Your WORST Computer Moment

[ex_reven]

Post your worst computer experiences here :D

I'll Start:

1 - Wireless networks constantly crapping out
2 - Computer resetting for unknown reasons - Probably voltage
3 - Owning a prescott
4 - Trying to turn on/log into a MAC (fk that)
5 - Gaming on a 2ghz IBM

Your go :)!

[J0N]

Went out for a few hours, when I came home, computer room full of smoke! PSU was burnt out and red hot. Lucky I came hoome when I did, otherwise I might not have a computer room any more. :p

(Good excuse to get a new case & PSU!) ;)

[ex_reven]

Went out for a few hours, when I came home, computer room full of smoke! PSU was burnt out and red hot. Lucky I came hoome when I did, otherwise I might not have a computer room any more. :p

(Good excuse to get a new case & PSU!) ;)

Keep em coming :D

[tigger]

well,not my worst but funny.

i went to my mates,rob.he'd forgot his password for xp,and had no other logon to use,and had been trying to remember it for 6 or 7 hours.i was there for a while and he'd still not remembered it,as i was about to leave,i said,you have tried caps on have'nt you.so he put caps on and tried it and it logged in straight away.TIT

[Seany1212]

Another funny one, went round an old friends one afternoon and he decides he wants to put neons in his case, any way, he went into his shed and came out with a drill. He then proceeds into the house, powers up the drill and stabs it into the side of his computer (bare side obviously), i ask him what the **** is he doing of which he replies "change of plan, i prefer the neons on the outside, im going to drill a hole in the side of me case and stick a switch in it so that when i turn it on the neons come on". Now after some dodgy wiring he finally gets them to work, of which its leaving time for me. Anyway go back a few days later to find that he "broke" the neons and now has a pointless switch sticking out the side of his computer :roll:

[Darknova]

This morning (and I mean 2 in the morning). I'd replaced all the thermal paste on my chipset cooler, CPU cooler etc. and rerouted a load of cables to make the case tidier...only to turn the PC on and find one of the wires is shorting out and wont let the PC turn on for more than a second -_- I manage to get it working again but my case is a right mess lol, cables everwhere. So no doubt that's what I'll be doing tomorrow morning :P

[Pinchy]

Spent 9 hours trying to figure out that my computer was using 1 lane on the gfx instead of 16 :p (thanks tigger :p)

...it was a simple voltage problem :p

[zekrahminator]

Single worst day for my computers...June 10 2006. I killed my 6200 trying to put on aftermarket heatsinks (went out with a big spark and smoke), and in testing it I killed a 160GB hard drive (when I put the 6200 in I had to move my 160GB hard drive, forgot to relatch it and bumped the hard drive. Killed the thing pretty quick).

As for continuous problems, Darth Flatulence has decided that it's taking a slow and unexplainable death. BSOD's, random program crashes (and the RAM's fine according to memtest), and my wireless just plain SUCKS. I have to reset the router just about every day due to lack of internet connectivity....way to go D link :shadedshu .

[Mussels]

Worst moment? oh i have so many... Most terryfying was when a 400W PSU exploded, earthed through me (one hand was on steel case of rig, other on the metal end of a monitor VGA cable) and in the process blew up the mobo, CPU, video card, hard drive, MONITOR (it melted the cord) and threw me about 5 feet into a brick wall.

Strange part was that none of the fuses even tripped in the place, and the only visible damage was to me, the wall, and the monitor.

Edit: oh and a good one occured last week. A plumber was due to come and clean out a clogged drain, so of course i decided to hide in my room gaming while he did his thing... suddenly, no internet. I spent an hour checking all equipment, swapping routers, ethernet leads, testing phone and ethernet cables... only to look outside and see a bobcat (Mechanical digger) chewing up the entire front lawn, and the phone cable dangling off the front part of it.... the bum had to replace a busted pipe, and took my precious phone line with it :(

[niko084]

Got a phone call after a long very aggravating problem with a computer illiterate customer who had to argue with me for 4 hours... The person on the phone told me her "Coffee cup" holder was broke... I literally broke out laughing thinking this was some kinda joke... Needless to say I pissed off a customer pretty bad...

[tigger]

when i did my first watercooling setup on the a64 3000+,i did not use proper clips on all the connections.so i have my hands in the case with it powered on and knocked a pipe,which came apart and i ended up with both hands in the case with a thumb over each end.my gf was'nt in so i had no one to turn it off.i ended up just having to force the ends together,did spray "some" water everywere.my pc survived tho'.

and i was doing summat on my pc and the screen just filled with random characters,so i just reset.it came back on again and did the same thing.so i got a torch and looked inside my case.it turns out there was a leak and my gfx card had a pool of water on the top of it:eek: .suprisingly the card survided.

the motherboard(a8n-sli premium) died two days after i sold the machine.mmmmmmmmm


put proper clips on your connections boys.

