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Most Common Ways to Kill a PC
Sparky the Service Center Dude writes "PCstats covers the most common ways to kill a PC in this "what not to do" guide. Everything from exploding capacitors, to cat hair, to dodgy components and overclocking account for users killing their own PC's. The most common PC killer? The Power Supply."
Like used! Slightly Shotgunned.
easiest way ive ever seen
Any one of my users will do.
The most common PC killer? The Power Supply.
I'm tearing mine out right now!
air and light and time and space
26% PSU and power issues
23% Bad gear and user negligence
13% Heatsink related
15% Assembly and moving
10% Lightning strike and static
3% Computer cruelty
6% USB related
2% Overclocking
The package said "Windows XP or better. Pentium Class Processor or better"... So I got a Mac with OS X
Odd. They omitted placing a Microsoft OS onto a computer as a sure-fire way to kill it.
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
Malware and spam.
put a http server on itand get it linked to slashdot.
Personally, my systems tend crash after applying the Elvis Technique for Irritating Home Electronics (Handgun).
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
In my opinion, the most common killer is spyware. With $400 computers, people are more reluctant to clean their hard drive every 4 months and take security precautions then to just throw the computer in the trash and head back to walmart.
Only 5 comments and the site is already down...
Slashdot the crap out of it. 9 comments and I get a "Connection Refused" error trying to load the link.
Let me guess, they tested out the "Most Common Ways to Kill a PC" on the web servers, eh?
I would have figured dust would be #1. I've cracked open my parents' Windows PC every six months or so only to discover the horror of a totally alien world caked in a layer of gray-brown fuzz. Like the Cowboy Bebop episode, I half-expect a new species of organism to form from the unique atmosphere. If I start seeing a human Martian face forming on the soundcard, I may just end up throwing the whole thing away.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
What, did Cmdr Taco just buy stock in a power supply company today?
Wow... less than 5 minutes and it's down. guess they didn't have enough power supllies...
Go on, be afraid. Encourage the terrorists
1. Install web server
2. Post link to it on Slashdot
Why, any Windows OS... Of course.
what else needs to be said.
You can always run a webserver on it, and get it slashdotted :D
They did it since it skewed the graph to much, it originally was this:
99.9% Slashdot
00.1% Other Problems
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
....use a crappy powersupply. Period.
Buy Antec!
so I'm assuming that a /.ing should be on the list.
Well, I guess it's not that common.
Get a woman. You'll forget your PC was ever there.
The coolest voice ever.
Don't those stats mean the most common way to recycle a PC is just to replace its power supply? I've pulled several working PCs out of the "trash" (NYC curbside - cleaner than a dumpster, dirtier than a Toronto dumpster). I had a "$2000" stereo system I rescued from yuppie abandonment by merely replacing its "motherboard" and speaker fuses.
--
make install -not war
There are nine comments and the website is down already. So let's forget about RTFA. Instead, let's come up with our OWN ways to kill computers. Come on. We are slashdotters. We can come up with many ways to kill our systems (some of them may actually be common!)
Dropping my computer and then plugging it in killed my system. Heatsinks fall off at 10G of force.
Also, the power supply fan failing sucks, too. Once that sucker dies, the PS gets hot and dies, too.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
post a link to it on Slashdot?
Loose Nut Between Keyboard And Chair. It's the cause of at least 95% of all computer fatalities, the other 5% being bad components (hey, when they make a million of 'em, even with the best quality checking a few units will slip through the cracks). And then of course there were those Taiwanese motherboards a few years back that had the exploding capacitors because some company's filler mixture was off...
I had a Commodore 64 for years, it suffered through insane adversity. My mother threw it across the room in a rage when we wouldn't come to dinner, my dad dumped an entire can of beer into the heat vent by accident when he was checking his wristwatch. It was dragged off a rickety TV dinner tray when cords were tripped over at least weekly. It always still worked. That thing was built like a tank. In the end, the power supply died.
Yeah, I know it was replaceable, I didn't have any money.
I think there's another way: Having your web site linked to by Slashdot.
Seems like just installing windows would be on the list.
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
...or my girlfriend who plugged a Maxtor powercord into an S-video out port on the back of the shuttle that I gave her. Apparently they fit in and run 6V into the motherboard effectively toasting your average Shuttle. I am suprised girlfriend, siblings, or parents didn't make the list.
