Dumbest hardware screwups...

[jaksback]

What was the dumbest thing you've done installing, rebuilding, tweaking or whatever inside your computer?

Here's my most recent:
Like a dumb ass I removed my fan and heat sink from the processor, I realized too late that I only had a little thermal paste left, just barely enough to cover the processor with a thin coating.
Where I really f'd up was thinking that there was no thermal tape or paste, and when I was taking the heat sink off, it felt like it was stuck and after a good pull it came off, processor and all!! You know how there is a small lever/locking arm for the processor socket, well, it was in the lock position still (or course) and I had bent up about 8 pins. I was kickin my ass for it. I VERY gently straightened them back out with a tiny screwdriver praying the whole time that one of the pins wouldn't break off. Thankfully none did. I would really have kicked myself in the ass if that had happened. Anyways all is well and it's running just fine.

Post your screw-ups. We all know we've done something dumb like this at one time or other and hopefully now we can laugh about it now (at least after we've paid the bill for it...haha). Who knows maybe we can learn from each other's mistakes.

 

[Chubz]

The text color will be the same as yours......

Here are 2:

1. When I was installing the 9600XT video card in my computer, I accidentally knocked one of those little "column" looking things over and it almost broke off of the video card......and keep in mind that I had just payed $200 to buy this at Circuit City, and even though I could have went back and got a refund or the same card, I still would have been pissed at my own self for doing something so ridiculous.

2. Not long ago, I went to uninstall one of my display drivers (Nvidia) so that my ATI drivers wouldnt have any conflicts........turns out, I uninstalled one of the motherboard drivers, completely disabling my AGP ability, and leaving my video card stuck in "PCI" mode. After a couple of mobo driver downloads and changes here and there, though, everything was, thankfully, back to normal!

Cmon people, post up!

 

[Apokalipse]

the "column looking thing" would prolly be a capacitor
I haven't really made any big fu** ups..............

























































maybe not yet

 

[Cappy]

reformat the wrong HD
Spend a week building a new system with counless re-installs only to find that i had 1 stick of bad PC 1066 Rambus memory :[ .
Forget to plug in the PS and spazz out becuase nothing worked .
Accidently remove the Display in Windows System Config ( Had to turn it back on in DOS :[ )
Plug my monitor into the onboard Graphics after i install a PCI Video Card .

 

[The Merlin]

I once bought a 9500 Pro AGP card, when I didn't have an AGP bis

Good thing though, because thats why I started getting into computers

 

[fiezk]

It looks like you've done some nice improvement on your hardware since then

 

[Shawzer]

Only last week I bought a new MB for an old computer that someone gave. I didn't take the time to work out where the front panels should have went on the board and ending blowing something because the CPU fan stopped working. Managed to take the MB back and exchange it though.

 

[Fragino]

My laptop display was starting to go bad. I unplugged it, made sure I was grounded and took the battery out. I found that the circuit tape that came from the motherboard, wound around a post on the bottom of the display and then connected to the display was starting to tear at the wind. I put everything back together and WOW it worked fine again. I decided to reinforce the tape and took it back apart. After retaping the wind I started to plug it back on the motherboard when I saw a spark go from the motherboard to the display. I FORGOT TO TAKE THE BATTERY BACK OUT!!! Display good. Motherboard bad.

 

[kboy]

I Installed a new CPU, Put the PC together & Turned it on only to smell that stinch known as not plugging in the CPU Fan!

 

[jaksback]

hey kboy, I did similar, I had plugged in the CPU fan to the wrong plug, luckily my bios screamed at me and shut me down to tell me something was wrong with my CPU fan. It took me 3 times total before I plugged it in the the right one. All I had to do was get the trusty flashlight out to read the damn mobo like I should have done in the first place.

And this is all within the same screwup as the mutilating my CPU pins in the start of this thead.