[cjoyce1980]

this morning, 200GB hard disk failed. poo poo

[Mediocre]

Spending 8 hours straight writing C++ for school (I procrastinated until the night before). So when I finished (@ ~2am) I decided there were too many icons on my desktop. So I cleaned my desktop, emptied the recycle bin, and went to bed...

Only to find my project missing the next morning...I copied a friends, changed a few things, and turned it in.

Got caught, got an 0, and had to re-take the class... DOH

Be careful when you empty you recycle bin

EDIT: LOL that last sentence should also say something about 'don't cheat', o-well

[niko084]

Spending 8 hours straight writing C++ for school (I procrastinated until the night before). So when I finished (@ ~2am) I decided there were too many icons on my desktop. So I cleaned my desktop, emptied the recycle bin, and went to bed...

Only to find my project missing the next morning...I copied a friends, changed a few things, and turned it in.

Got caught, got an 0, and had to re-take the class... DOH

Be careful when you empty you recycle bin

EDIT: LOL that last sentence should also say something about 'don't cheat', o-well

Or have data recovery software handy :ohwell:

[Mediocre]

Or have data recovery software handy :ohwell:

I wasn't that smart in '98

[Apa]

First thing was probably when I connected the frontpanel USB of the chassi to the mainboard, started the PC and I smelled something burning. The whole cord had burned up, but the PC was working perfectly even though it was filled with smoke and stench of melted plastic.

Second would be when I had gotten my C2D stuff and was happy, and decided to OC it a bit. Everythink worked as a charm and I managed to get it extremely easy to run at 2.5GHz (e6400) and was gonna try it a bit more later. I turn off the PC and goes away a bit. Later when I returned to turn on the PC, it rebooted, but nothing showing o nthe monitor. Then after about 10 seconds of loading, I hear it reboot, and loads for 10 secs, then reboot etc. I didn't get what was going on, so ofcourse I start picking it apart and try all my parts if something is wrong. After hours of trying and getting pissed, I pick up the PC and throw it on the ground as hard as I can (my temper is nothing to play with). I go and sit infront of the TV being all grumpy, and remembers "maybe it was the OC that won't let it start...?". So I reset CMOS and everything works, it even survived my throw. So now I have a very broken chassi, and a mainboard that don't likes OCing (if I OC it will boot once, but next reboot it won't do anything).

Currently Saving for a Asus P5B deluxe, and a new chassi :P

[lemonadesoda]

@mussels (and everyone else who is worried about electrical problems, especially shorts).

A fuse (fusebox) will normally NOT protect a PC. A fuse will normally only "trip" if the current exceeds 16Amps (Europe), and that means 16Ax230V=3700W.

Hence, and electrical fault in your PC will usually NOT trip the fuse. If you get an electric shock via touching a live terminal and your body is the "earth"... you will get a shock but the fuse WILL NOT trip.

Please remember that a fuse is to limit maximum current, so that if there is a short across the power line... or a failure in a high current device (e.g. motor)... the fuse will blow to protect the device, the house, and the electricity supply to the street. It is NOT designed to protect YOU the human user from shorting to earth. It's impossible (except within an electric chair)... for 3700W to flow through your body... so you, the human body, can never trip a fuse.

What you need is a RCD (residual current device) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual-current_device, also called an Fi in Germany, to protect YOU the human user from shorting to earth.

In the Europe it is a legal requirement to have an RCD in the bathroom in all new houses, and is recommended as an "upgrade" to older buildings also. In the UK you have to have it in the kitchen also. In the US, you have to have it in the garage (power tools) and near any swimming pools or saunas.

If you are concerned about electrical safety, you CAN install these devices on ANY socket.

Personally I think it makes sense to have an RCD on any electrical socket that is used to power electrical equipment that is "tinkered with" or that you operate with exposed cabling... e.g. a PC with the side panels off, etc.

[lemonadesoda]

My worst nightmares on the PC...

It is always related to HDD failure. Everything else is replaceable... but the data on a HDD can be lost forever.

Nightmares:

1./ HDD crash (windows NT) on laptop with ALL project data and ALL emails lost... while I was in Singapore. Value of data... can only be guessed by "value of project"? = 2 million dollars. Ouch. Thank goodness a techie in sim-lin-city was able to hook up the HDD to his PC as a secondary device and recover 95% of the files. Basically the boot partition was corrupt/damaged... but the directory structure and data was OK.

2./ HDD USB device crash... all "setupfiles" lost and all e-books lost. This had years of material on it. I even tried buying an IDENTICAL HDD unit and swapping the electrical boards in case it was a board failure. Same problem: the HDD read/write arms had crashed. Nothing could be done to save it.

3./ Server HDD crash... all files and email boxes lost. As a "very small business"... we do not have an IT administrator that does backups. We do a backup once a month... if we remember... anything else is just too expensive from the point of view of a very small business. So we did a recovery... but lost about 1 months worth of data... which was INCREDIBLY time consuming to replace.

