Wost Computer Disaster You've Ever Suffered
- Thread starter Mr. Q
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My old rig was water cooled and had two Nvidia 8800GT graphics cards. I wasn't watching the water level for awhile and it ran low. I noticed the system was running hot and bought some water to fill the reservoir. Everything was working fine for a minute, but then I started seeing dead pixels; Pinkish, purple, blue, and green dots started showing up all over the screen, then the monitor went black. Apparently the seal around one of the connections cracked, from age and the increased heat when the water ran low, and little drops of water were landing on the top graphics card, frying the card. I didn't know what to do, so I ran to grab a bowl, cut one of the hoses, and drained all the water as fast as I could. Ended up saving all the other components, but I still can't believe I almost destroyed my gaming computer.
Lol, ouch! I've done the same. Didn't get myself as bad as you though. This was before I really knew anything about computers and didn't realize how hot a processor can get without being properly cooled.DragonZA said:
Happened a few years ago, was running Linux - Decided: I want to play games, I'm just going to dual boot windows! So I installed Windows on a partition.
- BAD MOVE -
Installing windows on a partition wrecks the bootsector and makes it impossible to boot any other partition. I had to run Linux from a live-CD and reinstall it from the terminal.
I'm NOT a computer savvy person, this took HOURS for me.
- BAD MOVE -
Installing windows on a partition wrecks the bootsector and makes it impossible to boot any other partition. I had to run Linux from a live-CD and reinstall it from the terminal.
I'm NOT a computer savvy person, this took HOURS for me.
Lol, there's no better teacher than a situation like that. Most of my computer education has been preceded by the words, "Ooooh shit."Apostheum said:
As a person that repairs PCs for a living let me just say that there is no reason to not do a weekly backup, especially if you have a Mac (time machine backup is awesome). And as far as the weirdest thing I've seen I will have to go with the machine that was I believe literally haunted. Wouldn't power on unless you held it upside down, the screen was broken so everything was blood red, and the sounds were messed up so the Windows log in sounded like zombie moans. I wanted to dunk the thing in holy water and burn it.
Save early save often people.
Save early save often people.
my personal luck with PC's is....deadbottom, as a friend once told me,
'you know King Midas and his touch of gold?'
"aye?"
'well..your the opposite with PC's...you touch it and it turns to shit.'
Ive had that luck with PC's, on my old PC my graphic card died, went out to buy a new one, implemented it, and then I kid you not, 4 hours later I got BSOD's cause my Hard drive broke. Not only that but Id have random occurences of my PC just giving me the middle finger...forever. Nevertheless though, the PC I have now...loves me or something, I have not once yet had the touch and its always been faithful to me, I spose Ill marry it someday. If Japan allowed that one chap to marry his pillow with his waifu, I do think I should be able to marry a piece of Technology.
'you know King Midas and his touch of gold?'
"aye?"
'well..your the opposite with PC's...you touch it and it turns to shit.'
Ive had that luck with PC's, on my old PC my graphic card died, went out to buy a new one, implemented it, and then I kid you not, 4 hours later I got BSOD's cause my Hard drive broke. Not only that but Id have random occurences of my PC just giving me the middle finger...forever. Nevertheless though, the PC I have now...loves me or something, I have not once yet had the touch and its always been faithful to me, I spose Ill marry it someday. If Japan allowed that one chap to marry his pillow with his waifu, I do think I should be able to marry a piece of Technology.
My previous laptop shipped with Vista, had to deal with it for over a year, oh the horror!Queen Michael said:
Ah, those were the days. I still have one that I use for some older games. It's a shame IBM stopped making them; they were really pretty good machines.Varrdy said:
OT: Anyway, probably the worst thing I can think of is finding out recently that one of my old computers has capacitor rot, explaining the weird crashing I'd been having with it. One of these days I'm going to try replacing them myself, but I need to brush up on my soldering skills first. The computer actually runs even with the bad caps, but I don't want to risk the rest of the PC to keep using it, especially since the capacitors that are bad lead directly to/from the CPU.
My brand new computer managed to contract Conduit really really soon, requiring an entire windows re-install to get rid of it. I did every single step the internet knew of, and it still someone managed to live on. Little bugger was strong. Luckily, I didn't get anything new and important added in the 1-2 day time frame I was using it, so, I just had to re-do the install and file transfer process
Someone decided it would be funny to enter the "INITIALIZE DATABASE" command(which resets EVERYTHING to factory default) on a Promina system(an older networking device).
You don't know tedious until you've had to re-program 500 circuits in a 20 year old machine while the phone is ringing off the hook because people are demanding to know why their internet doesn't work and can't even track down which idiot just killed the network because the login record got deleted with everything else.
Thankfully it only reset that particular node, so I could coordinate with other sites to get mismatches corrected while I had to re-enter all the information for all the circuits.
You don't know tedious until you've had to re-program 500 circuits in a 20 year old machine while the phone is ringing off the hook because people are demanding to know why their internet doesn't work and can't even track down which idiot just killed the network because the login record got deleted with everything else.