17 year history:
1992: Power Supply
1994: Power Supply
1998: Power Supply
1998: Monitor
1999: Power Supply
2003: CD Burner
2004: Power Supply
Of course, the power supply is the one thing in your computer that's a pain in the posterior to replace; might as wellj just get a whole new case.
paintball
Post a link to it's HTTP daemon on Slashdot.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
Speaking as someone who has worked at a college computer store, I would have to say water/beer is the biggest enemy to the life of a computer.
"OMG! I was just having a drink and chatting with my girlfriends online, and I accidentally spilled it on my laptop! Daddy, buy me a new one!"
On several occaions, I have also run across a laptop that was damaged during...um...let's just say "coital activities". Those definitely make the hall of fame.
Windows ME. Seriously, all trolling aside, this is the worst operating system known to man.
heres the Mirrordot copy incase the thing totally dies: http://mirrordot.org/stories/4ec4acbeb790ac0270a10 94afdd09d56/index.html
Looks like on of the things they listed just happened to their server.
I dropped an entire glass of coke into my computer. I just let it dry because I couldn't be bothered to clean it up...
My computer had actually survived after booting it up a few hours later.
The dust did seem to collect at an alarming rate after that though.
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insert sig here,here, and here
google to rescue
and i thought it was the beer people spilled on them from using CDrom trays as coasters.
My grandmother just got a new (old) computer from my uncle. They plugged it in, and the power supply exploded. I determined that the problem was the hard drive was causing a short-circuit, and the power supply didn't have any overload protection mechanisms. A new (old) hard drive and new (new) power supply worked.
Probably because it's not sure-fire. I've been running Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 on my computers since each of those operating systems was released, and none of them have died on me. Say what you will, those are fucking rock-solid.
Attempting to edit logo.sys and accidently editing log.sys instead. Oops
Reminds me of that guy who hosted a webpage on his George Foreman grill. That must've killed it!
#99) hotswapping ram while the computer is running.
Routed CRT internal voltage levels down VGA cable to motherboard. Bad bad, very bad. The magic smoke escaped, while making several bangs.
I've been through quite a few power supplies... Some of them barely lasted a year before dying. The last time one died, I scavenged one from an old 386 that I had lying around. It's been running 24/7 for almost two years with no sign of slowing down. Guess they just don't make 'em like they used to.
Ditto for my Apple ][, minus all the domestic troubles and incompetence. Every single one of the IC's on the motherboard tests out fine to this day. Runs like new. Power supply, CPU, keyboard, everything's original - hell, even the Shugart Disk ][ drives. You could take it back to 1977 and they'd think you bought it yesterday.
I've been running with the same 250w power supply for ten years now, and I've never had a prob...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They need to read their own article.
Here is a readable version for those who don't have a death wish for their monitors.
The lesson here is that, in order to avoid "killing" your PC, you must verify that all parts are the very best. Avoid the "Made in China" label. In made cases, it is a death sentence. Failing brakes on a car, anyone?
But a Microsoft spokeswoman told eWeek that it was "highly unlikely" that Longhorn will be released after the consent decree expires in November 2007. "Any and all relevant APIs will be disclosed as documented on release of the product," she added.
Well, Microsoft is pretty good at doing the impossible.
I was burned once for my stupidity (lost video card, mobo, and powersupply, not sure why the video card). Now I always buy top-of-the-line PSU's. The expensive ones have more features anyway like a see-through case and fan-speed controls. I am not going to risk 800+ bucks because I wanted to save 30 bucks.
I don't see it on the list, surely I can't be the only one?
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
I was warned that smoking can corrupt those 5 1/4" floppies. Bad news for us hackers in Jr High School.
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
- The 20GB Hitachi in my laptop (8 months old)
- The 120GB Maxtor in my colo server (12.001 months old)
- A 2 month old 120GB WD in my media centre PC
- The warranty replacement of the 120GB WD drive, after 2 weeks
- An 80GB Maxtor in my Sun U5
- An ancient 2.5GB drive in my firewall
Any ideas anyone? Different makes, different machines, mostly on UPS's.Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
As those of your who live in beachfront houses already know, salt tends to destroy lots of things around the house. My office was in a Malibu beach house right up against the ocean, and all machines we got were completely rusted over within the year. Maybe manufacturers don't think about corrosive elements in the air...
Solomon Chang
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
is that for those of us that know what's going on, we can get "dead" machines for basically free and fix them for next to nothing.