[pt]

having a prescott
and:
ram dies (wait a month)
gfx dies (still wating 3 months)
ram dies again (going to send it monday)
/\ all those last 3 in a row

[mullered07]

buying a thermaltake mambo case from ebay on the 29th december, waited until the 5-6th jan before contacting seller not arrived, received one email saying he will look into it,

11 jan still no further emails and replies from seller opened paypal dispute, 15 jan emailed seller thru paypal, he responded saying he had sent it and i had ignored courier cards !!(kinda hard my wife is at home 24/7 with a newborn :shadedshu ),

escalated the dispute to a claim, the buyer left me negative feedback and a non paying bidder strike wtf ?? :wtf: finally after he didnt respond to the claim i got my money back from paypal a whole month after i paid for it having had my first neg feedback and non payer strike and up until the time i could get a new case having to use my mates crappy ol 3200+, ati 9250 as i had no case :shadedshu

not exactly my worst computer moment but computer related, yes indeed.

funny thing is ebay gave me a strike without even checking that id paid (and done it thru EBAYS company paypal) they seem to turn a blind eye to sellers like this who sell tons of stuff but screw over a lot of ppl, afterall they are making them all there money and its the buyers who lose out :wtf:

[Steevo]

My worst nightmares on the PC...

It is always related to HDD failure. Everything else is replaceable... but the data on a HDD can be lost forever.

Nightmares:

2./ HDD USB device crash... all "setupfiles" lost and all e-books lost. This had years of material on it. I even tried buying an IDENTICAL HDD unit and swapping the electrical boards in case it was a board failure. Same problem: the HDD read/write arms had crashed. Nothing could be done to save it.

3./ Server HDD crash... all files and email boxes lost. As a "very small business"... we do not have an IT administrator that does backups. We do a backup once a month... if we remember... anything else is just too expensive from the point of view of a very small business. So we did a recovery... but lost about 1 months worth of data... which was INCREDIBLY time consuming to replace.

I hoff replaced a RAID 0 array with RAID 5 as we have had power problems, and it took out a disk. We found the source of our problems, after it took out our server, firewall configuration, and another computer has started acting funny.

They were warned multiple times that there was a power problem, but they choose to ignore it as it was working at the time. Even after showing the main man the logs from the UPS.

A wire was partially disconnected from the circuit breaker and it would randomly disconnect and reconnect, causing very small power surges, that a surge protector and UPS did not filter.

It cost them close to $2K for me to repair it, recover the data and new hardware.

[J0N]

Another....

My younger sisters Harry Potter Game (roughly 5-6 years ago) Crashed the computer somehow fukt the harddrive and wiped everything! All music, files, photographs gone! :banghead:

[xylomn]

I spent 3 days trying to get a computer working...

After that time I was so irritated that I smacked the side of the computer with a hammer...

Surprisingly the computer then started working...

Not exactly my worst moment but funny non-the-less...

[pbmaster]

I installed my long-awaited 250 GB SATA HDD Tues. night. Everything was working great! Windows loaded in 3 secs, and all my games loaded even faster then before. Wed. morning i wake to find my comp wont turn on, no BIOS beep, no Power or HDD light, but all fans spinning. wtf. One of my good friends lets me borrow his old Gateway, which worked ok when he last used it. I get home, plug the Gateway in and DOH! Now it does the exact same thing. WTF!

[AshenSugar]

buying a thermaltake mambo case from ebay on the 29th december, waited until the 5-6th jan before contacting seller not arrived, received one email saying he will look into it,

11 jan still no further emails and replies from seller opened paypal dispute, 15 jan emailed seller thru paypal, he responded saying he had sent it and i had ignored courier cards !!(kinda hard my wife is at home 24/7 with a newborn :shadedshu ),

escalated the dispute to a claim, the buyer left me negative feedback and a non paying bidder strike wtf ?? :wtf: finally after he didnt respond to the claim i got my money back from paypal a whole month after i paid for it having had my first neg feedback and non payer strike and up until the time i could get a new case having to use my mates crappy ol 3200+, ati 9250 as i had no case :shadedshu

not exactly my worst computer moment but computer related, yes indeed.

funny thing is ebay gave me a strike without even checking that id paid (and done it thru EBAYS company paypal) they seem to turn a blind eye to sellers like this who sell tons of stuff but screw over a lot of ppl, afterall they are making them all there money and its the buyers who lose out :wtf:

you gotta get allover them for that kinda crap my first x800 was ordered from ebay the guy turned out to have sold the same card 5 times claiming he had more then 1 (multi listings) then his supplyer ran out of them, they paypal payed us back eventuly, and ebay banned him then 6 months later my buddy got the neg mark removed he had left.

[AshenSugar]

My worst nightmares on the PC...

It is always related to HDD failure. Everything else is replaceable... but the data on a HDD can be lost forever.

Nightmares:

1./ HDD crash (windows NT) on laptop with ALL project data and ALL emails lost... while I was in Singapore. Value of data... can only be guessed by "value of project"? = 2 million dollars. Ouch. Thank goodness a techie in sim-lin-city was able to hook up the HDD to his PC as a secondary device and recover 95% of the files. Basically the boot partition was corrupt/damaged... but the directory structure and data was OK.

