptop. Why? As it turns out, it couldn't handle all the USB connections going to it. I had two USB docking stations. For some reason, this was causing the computer to crash, take 20 minutes to reboot, and all sorts of strange things (like the Shift keys not working). Then one day I was looking at the black screen as it was struggling to reboot again, and I reached over and disconnected one of the USB docking stations, and the laptop instantly booted and never had problems again.

 

[mjs warlord]

A long time ago i read a pc can run 256 usb devices but as you know that compete B.S.

Take a look at this

how many USB devices can i connect to a single PC

all,I need to connect lots of USB devices to my PC.I have 14 racks of USB's, on each rack i have 14 slots where i connect USB... | General Hardware

community.spiceworks.com

 

[neogunhero]

I built my very first computer in 2011. I saved up $800 from mowing lawns, allowance and chores, and any other side jobs I could get the neighbors to pay me to do. I watched tons of YouTube videos and read as much info I could find in anticipation for the build. I thought I knew everything there is to snapping together some hardware and jamming it into my case.

When the parts finally came in, I built the whole thing on a thick shaggy carpet… the backside of the motherboard was in direct contact with the worst kind of carpet for static electricity. I unboxed everything thinking it would be easier if all my hardware was laying on the ground within arms reach. CPU, RAM sticks, GPU, all on the carpet. Putting them on the motherboard required me to press down on the mobo further into the carpet. Needless to say I had no idea what static electricity could do to computer components. However, it miraculously did not get fried and worked perfectly. I kept the same motherboard and CPU installed for 7 years.
I will never make that mistake again even if my luck turned out good that last time.

 

[Alm]

When I was in school my best friend convinced me it would be a good idea to double the capacity of a zip disk using a DOS command for floppy disks (DBLSPACE? - something like that). Needless to say it screwed up my Dad's PC and he had to pay about £200 to get it fixed.

 

[Pifanjr]

As someone who started interacting with computers when I was 2 years old, I've made a lot of dumb mistakes. I've downloaded countless viruses and mishandled a lot of hardware, sometimes breaking it completely.

The dumbest thing I've probably done was taking my desktop with me in my suitcase when flying to the USA, without any protection besides the clothes that were in there too. It was pretty banged up and it took some fiddling to get it to work again. I'm pretty sure that's when my HDD started dying though.

The dumbest thing my brother has ever done was probably changing the colour of the Blue Screen of Death to red by fiddling in the registry. He did manage to do it, but the computer refused to start afterwards, requiring a complete reinstall. Then again I think he reinstalled Windows about once a month because he kept messing with it.

My sister once deleted Minesweeper off of the computer and broke Windows like that.

 

[Brian Boru]

DOS command for floppy disks (DBLSPACE? - something like that)

Probably DriveSpace, that was dodgy back in 90s.

Since we're supposed to learn from our mistakes, I should have a real PhD by now—mine stands for Physical Destroyer. But apparently my learning only lasts until next time I forget

Been caught more than once by the classic PSU not turned on—lost over a day to it first time

Maybe my 3rd or 4th build—enough experience to have gotten cocky about my ability—I built the whole thing in one go, only to have to disassemble it all again for some reason I've blocked out.

Probably the longest-lasting dumb thing I did tho was sticking with Windows 3.0 for over a month, despite the thing crashing every day. I finally dumped it due to frustration and went back to the excellent XTree Gold. Windows 3.1 tho saved the day later.

 

[Alm]

https://imgur.com/a/nUf1f3U

View: https://imgur.com/a/nUf1f3U


Looks like DriveSpace was the later name for dblspace!

 

[Smellincoffee]

When I was a kid, I got angry because I kept dying in the same level of Donkey Kong Country 2 and would smash the Gameboy into my forehead in frustration. It broke after a few times. Buying a Game Boy Pocket (basically a thin version of the original Gameboy) with my allowance money over the course of several months taught me to rein in my temper.

PC wise....once I was chatting with a girl on AIM, and she wanted to know if I wanted to see a photo of her in a bikini. AIM had the ability to send/receive files like pictures, wavs, and even mp3s. My moronic self saw the extension was photojpg.exe and actually clicked on it once, but fortunately didn't double-click. That could have gone sideways. Frankly, I'm amazed I didn't run into issues using limewire/kazaa (FOR TOTALLY LEGITIMATE PURPOSES, NOT AT ALL FOR MUSIC SHARING) back in the day.

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

Once I was writing a script in Python that would help me with my then-work related thingies. Basically it was a simple stuff "delete everything in subfolders" with an option to specify the extension. I was so sure I wrote it correctly I well, tested on production. Let's just say I was lucky that I made a mistake and the only thing it deleted was itself.
It was much easier to recover a script than it would be to recover well, everything else. And no, this script didn't move things to the bin, na-ah.

Othertime I was trying to get some data off a HDD that was damaged. Connected it using my very old at this point set, something like this below.
Guess either I did something wrong this time around (not my first rodeo, but I may have made a mistake, can't remember) or the drive was really so damaged it kinda started smoking the moment I connected the power. Oopsie.

 

[Pifanjr]

Once I was writing a script in Python that would help me with my then-work related thingies. Basically it was a simple stuff "delete everything in subfolders" with an option to specify the extension. I was so sure I wrote it correctly I well, tested on production. Let's just say I was lucky that I made a mistake and the only thing it deleted was itself.
It was much easier to recover a script than it would be to recover well, everything else. And no, this script didn't move things to the bin, na-ah.

Nothing as humbling as writing code.

 

[Frindis]

Many eons ago I got a nice flower arrangement from my neighbour. I put the flowers in a large vase that had way too much water in it and decided the best place to put it would be on top of my PC case. You know, so I could get some fresh air while playing. Then one fateful morning I noticed the vase had less water (incredibly enough) and decided the smartest thing would be to lift the vase using only four fingers inside and thumb on the outside. Yeah, REALLY smart! Vase broke and way too much water seeped into my shitty case to the point of it starting to burn when I turned on the PC later.

 

[D10S]

I left my ultrabook in one of the schools in work at, and I don't know which one. Still haven't found it, someone must have taken it during lockdown thinking it was just office stuff they could use. really liked it. Specs were crap, but it was a thin, light, white lenovo 10 or 11".

 

[D10S]

first time I built a pc I smoked a nforce2 socket A board.

ASRock > K7NF2-RAID

Socket A(462) for AMD processor; NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 / MCP-RAID chipset; For FSB400MHz AMD Athlon XP/Sempron processor; Supports Dual Channel DDR400 high performance memory; SATA 1.5Gb/s, RAID 0, 1, JBOD; Hybrid Booster - ASRock Safe Overclocking Technology; AGP8X, 5.1 channel Audio, 10/100...

www.asrock.com

screwed it right to the case w/o standoffs.
luckily, my athlon xp 1800+ was undamaged and asrock replaced it free of charge, must have thought the board just burned.