Our beater home PC is a PIII 500 MHz with a 15" LCD Panel.
The PC came from a guy who had an electrical short in his breaker box that sent 220 V to all the 110 V recepticles (this is in the US). His homeowner insurance basically replaced all electronics in his home wholesale. He gave me his dead PC in exchange for the work I did setting up his new PC (temporarily installing the drive from his old machine into the new to recover files). I opened it up and found a capacitor had been fried in the power supply. I already had the cap, which saved me from buying a $1 component at Radio Shack, so I had a PC for free (this was a few years ago when 500 MHz wasn't too shabby).
Now for the 15" monitor. Another guy had it laying around his house for a year, because his sister's kids had plugged the wrong power adapter into it and it no longer worked. After doing some computer work a couple times for him (for free), he gave me the monitor and said if I could fix it I could have it, otherwise toss it. So after opening it up I found it had a tiny surface mount ceramic fuse. I bridged that bad boy and had a perfectly functioning like-new 15" LCD monitor.
So I've got an entire computer system for free as the result of power supply failures.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I used to work in a Computer Retail Shop and had repair / Test any hardware brought back.
The one of the weirdest things I was a PC that would not boot..., when I checked the Motherboard, I found the F%cker who insisted he was a IT Expert had cut his hand & 2 of the PCI slots and the AGP were covered in Blood....
Shorted the board out and blow a $799 graphics card.
But the biggest and most common people putting the full tube of heat sink gel ALL over the CPU...
I saw a AMD CPU covered 2 inches thick with Arctic Silver over BOTH sides of the chip....,
Or the half Melted Motherboard there the guy put DDR in the wrong way and the DIMM slot melted and the ram was black..., he them tried it in the other slot...!?!?!?!?!?
Spoken like someone who's never _seen_ "rock solid" - let alone linux on similar hardware, how about mainframes for rock-solid?
Linux is stable. Mainframes are stable. Windows 2K/XP/2K3 are stable. What, pray tell, is your point?
Bet you can't even hot-swap a CPU out on your windows b bitty box...
Why the hell would I want to?
Slashdot, the most successful way to kill a cheap webserver.
My other first post is car post.
Kill a PC: Buy a mac ?
No yellowing here. Your original ]['s and ][ Pluses don't get that unless they've been stored around bad air - cigarettes etc. My ][ looks fine as paint.
That stuff will slowly kill a mainframe. A PC doesn't stand a chance.
A few weeks back I replaced all the major caps on an old AOPEN motherboard that had unexpectedly died. Now it works again.
Interesting that AOPEN didn't provide any tech support response, or offer to recall/exchange the obviously defective boards. (6 caps were blown on the 1 motherboard, all with the same branding)
No more AOPEN for me. Now I've got a nice big G5. :)
Ultimately if they are replaced under warranty then the manufacturer or supplier foots the bill...
Strangely enough those costs will come right back round to the school again (next computers will cost more) and to the taxpayers.
Just a couple of weeks ago a PC nearly burned down the house. I was out the front and heard frantic calls, came round the back to find smoke pouring out one of the windows, I mean thick acrid black smoke. Neighbours had already called the fire brigade.
Anyway they arrived in a couple of minutes and went inside and put it out. Luckily there were two windows open and a good breeze blowing in one and our the other so the damage was minimal (all smoke went straight out the window).
The PC was completetly incinerated though, I've never seena anything like it, the hard drive was actually warped from the heat generated in that steel case. The plastic fascia was gone, just, not there any more, the motherboard, well what loosly resembled one was pretty much ash. The solder holding the ICs obviously melted and they had popped off etc. Luckily, it wasn't my PC, and it was only an old P200 or something, or I'd be up shit creek.
It burned right through the carpet immediatly under the case, and burnt a good impression into the wooden floor beneath. Burnt a chunk out of a couch next to it, but it was caught early enough that there wasn't really any other damage.
I can't see what caused it, the heat generated inside the case was incredibly intense, basically anything inside it that could vaporise, did.
Let it be a warning - install smoke alarms near your PC if you leave it running unattended.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
That's no surprise at all. I've only ever killed two computers of mine, and both were the victims of a failing power supply unit. I was thinking; since it's possible to block electrical shocks from entering vital equipment by placing a blocking device in between the wall and the power cord, why not use such a device in a computer? Let's say all powercords from the PSU were shock protected, wouldn't that save tons of motherboards every year from burning up?