2./ HDD USB device crash... all "setupfiles" lost and all e-books lost. This had years of material on it. I even tried buying an IDENTICAL HDD unit and swapping the electrical boards in case it was a board failure. Same problem: the HDD read/write arms had crashed. Nothing could be done to save it.

3./ Server HDD crash... all files and email boxes lost. As a "very small business"... we do not have an IT administrator that does backups. We do a backup once a month... if we remember... anything else is just too expensive from the point of view of a very small business. So we did a recovery... but lost about 1 months worth of data... which was INCREDIBLY time consuming to replace.

get one of the newer tape drives and set it to do incremeental backups on a nightly scedule after everbodys gone home for the night.

or buy an external hdd tower and use volume shadow copy to keep a copy of the whole system on it(did this for a server at one place i contracted with for a while)

[AshenSugar]

First thing was probably when I connected the frontpanel USB of the chassi to the mainboard, started the PC and I smelled something burning. The whole cord had burned up, but the PC was working perfectly even though it was filled with smoke and stench of melted plastic.

Second would be when I had gotten my C2D stuff and was happy, and decided to OC it a bit. Everythink worked as a charm and I managed to get it extremely easy to run at 2.5GHz (e6400) and was gonna try it a bit more later. I turn off the PC and goes away a bit. Later when I returned to turn on the PC, it rebooted, but nothing showing o nthe monitor. Then after about 10 seconds of loading, I hear it reboot, and loads for 10 secs, then reboot etc. I didn't get what was going on, so ofcourse I start picking it apart and try all my parts if something is wrong. After hours of trying and getting pissed, I pick up the PC and throw it on the ground as hard as I can (my temper is nothing to play with). I go and sit infront of the TV being all grumpy, and remembers "maybe it was the OC that won't let it start...?". So I reset CMOS and everything works, it even survived my throw. So now I have a very broken chassi, and a mainboard that don't likes OCing (if I OC it will boot once, but next reboot it won't do anything).

Currently Saving for a Asus P5B deluxe, and a new chassi :P

may want to look at the biostar tforce board if you want cheap but good overclocker :)

[AshenSugar]

as to my worst one, well thats hard to say, probbly not to long ago when i had my main hdd DIE and my 200gb external overheat loosing years of data(but the drives stilll 100% useable now that i used hdd regen on it :) )

i got more storys then i care to list at the moment, but heres a fun one, i had a client buy a cheap dell thru work, then bring it in because it was slow, spent 2 weeks waiting for dell ram(it requiered dell ram to work, wouldnt work with normal ram) then stuck the ram in and the rams bad(bouth sticks are errored) 2 more weeks they sent working ones back, then the client takes the pc home and sets it up in his shed behind his house(where he hides from his family) 3 days later he came in and told me the shed had burnt down and the fire dept had determined the pc was the sorce of the fire....he was mad at me, and dell, and the world, dell denied it was their computer that did it(duhhhh) but he had payed for the best warr they offered so they sent somebody out to take a look, the thing was crispy, he took it with him and 4 months later they sent the guy a whole new system, less the ram upgrade......ROFL

by then he had gotten a pc from me that was faster and that was easly upgraded, he sold the dell to somebody he knew, 3 months later the lady called him and thretened to sue him because the pc was throwing sparks out the back, turns out the PSU was flawed and the cause of the fire, he called dell after it was back at his house, showed their rep that showed up 2 weeks later, the guy said he would "deal" with it, a month of more later he got a new pc back , diffrent model, bigger hdd, better video, worse cpu, slower ram....no dvd burner.

that system went to the lady, it died 6 moths later and he had me rebuild it insted of dealing with dell support because he was sick of the waiting game

[lemonadesoda]

lady threatened to sue
America! She wanted to sue him, even though it was clearly the PC that was fucking up. Not very neighborly. How about he sues her back for malicious accusation and threatening behaviour? :roll:

[BXtreme]

well, this one's funny. a lizard got stuck in my psu, got zapped and burned and dried and stink.
Luckily my pc survived :0 ! It's funny and rather worst moment...

[Random Murderer]

worst moment by far... installed a new w/c setup i had been leak testing for 4 days(to be sure, lol) with no leaks, i turn my compy on and what happens? it leaks and kills my $300 video card and my athlon64...

[Sasqui]

1 - Trying to upgrade a Dell XPS
2 - Trying to upgrade a Dell Precision
3 - Trying to fix a broken Dell Dimension
4 - Breaking my toe kicking the Dell Precision ;)

[Alec§taar]

I was still learning, & messed up some hardwares, early on in my 'career' in this field:

1.) One I have mentioned before, that due to using ELECTRICAL TAPE on a very high RPM fan I was using for cooling, lost the electrical tape on the ends & had exposed wires (I rigged it using a frayed end electrical cord is why & connected it to the fan, & it worked fine, until this happened)... well, the exposed ends contacted part of my desktop here & I heard a LOUD "POP" & blew all the fuses on that circuit & the smell of ozone was everywhere... lol!