Thankfully it only reset that particular node, so I could coordinate with other sites to get mismatches corrected while I had to re-enter all the information for all the circuits.
Nothing I couldn't deal with. Wayyyyy back in the day I got a pretty nasty virus from Steam, back when it was using the IE platform for browsing. It resulted to a reformat, which was a hassle.
The worst thing I can imagine happening is hard disk failures. I always choose the pricey WDs with the 5 year warranty as my main drives and backup the super important files on a cloud service.
The worst thing I can imagine happening is hard disk failures. I always choose the pricey WDs with the 5 year warranty as my main drives and backup the super important files on a cloud service.
I'm not sure if this counts as a disaster, since I was able to salvage it, but here goes.
About two years ago I suddenly began having some major overheating problems in my desktop and suspected that either my liquid cooling system had failed, or the thermal paste needed to be redone. I had to take it out to check either. So, I carefully edge around the seal between it and my CPU, give it a firm but steady twist to break the bond cause by the thermal paste, and POP! out comes the CPU, in spite of the lock supposed to keep it in place. I had little pins bent every which way except for straight. (for anyone who has not seen the back of these units, they have a couple hundred tiny pins, no more than about 5 millimeters in height)I was convinced right there and then I was suddenly holding a $250 piece of garbage.
I decided that for that kind of money it was worth attempting to save, and so spent the next two hours gently realigning the pins. Fortunately, it worked, and once I replaced the cooling system, ran just fine. It is still running the computer I'm using to type this in fact.
About two years ago I suddenly began having some major overheating problems in my desktop and suspected that either my liquid cooling system had failed, or the thermal paste needed to be redone. I had to take it out to check either. So, I carefully edge around the seal between it and my CPU, give it a firm but steady twist to break the bond cause by the thermal paste, and POP! out comes the CPU, in spite of the lock supposed to keep it in place. I had little pins bent every which way except for straight. (for anyone who has not seen the back of these units, they have a couple hundred tiny pins, no more than about 5 millimeters in height)I was convinced right there and then I was suddenly holding a $250 piece of garbage.
I decided that for that kind of money it was worth attempting to save, and so spent the next two hours gently realigning the pins. Fortunately, it worked, and once I replaced the cooling system, ran just fine. It is still running the computer I'm using to type this in fact.
New Years Day, just this year, my laptop exploded. That's no euphemism either. A capacitor inside blew up and covered everything in acid. Thankfully it didn't damage the hard drive and so I didn't lose a single thing. Well, except for the computer.
Never had a disaster. I've had several pains in the ass.
I once had to DBAN a machine to get rid of a Virtumonde infection. Goddamn but that program can cling. I saved all my files, though.
I lost all my files when my old Gateway bit the dust unexpectedly. This was many years ago, before amassing the ridiculous conglomeration of useless data I have today. There wasn't much to lose.
After installing BioShock (and therefore SecuROM), my machine developed several....let's call them idiosyncrasies. It would often refuse to recognize CDs (even the legitimately purchased BioShock disc), running antivirus would result in BSOD, sometimes it would BSOD just because it felt like it, the list goes on. SecuROM is the single worst thing I've ever had on a machine. Most viruses are less invasive and easier to remove. My favorite part is that the makers insisted it would not cause problems with any legitimate hardware or software.
Lost a bunch of music I had bought through the iTunes store because everything there is account-locked and iTunes wouldn't recognize me on my new machine.
I once had to DBAN a machine to get rid of a Virtumonde infection. Goddamn but that program can cling. I saved all my files, though.
I lost all my files when my old Gateway bit the dust unexpectedly. This was many years ago, before amassing the ridiculous conglomeration of useless data I have today. There wasn't much to lose.
After installing BioShock (and therefore SecuROM), my machine developed several....let's call them idiosyncrasies. It would often refuse to recognize CDs (even the legitimately purchased BioShock disc), running antivirus would result in BSOD, sometimes it would BSOD just because it felt like it, the list goes on. SecuROM is the single worst thing I've ever had on a machine. Most viruses are less invasive and easier to remove. My favorite part is that the makers insisted it would not cause problems with any legitimate hardware or software.
Lost a bunch of music I had bought through the iTunes store because everything there is account-locked and iTunes wouldn't recognize me on my new machine.
During a round of Guild Wars 2, my GPU died. Took a couple of weeks, but I amassed enough money to get a new one (GTX 760); I was planning on replacing my aging 560 Ti, so it all worked out for the best.
Also, yesterday, my Razer Naga broke, and I'm basically forced to use an old mouse I've had lying in my closet for a couple of years. I was also planning on replacing that mouse with a Logitech G600 (not going back to a non-MMO mouse for games).
Also, yesterday, my Razer Naga broke, and I'm basically forced to use an old mouse I've had lying in my closet for a couple of years. I was also planning on replacing that mouse with a Logitech G600 (not going back to a non-MMO mouse for games).