Ok, this actually happened.
One day our secretary comes to me and says her keyboard isn't working properly. I just assume it died naturally and so I grab a replacement from a pile in my cupboard and hand it over. 30 minutes later she comes back and says that the one I gave her is broken too. Now that seems strange, so I go to her system and do a full check, thinking that either her motherboard is faulty, or something is shorting out the keyboards, or she has some practical joke walware like the old Amiga virus which re-mapped keystrokes but only if you typed fast enough. After a thorough check, I confirm her system is OK and both keyboards are indeed dead. I take another spare keyboard from the cupboard, test it on my computer first to make sure it works properly, and then give it to her. 5 minutes later I decide I better check to see if it's OK, so I walk over to her desk just in time to see her take a bottle of spray'n'wipe, spray a massive amount directly into the keys, wipe them off, then bang the keyboard upside down against the edge of her desk to dislogde any dirt which may have been there.
The 3rd keyboard she got that day was a new one so she didn't have the urge to clean it. It still works.
The funny thing is that I felt an immense sense of relief knowing why they broke. 3 keyboards "mysteriously" dying in an hour is something I don't understand and makes me nervous, however stupidity is something I do understand and just accept.
Putting syrup in coffee is some form of blasphemy.
I was working when a computer near me literally exploded.
It was a 486, running with it's case off, and it had probably been on for months if not years straight. Suddely there's a loud bang, a bright flash and a lot of smoke.
What we decided happened was that the motherboard must have slowly heated up and melted around the power connector. Finally this hit a critical point and the connector shorted against the bottom of the case.
Old school power supplies were pretty well made and this must have delivered it's rated amperage, which in turn generated enough heat to vaporise a two inch hole in the mobo.
That made quite a bit of smoke, and more ominously took out the little cadmium rechargable that kept the bios alive.
We kept that area of the lab vacated for the rest of the day.
hmm. what about the BOFH? i vote him as #1 killer of computers and their ignorant users.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
That's why I always use quality fake components from Korea.
With any computer I build for anyone, or even work on, I immediately suggest they replace their elcrappo no-name PSU with a quality PSU from Enermax, Antec, or Sparkle.
The PSU is the one component in your system that can destroy everything else in your system. It is worth every penny to purchase a good one.
The only PC I've killed was through old-fashioned physical trauma -- I was moving out of my dorm room sophomore year and, as I hate moving more than anything, wanted to speed up the process a bit. Seeing that a graduating senior had left a twin-size bed skirt, I had an insight: I would lay the bed skirt out on the (carpeted) floor, pile all my stuff on the bed skirt, and then slide everything along, pulling the edge of the skirt. It worked beautifully -- I maneuvered it into and out of the elevator, even -- until i got the the door of my building, when the corner of a box hit the door jamb, pitching my PC onto the (decidedly not carpeted) sidewalk. Cracked motherboard, dead CPU. RIP.
Always a godfather; never a god. -Gore Vidal
I find American crap to be the very best in fake parts. You'll never know their American, because the tech support staff are situated in Bangalor and speak at least eight words of English.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Am I seriously the only one who's been around computers since his birth in '82 and has NEVER EVER, NOT ONCE SEEN A DEAD POWER SUPLY? I've fried cpu's, ram, a co-proc., a CMOS battery, and nearly every other component or accessory... but why is it I haven't seen even one power-supply go? I feel left out.
Suck,
"Remove me, unsubscribe, take me offa list"
Install any version of "Windows" on it... (what did you expect with an initial post like that)
I'm not surprised that PSU related problems is on top seeing how it's the most important component of the computer but the one that people seem to pay the least attention.
What people must understand is that they need a PSU that have the most stable rails (such as the +5 & +12 rails) and that isn't made by Mr. Bingo Bongo. Sure you can save around $20-30 going with a cheaper PSU but that action is a gamble. Are you a gambler? My friend sure was. Bought some power supply made by some unknown manufacturer and he's still surprised that it was the cause of his exploding CD-Rom.
People in general should take power supply reviews more seriously and consider to spend the extra bucks to hafve something that will work for years as you want it to.
Most of the "learner PC's" I've built for friends who needed something to hack on came from productive dumpster-diving excursions. And the PSU is what's dead often enough that I have a small stack of new ones (still in the box) in my closet right now...
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
Just FYI, the Google cache of the first page is readable! The other pages are apparently not.