(Threw the breaker downstairs after replacing the shot fuse, & all was well after that)

GUYS - don't use electrical tape if you can help it, is all I can say, w/ powercords. It doesn't hold as well as "heatshrink" does, & often falls off! I found out the hard way... yes, I have done it since, @ least while prototyping stuff, but I do NOT leave it that way (I use heatshrink wirewrap for final jobs).

2.) Drilling a case I had for a 486, stupid me did it w/ the mobo in the case, & I tore up a single FastPage 30-pin 4mb RAM chip I had then (for those days, very fast, 70ns type (vs. 80ns))... that was $40 per mb in those days too, mind you, so $160 was "gone w/ the wind" (of the drillbit, lol).

:)

* You learn hard sometimes, especially EARLY ON, in any field imo...

APK

P.S.=> Someone here mentioned coding C++ till the morning in this thread... I've been there TOO many times the past 24++ yrs. now in this stuff to recount. So much so? I don't even consider it 'abnormal' anymore in fact... part of the territory, coding imo... academically or professionally, it doesn't matter - sometimes, it's HOW it works! You get a salaried job in it, you will find out how often it goes on, & you pull 60-90 hr. work weeks... apk

[stevorob]

Stupid things...

Trying to figure out why my machine won't boot up. Checked the connection in the case, the back of the PSU, made sure the PSU was on, checked the power switch on the case... nothing.

The damn power cable was just unplugged from the surge. Felt pretty dumb after that one...

[Namslas90]

Back in 92; My then 2 year old daughter decided to help me fix the computer by throwing her juice cup into the open case. Orange juice and mobo's a bad mix, she thought the sparks were "pretty".:banghead:

[theonetruewill]

12:01 am
Well I'd just finished my CWK that had to be in for the next day and had a backup on a pendrive. However I lost my damn glasses that day and I was tired and it was late, so when I reached for the pendrive like a retard I punched straight past it and snapped the thing into about 4 pieces. Tried to fix it for a couple of hours but in vain using soldering iron etc cos there was other cwk on it too and I'd only just bought it.:banghead:
2:10am I was really pissed off and decided the only thing was to calm down by having a little go at oc'ing my laptop (no idea why I ever thought that would calm me down???) Overclocked the graphics properly to its max using Ati tool and became satisified.... Hmm time to try something else.
5:01am (really needed sleep and very tired, but was inspired by sucess of gfx oc) Then I tried to oc my Pentium M fr the 1st time using clockgen (cos the bios is pants). Ahhh very satisifed but get careless.
5:45am Holy twiddles!:eek: Massive scary BSOD saying I've got a mass critical error!
5:46am Frantically try and restart the thing but it just kept going black almost immediately after turning the power on! My CWK!!!
I spent the next 3 hours trying to get the thing to boot properly including trying to see if I could get into windows with a blank screen but to no avail!
7:49am Last restart I could try, before I needed to get the thing into school. So I decided to turn to God. Please God help me now, I know I don't go to church enough and all that jazz, but I really need you right now!:respect:
I am now absolutely terrfied as the clock strikes 8am. Press the power button........
It works, and I print off CWK and e-mail it (about 6 times) to school just in case.

To this day I have no idea what went wrong but I do have a conclusion.:confused: :confused: :confused:
God sympathises with n00b overclockers:D

[dino25]

i burned my video card

Sapphire x800 GTO 2 Limited edition when i tried to put a cooler from cpu (socket a) to a memory...it droped on pcb and....zzzzzzzzzz....memory burned...:)

[JC316]

1. Putting RAM into a HP Pavillion XE743. You had to disect the half of the case to get to the damned sticks.

2. Installing my first video card. Voodoo 3 3000 PCI, they were not well known for ease of installation. It took me the better part of 4 hours to get it working properly.

3. Making the modem work on a Packard Bell Pentium 166. I am still not sure how I got the drivers working for it......

[lemonadesoda]

Yes, what is it with modems? Did ANYONE ever find installing modems easily... especially after upgrading the OS to XP or Server 2003? I had to end up buying an external modem for my laptop (SONY Z600) Pain in the arse. But not a disaster like HDD failures.

[JC316]

Yes, what is it with modems? Did ANYONE ever find installing modems easily... especially after upgrading the OS to XP or Server 2003? I had to end up buying an external modem for my laptop (SONY Z600) Pain in the arse. But not a disaster like HDD failures.

Once XP came around, modems were fairly easy for me. It was back in the Windows 95 days when you had to set up everything manually that it was a PITA.

[Alec§taar]

Once XP came around, modems were fairly easy for me. It was back in the Windows 95 days when you had to set up everything manually that it was a PITA.

JUMPER HATS!!!

:)

* That, OR tiny switches on modems... it was like that in DOS as well!