I musta killed 2 or 3 Hard Drives by installing Linux...
I am serious....
I don't know if anyone has ever had problems with small rodents as I have...
:(
I've had it hat mice will find ways to get into your desktop since the inside is quite warm, especially on the hard drive. They perform their bodily functions, leave that stuff all over the inside
it was pretty dead after that.
Last week's issues:
#1 - Call from remote office. Server isn't working.
Office manager was cold, so she bought a 1500W electric space heater. She needed a place to plug it in and there just happened to be an empty outlet on the UPS that fed the server, which was conveniently located right across the hall from her office.
Plug in heater, heater kicks on, high current starts, battery backup melts down, and server goes into SSF mode (Sparks, Smoke, and Flames). RAID card burned out and the machine is pretty much toasted. Defintely a power issue.
That office needed a new server anyway.
#2 - Call from dentist's office. Computers won't connect to the network and they are getting weird errors. Drop by office to inspect. Reboot computers and everything seems to work fine.
Network swtich and router are located in a cabinet in the darkroom. There is a single cable that comes out of that cabinet from the UPS that feeds the network equipment. They are short on outlets in the darkroom.
When some of the employees need to use the film duplicator, their solution is to unplug this plug that doesn't seem to connect to anything important. (Never mind that beeping sound in the background!)
Network doesn't instantly fail, since the equipment stays on UPS for ten minutes. Since they don't have instant feedback to realize that what they're doing is bad, they never associate the bad action (pulling the plug) with the bad event (all computers quit working).
Power issues. Yep. Sheesh!
1998: CD
2000: HDD
2004: PSU
That's it - since 1985! The CD was broken by impact. The HDD was garbage from Quantum, may they rot in hell. The PSU was overworked and gave up. It took the mobo with it, but not the RAM or CPU.
The worst part is that I only upgrade when I get a failure or when the parts are horribly antiquated. (My last upgrade was in 2002.)
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Women with shaved lips and hairy armpits wearing Greenpeace tshirts and men's pants!
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Evne the "Made In ..." label is faked. As much as I like to joke about it, it is not uncommon for counterfeit product to carry bogus place of origin sticker.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
just go with the el-cheapo PSU, and insure the PC against fire... let that sucker burn. By the time it gives out, you're likely in the market for an upgrade anyway.
This being said, who makes the best power supplies?
ôó
I've never actually killed a PC. Replaced fans and powersupplies, a CDRW here and there, keyboards and mice that went airborne. But kill? Never. But check one of my other posts from today. According to Powerleap, elevated tempurature will dramatically shorten the life of the capacitors on your motherboard. As much as 50%. So we can expect PCs to last on average about 3 years before the MoBo conks out.
The number one killer of PC's, IMHO, has been the modem.
Lightning usually doesn't even have to enter into it. Everytime the phone rings you get voltage running into your PC.
Once I heard a long ring and the PC never turned back on (well, for a year at least. Later the machine was revived but using any PCI slot mysteriously disabled DMA. On a 333Mhz machine you can imagine boot times).
Another killer was USB related too. Microsoft's Trackball Optical cable shorts out occasionaly which for some reason killed my $3000 custom-built PC about 3 years ago. Someone here on Slashdot told me I can get a refund or some sort of offer but it wasn't worth the hassle.
Get your Unix fortune now!
M$ products
I had two cheapo power supplies fail on me in a row, when building a few computers. After about 5 minutes of running, smoke started pouring out of the computers--the cables from the power supply had melted and the plastic had fused them together. :/.
My first (and only) attempt at modding a heatsink to fit on a cpu resulted in a spine-tingling grinding sound as I tried to force it down on the motherboard--the edge of one corner of the core had been ground into dust
This poor old laptop i'm typing on right now has had a hard life:
We had a pretty big flood a few years back, and this was sitting in it's backpack, leaning against a wall in the basement. Walking through the foot deep water, I realized that the laptop was underwater! I reached inside, and pulled it out, watching as water poured out of the cd-rom drive bay. Behind me were two insurance adjusters, and the both simultaneosly choked back a tear; the laptop was brand new!
Pulled out the battery, and proped it up in the kitchen, afraid to turn it on. We left a hair dryer on it for days, befor we finaly turned it on, and it worked!! It took a couple months, but the water marks left the LCD left to.
The laptop screen is now DE-TACHED, as in not connected to the body by anything but the data cable, but it still works for all my Slashdotting needs.