APK

P.S.=> Heck - so were motherboards & other cards: I do NOT miss it, I bet almost nobody does... "Plug-N-Play" made life MUCH simpler for hardware techs! apk

[Alec§taar]

Had a "Bad Computer Moment" today guys, first one in YEARS!

Problem: BRIDGING A WESTELL DSL MODEM OVER TO A LINKSYS ROUTER here.

(Man- they're ALL just routers imo, & I hate the fact they call "cablemodems" & "dslmodems" MODEMS, period, as it makes support calls tougher too... they're just routers too, imo, that run over 10.x.x.x (or other private IP broadcasts like 172.x.x.x, or sort of like how DHCP is) networks internally for themselves)

Solution: PAIN IN THE BUTT, NOTHING LIKE DOING IT FOR CABLEMODEMS! Just go thru the "bridgework" in the DSL modem/router first, setting it to PPoE, & then dump it totally for the LinkSys NAT routers for security & such (turning it to PPoE on both the dslmodem & the NAT router) afterwards, like the DSL "modem" was never there, period.

(Either TimeWarner using Motorola Surfboards, OR CableVision using Motorola Surfboards OR their Terayon Terajet cablemodems never needed this - it was direct, easier, & yes - faster too! Still, part of why I went DSL was to learn more on it, & to see how it runs (and to save monies, vs. cablemodem rates of internet access))...

I never ever had to use a "bridged configuration" on cablemodems... but, DSL apparently requires it, along w/ username + pwd logins while doing so.

(Odd, compared to cablemodems, bigtime, & imo? TOUGHER TO DO, especially the first time, just like w/ anything else I guess though, that first time).

APK

[freaksavior]

Worst moment ever you say.......well it all started one afternoon. I decided to try overclocking are P4 computer, boot in bios up the voltage nothing else, no post! I Was freakin out. Kept thinking, dad's going to kill me! Dad's going to kill me!

So dad didn't kill me, just didn't let my buy new mobo, cpu for a month :(


About 5 months later, I reset the cmos on the p4 system, and wala system boots up!.

Another would be after my dad let me get a new mobo and cpu i installed all the stuff, hid wires, all that good stuff. Hit the power button, boots past post. reboots,......now lather, rinse and repeat. System continually rebooted after post screen. Though ok it's gotta be the mobo. took it back to frys. got a new mobo, and cpu. SAME THING!!! btw the hdd on the machine had about 90 out of 120gb full! well reformated it and it worked, turned out it was a bad file in windows preventing start up :banghead:

Third worse experience! (most recent too. still suffering the consequences of my actions on this one) Bought a water cooling kit (thermaltake big water 745 STAY AWAY!!! I WORNED YOU!) Leaked ALL over my nice old new graphics card :( x800 xt pe. Thought it burnt the card out. Sanded it down worked for a while, then the agp slot burnt out, and now it's in rma :(

Well that all the bad experiences i can think of!!
Enjoy them and don't let them happen to you :)

[AshenSugar]

Yes, what is it with modems? Did ANYONE ever find installing modems easily... especially after upgrading the OS to XP or Server 2003? I had to end up buying an external modem for my laptop (SONY Z600) Pain in the arse. But not a disaster like HDD failures.

modems=easy as hell to setup under nt4,2k,xp,2k3, just gotta know where to get the drivers, u know not the ones from the card sellers site but from the chip makers site.

hell i use a usb 56k modem here at the moment(to lazy to put in a pci one) and its drivers are built into my windows 2003 disk :)

[PVTCaboose1337]

When my computer was dropped into a tub of vegetable oil (a pII so no loss) and I turned it on, and it worked for 5 minutes. Then the hd started bubbling. Then there was a crack and the hd made a terrible noise. I tried to fix it, but then I touched the oil, realizing what I had done, the mobo fried... Then I poured in salt knowing it was all over...

[TUngsten]

here's mine - from YESTERDAY

I finally assemble all the parts for my new c2d build (financed by selling off a bunch of basement junk on ebay!)

Get everything together, peruse the MB manual for the third time...reach for the power button...and.....


nothing, not a beep peep or any other reaction



after trying everything I could think of, I finally went to radio shack and bought a button. Yes, a power button. Yanked the leads off the case button, twisted them onto the button in my hand and..


on it came :rockout:

[Mussels]

When my computer was dropped into a tub of vegetable oil (a pII so no loss) and I turned it on, and it worked for 5 minutes. Then the hd started bubbling. Then there was a crack and the hd made a terrible noise. I tried to fix it, but then I touched the oil, realizing what I had done, the mobo fried... Then I poured in salt knowing it was all over...

I so want to do that... of course, i'd leave the mechanical parts OUTSIDE the tub.

Oh and on the power button one - my dad spent 3 days and many return trips to get a case/PSU working, once i reminded him ATX systems need a motherboard installed to power on he felt kinda stupid.

[Alec§taar]

on it came :rockout:

Well, @ least YOU had a 'good day'... lol!