XD
--
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF ALL MY BASE ARE BELONG TO YOU
A guy I once worked with had a customer of his computer store get so frustrated with the "flaky" PC he bought, that he sent it back to him as a 6x6" cube. He used a hydualic press of some kind.
To quote my friend "I didn't know if I should call the cops or laugh, but it made a great paper weight"
These instructions aren't necessarily a way to physically kill a PC, but it is something new to me. Recently I built a computer for my nephew out of spare PC parts that I had laying around. It was a P3-500 with 384MB ram, standard everything. Nothing special at all. Well my nephew - who is very good on the computer for his age (about 4) - really liked playing kids games on it. He hopped on there one day and decided to play while my brother was in the other room. He actually got the computer booted up and put the CD in, except he put it in upside down into the drive. I'm not sure what happened next, but I guess it must have shutdown. Next thing I know my brother called me up and said the computer wouldn't boot. It wasn't POSTing, and was making some weird alternating beep noises. When I got the computer, I eventually had to put a PCI video card in (wouldn't boot with AGP) and realized that the BIOS was gone. All because of putting a CD in the drive upside down. I booted up onto a floppy drive, and was able to reflash the BIOS. System is working again, and my brother (and hopefully his son) learned a lesson. No more computer unless daddy is around!
I used to have my computer sitting at a desk in the dining room, and any time you walked from anywhere else in the apartment to the living room you walked by it. It was also sitting on linoleum. Over time (about 6 months or so), the fan sucked cat hair and dust into the power supply. Lots of cat hair. Lots of dust.
Then I moved to a new apartment. I unpacked everything, got everything hooked up to the computer, turned it on, and I heard this rather disturbing popping or snapping noise, looked at the back of the computer, and saw flames.
I unplugged the power strip right away, and luckily all I had to replace was the power supply.
The moral of the story: don't put the computer in a high traffic part of the house where there's lots of cat hair to get sucked into the machine, and if you do, don't be a chump and vacuum out your machine every once in a while.
Your power supply might fail if....
1. It came FREE with the $30 case with the blinky lights.
2. The power supply came in a low end Gateway.
3. The power supply came in a low end Dell.
4. The power supply might cost less than $30.
I'm done with the el'cheapo powersupplies and only buy Antec these days.
Make a mirror first: http://www.pcstats.com.nyud.net:8090/articleview.c fm?articleID=1720
Apparently nyud.net got through long enough to get the first page I requested about an hour ago. As for the second? Nyud is giving me 503s.
I've never had cat hair kill a computer, but a few years ago my cat killed one. She has a penchant for tipping over glasses. Especially ones filled with liquid. Actually you might call it a bit of a neurosis. Anyway, one day I was away from my desk for a few minutes, and sensing a golden opportunity, she dumped a glass of water onto the strip-style surge protector below. The surge protector, not exactly of the highest quality, must've overloaded and sent a spike into the computer, taking out the motherboard, several PCI cards, and RAM chips with it. Needless to say, I use an APC UPS located in an area not easily reachable by falling water now.
But I would guess the biggest PC killer is brownouts. I worked at a startup for a while where the admin chose not to use any surge protectors on our computers. I suppose he assumed because we were in a fairly modern office complex that they had clean lines. It took him a bit to figure out why he had to keep supplying me with new power supplies every few weeks after the previous one would die.
well, we know the most common server killer... slashdot. someone get a mirror up asap
When I was in the Philippines I was told that if you lived on the beginning of the street your tv would burn out a lot quicker but if you were at the end of the street your lights would go out when everybody's favorite tv show came on.
http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/
It's destroyed 2 comps, and a CD player of mine. Horrible, horrible stuff.
Strange. /. doesn't normally remind us that it's that time of year again!
1) Install Windows
2) After 1), you won't have a chance for more....
I burned up one of my first computers with upgrades :(
:(
by the time i finished i had IBM AT with:
Dual monitor
dual floppy
dual HD
task swapping and scrollback
and
16-17 M of Ram !!! 1M main + BOTH extended and expanded (100+ little chips on 2 fullsize cards+MB)
Most awesome AT ever....while it lasted....which was less than a MONTH before cpu melted
My venerable Abit BX6 2.0 motherboard bit the dust about 6 months ago due to faulty capacitors. I'm still a bit peaved since it wasn't a dirt-cheap motherboard.
AccountKiller
My friend was working on one of his computers one day and saw one of those small connectors coming out of the power supply not connected to anything.
Anyways, he thought it needed to be plugged in somewhere and what better place than the little 2-pin port on the back of a CD-ROM drive.
It looked like it was meant to be plugged in there because it fit, and he decided to turn the computer on.
White smoke was everywhere. Something inside the power supply exploded, killing the cdrom drive, and everything in the computer.
That just goes to show that even if the plug fits, it might not always be the right place to put it.
1) Slashdot it. 2) Some other form of DDoS attack. 3) ...
Crap! Two links to Dan from me in one day (it's a great site).
Excerpt from the page:
"Many computer users perform their own hardware upgrades, and a distressing number of these result in insufficient damage to the system. Destroying your own computer is every user's right and is the pattern of behaviour expected by the manufacturers and, especially, repair personnel, whose very livelihood is put in peril by those users who perversely persist in correctly upgrading their equipment."
I only buy genuine Sorny, Panaphonic, and MagnetBox.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Does that trash comment refer to this page?
Just curious.
Moral of the story: if it might be an overloaded power supply from a one time short, give it a few hours and try again. Unless of course there is copious smoke emanating from said machine.
Letter To Iran
Do it, mark me negative...
I once had a motherboard killed by a keyboard short -- or to be accurate, what died was apparently the keyboard BIOS. (This was back in the 486 era, when such things still had their own chips.) I accidentally hit the F6 and F7 keys at the same time, the nasty Focus keyboard objected by going PHZZT, and sent its protests off down the cable. ALL the lights on the main box came on, and stayed on until I jerked the cord out of the UPS.
Much testing later (involving a POST card and some mix-and-match with an identical system), I determined that the PSU was still good, the motherboard was still getting power and passing it along to the components in the usual way, all the components were still fine, and the CPU and system BIOS were still alive and well. That left only the keyboard BIOS as suspect. Guess which chip was SOLDERED onto the motherboard??!
After that I started looking more closely at "dead" motherboards, and discovered that nearly ALL of them had evidently died of a fried keyboard BIOS.
About this time, APC started marketing surge-and-noise protectors for NICs, because they'd found that there was significant incidence of system-frying shocks (and plain old electrical noise causing packet corruption) coming over network cables. Thus inspired, for several years I whined at APC about making keyboard protectors, but nothing ever came of it.
So... I find it perfectly believeable that a mouse could commit similar mayhem.
Oh, the 486 in question started life as a $2000 box, but by then was (fortunately!) overdue to be upgraded anyway.
As to modems, I've wondered about that... My modem cables all run thru a heavy-duty surge unit; one hopes that helps. -- I personally know two people who had PCs fried by lightning strikes coming down the phone cable; in one incident, it set the internal modem on fire and melted a hole in the motherboard. Miraculously, the HD survived this abuse, all data intact.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I had a case open once because I was copying data from a second hard drive which I was going to remove as soon as I was done, and I was fidgetting with a paperclip...and dropped it...right into the open case. The machine powered down instantly. The useless piece of metal shorted the machine immediately.
I was sure it was broken...it didn't start for several hours, but in the end it surprisingly booted. The only components that died were the soundcard and the NIC.
A former roommate told me a story about how he'd killed one of his computers. Seems he left the thing on the floor in his room.
Now, his living spaces tend to be trash heaps; it was only constant nagging from his ex-fiancee and me that kept mold from growing in their room when he was living with us. So this did not surprise me at all when he told me what happened...
For whatever reason, ants decided to visit his computer. Ants. I guess he might have spilled something in there, probably Mountain Dew. He saw the ants crawling in and out of his computer, didn't pay much attention to it, and turned the thing on.
Poof. Fried.
I laughed at him.
An ex of mine wound up with a few extra chips in his computer (chocolate and dorito) owing to leaving it open, but never before or again have I heard of ants infesting someone's computer.
Install Windows XP SP2, Real Player and Kazaa, and look up lots of pr0n in IE.
mount
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not that anyone cares anymore, but IIRC, the C64's joystick port was right next to the power switch, and that port, naturally, went right into the motherboard (as did the cartridge thing in the back). All it took was one touch of a static-laden finger while hitting the power switch, and bye-bye. I used to stick the plug from an old Atari 2600 joystick in the port to prevent that sort of thing from happening.
A comment I saw once in the source code for the C64's operating system: "Commodore engineers: designers of the finest semi-functional devices in the world". Ya gotta love it!