:)

* I surely haven't, & it's not about my DSL/LinkSys bridging hassle today either that I mentioned above, that was the LEAST of it today for me... that got solved, & so did the MAJOR parts of my rotten day today... except one (furnace is shot that tenant uses, & it is subzero tonite & was most of today, so struggle now is to see if the "fix" I used for now, will work for him... man!).

So, I guess, look @ the 'bright-side' I guess (I surely am trying to, lol - I need to, today!): @ least YOUR day worked out perfect!

APK

[PVTCaboose1337]

I so want to do that... of course, i'd leave the mechanical parts OUTSIDE the tub.

Oh and on the power button one - my dad spent 3 days and many return trips to get a case/PSU working, once i reminded him ATX systems need a motherboard installed to power on he felt kinda stupid.

I did not know that at the time...

[lemonadesoda]

modems=easy as hell to setup under nt4,2k,xp,2k3, just gotta know where to get the drivers, u know not the ones from the card sellers site but from the chip makers site.

LOL. You made me laugh! That's the whole point. No drivers for older modems. Especially inbult modems... and especially after the rockwell conexant takeover etc.

Most modems designed for win 98 never made it to XP driver. That was the problem with my SONY laptop.

[PVTCaboose1337]

Noob: I tried to open up my hd and overclock it. It exploded at 26000rpm and now I have silver in my brain.

[Alec§taar]

LOL. You made me laugh! That's the whole point. No drivers for older modems. Especially inbult modems... and especially after the rockwell conexant takeover etc. Most modems designed for win 98 never made it to XP driver. That was the problem with my SONY laptop.

Folks, I hope, realize that "WinModems" use the CPU to "MOdulate-DEModulate" (rather than an onboard, dedicated "CPU" for this, but some U.S. Robotics ones still do iirc - they are supposed to be the "good" (true) modems still on many of their models that are NOT 'winmodems').

Also, & that there IS no "Driver" file per-se (.sys type executables on NT-based OS, & a .vxd 'virtual device driver' in Win9x series) that ship w/ them anymore...

Just .inf files for the MOST part, that tell commdrv HOW to talk to a particular modem, IF it had 'variations' on its HAYES COMMAND SET.

This is so Windows own commdrv can take over (I am fairly certain that is the file, commdrv & telephony) & do the job of a 'classical driver'...

APK

P.S.=> I am pretty 'cloudy' on that stuff, haven't thought about it, in YEARS literally (since the 56k days in the late 1990's when I used X2 & V90-92 modems, etc)... could be wrong on some of it! apk

[Protius]

Noob: I tried to open up my hd and overclock it. It exploded at 26000rpm and now I have silver in my brain.

try doing 26000 rps

[PVTCaboose1337]

try doing 26000 rps

Only w1z could do that...

[hat]

I fried printed wire going to my agp port... no video. Had to spend all my christmas money on a new mobo

[anticlutch]

Worst moment ever you say.......well it all started one afternoon. I decided to try overclocking are P4 computer, boot in bios up the voltage nothing else, no post! I Was freakin out. Kept thinking, dad's going to kill me! Dad's going to kill me!

So dad didn't kill me, just didn't let my buy new mobo, cpu for a month :(


About 5 months later, I reset the cmos on the p4 system, and wala system boots up!.

Another would be after my dad let me get a new mobo and cpu i installed all the stuff, hid wires, all that good stuff. Hit the power button, boots past post. reboots,......now lather, rinse and repeat. System continually rebooted after post screen. Though ok it's gotta be the mobo. took it back to frys. got a new mobo, and cpu. SAME THING!!! btw the hdd on the machine had about 90 out of 120gb full! well reformated it and it worked, turned out it was a bad file in windows preventing start up :banghead:

Third worse experience! (most recent too. still suffering the consequences of my actions on this one) Bought a water cooling kit (thermaltake big water 745 STAY AWAY!!! I WORNED YOU!) Leaked ALL over my nice old new graphics card :( x800 xt pe. Thought it burnt the card out. Sanded it down worked for a while, then the agp slot burnt out, and now it's in rma :(

Well that all the bad experiences i can think of!!
Enjoy them and don't let them happen to you :)


One of my bad experiences: Buying a C2D E6400 + ECS P4M800-Pro combo at Fry's. It's easy to see why the mobo is basically free with the combo.. it's worthless. The only time my computer was stable was when it was off. Luckily I was able to replace it with another mobo and now the mobo is just sitting in its box right next to the other POS ECS mobo (ECS 945P-A).

Other bad experiences:
1. Buying a 2.8Ghz Prescott socket 478 thinking that it was going to last me for a LONG time... and finding out that a few days later lga 775 came out.
2. Trying to install drivers for the 56k modem I had back when Windows 98 was new.

[AshenSugar]

LOL. You made me laugh! That's the whole point. No drivers for older modems. Especially inbult modems... and especially after the rockwell conexant takeover etc.

Most modems designed for win 98 never made it to XP driver. That was the problem with my SONY laptop.

whats the chipset?

i can get rockwell,connextant and pretty much any other common modem driver for 2k and up, its not hard at all, u just need to know where to look

connextant acctualy are built into 2003(marked as a dell modem driver) i have 1 modem i cant find drivers for but thats because only 1 pc card maker used that motorola chip for a modem then they went out of buisness for years(stupid diamond!!!)

ambiant, connextant, rockwell, pcchips, pctel, lucent all are VERY easy to get drivers for :)

[Brutalfate]

My worst moment would have to be touching a Mac. :cry: I'm scarred for life.

[AshenSugar]

One of my bad experiences: Buying a C2D E6400 + ECS P4M800-Pro combo at Fry's. It's easy to see why the mobo is basically free with the combo.. it's worthless. The only time my computer was stable was when it was off. Luckily I was able to replace it with another mobo and now the mobo is just sitting in its box right next to the other POS ECS mobo (ECS 945P-A).

Other bad experiences:
1. Buying a 2.8Ghz Prescott socket 478 thinking that it was going to last me for a LONG time... and finding out that a few days later lga 775 came out.
2. Trying to install drivers for the 56k modem I had back when Windows 98 was new.

u thought an intel socket was gonna last a LONG time......ROFL.....thats funny shit!!!!


and ECS+VIA or VIA=shit, other ecs boards, well for the most part they just need a bios update to fix any stab problems u find, i have used ALOT of their sis and nvidia based boards and only had 4 die (out of hundreds installed) and ecs was VERY good about replacing them, even sent me an email to print to take to FRYS to get them to exchange one of them for another 754 board( the board had 1 bad cap) ended up getting a better board then i returned, i returned a 755a rev1 and left with an nf3 lite board(good clocker for its price)
really i cant say this enought DONT EVER BUY A VIA chipset board if you want high quility or high end, rarly u will find a person whos happy with one like cdawall, but most geeks hate them, stab issues, poor clocking, driver issues, perf issues, they are made for OEM's to use on CHEAP ASS SYSTEMS(think emachiens for example)

[wazzledoozle]

Years ago I kicked in the front of my PC after losing a game of redalert 2 due to net lag. I then proceeded to throw the smashed front, which fell off, across my room. The hard drive crashed and never worked again, and the rest of the hardware worked but was crap anyways at the time I was using it. 333 MHz celeron with 64mb of ram back in 2001 or 2002.

[AshenSugar]

Noob: I tried to open up my hd and overclock it. It exploded at 26000rpm and now I have silver in my brain.

u have a brain *faints in shock* :P

[JUDAS3]

my first step into overclocking where I couldn't be bothered to up it by a couple of mhz, so I jumped straight to the maximum.......argghhhh.....I thought it was a bin job when it didnt post.

in the end i got my 1.8 athlon to 2.2 and it still had some more to go.

[gerrynicol]

When my old waterblock cracked and leaked onto my modded 6800GT, the card was ok in desktop mode, but in games it was fooked. Also when my old pump gave up the gohst and nearly fried my X2 :(

TBH ive not had much luck with water cooling :(

[ex_reven]

another bad experience
msn spontaniously closing in the middle of a raunchy conversation with a hot chick, only to sign back in and find that she is offline

:cry:

[Pinchy]

at least ur PSU didnt blow up and destroy ur comp :p

[Pinchy]

My worst moment would have to be touching a Mac. :cry: I'm scarred for life.

AGREED!

[pt]

AGREED!

that was one of mines aswell
macs are evil

[C.Ash]

One Word - NTLDR.
That name will haunt me forever.

[Lazzer408]

The day I introduced myself to Windows 2.5 on my 286.

[mortal]

I spoiled whiskey or something over my thermaltake frot panel ( USB, fan cotrol, thermal probe ) but that happened few week before i've installed it. Naturally i forget and i connect it, 2 molex, headers.

Power on, and then flame, front panel started to burn, 2 sek and there is no light, power supply turned off electrics in the house, and only thing i saw was flame on my computer burning my hardware. When plastic burned, it went off :)

[Mussels]

I spoiled whiskey or something over my thermaltake frot panel ( USB, fan cotrol, thermal probe ) but that happened few week before i've installed it. Naturally i forget and i connect it, 2 molex, headers.

Power on, and then flame, front panel started to burn, 2 sek and there is no light power switch turned off electrics in the house and only thing i saw was flame on my computer burning my hardware. When plastic burned it went off :)

But this is a GOOD thing! Thermaltake deserves to burn!

[AshenSugar]

One Word - NTLDR.
That name will haunt me forever.

noob!!! ;)

[ex_reven]

noob!!! ;)

what is NTLDR?

malicious file?

[AshenSugar]

its part of the nt core os, its needed to boot the system :)

[SK-1]

Took me 3 days to figure out I had a bad SATA cable.I was cussing my new A8R32 to the max.
Also had a similar problem with a PSU power cable.It broke inside of the molded plug!
ALWAYS check the cables is my motto mow.