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
I wonder how many slashdot-related server deaths have occurred. Surely a human DDoS must have some lasting effect on servers.
[!] No, I can't see my comments. They are not worthy of +3 moderation.
The PSU in my machine here says it's CSA tested and certified. I have no idea what the safety standards they test are for that type of device... but perhaps that's why I've never seen one screw up. Not that stuff doesn't get by them sometimes, I had a yorx stereo explode on me. Of course, I wouldn't blame no-name parts first. Wouldn't it be negligence such as leaving it on in a stuffy enclosure for eight years without even dusting the outside of the case (and forget about the inside)? I always kept my computers clean, and allowed clearance all around them for air flow. The desk I'm using now has a spot for the CPU but it's closed in on all sides but the front and a small slot in the back for the wires. I use that space to hold books so my computer can breath on top of the desk.
im going to keep with my favorite way to kill a PC http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=137921&cid=115 35582
Cooling systems are very tricky, ALWAYS CHECK FOR HOLES! Otherwise you get the famous carwash
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
Install windows on it?
I'm a firm believer in surge protectors. Years ago (back when the Pentium 100MHz roamed the plains), a lightning storm decided to play havoc on the neighborhood.
When I came home from work, I smelled ozone and burnt plastic. Looking around I noticed that the surge protector power supply plug was melted and fused to the wall socket. Though ruined, the surge protector did its job. Nothing attached to it was affected by the lightning strike that hit the powerline outside.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Several years I helped a friend set up a new computer. I was not watching closely (hey, I was there to help install software). The high end CRT monitor came with two ports: one plug for Mac (old style) and one VGA, and two cables. Until a moment after he turned on the monitor, I had never appreciated that the Mac video connector is the same format used by the PC joystick port... We got flames (briefly) and lots of acrid smoke. Happily, all he lost was a ribbon cable inside the case.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
This is a much better article on the subject.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
fridge magnets (the good earth ones)?! That will mess with your head for a while!
People say it was me. I remember it being someone else. Well, anyway, it was an old windows 3.1 gateway computer back in middle school. It was really fun, we played gorilla (the qbasic game) and epic pinball. While we were playing epic pinball, someone pressed shift, and the monitor just started smoking. I can't remember if the image went off right way or not. Kind of weird though, and sucky, since we didn't have a computer in there anymore. Not that catastrophic I suppose.
... is to install a Microsoft Windows OS.
You guys make this sooooo easy.
"looks like there's a strong ba in there, but it's getting eaten by some linux or something..." Its brief mentioning on an internet cartoon is a sure sign that Linux is mainstream now, right?
Google Mirror Page 1
Google Mirror Page 2
Google Mirror Page 3
Google Mirror Page 4
Google Mirror Page 5
Google Mirror Page 6
Google Mirror Page 7
Google Mirror Page 8
Google Mirror Page 9
Well, alright, it wasn't a PC, it was a Sun server.
;-), but we were down for about a week while the parts came in and we put everything back together.
This was in the 1989-1990 time frame. The company I worked for at the time (Language Technology - they don't exist any more), had a rack mounted Sun-3 server that was our primary file server. We had too little RAM in the server (I think we had 16MB) so the poor thing was constantly paging.
Anyway, one day I was in a meeting in our boardroom, which had a big window all along one wall that looked into, among other things, the big window that lined one wall of our computer room. Suddenly, there was this loud electronic noise. I turned to my colleague and said "Do you hear that?" when all of a sudden there was a loud BANG! and the computer room went opaque. The Halon system had discharged.
It turns out that the "noise" I had heard was the fire alarm. The Fire Department came and evacuated everyone, then, when they determined that there was no active fire, set up big fans to air out the Halon. Two hours later, when we were allowed to go back into the computer room, we pulled the server out of the rack. The top of the card cage was carbonized black.
After a few days of investigation we figured out that our Xylogics disk controller card had caught fire. It turned out that there was a design flaw on that particular model of disk controller such that if there was constant disk activity a diode at the top of the card would overheat. We were so RAM-poor that we kept that sucker seeking hour after hour, until finally the diode overheated to the point that it and the PC board actually caught fire.
Insurance covered everything; we got a new server (same model, though we got a better disk controller
So, you see, we killed our server through excessive disk usage.
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
Ive always wondered what happens when I switch that 120 switch to 220 hehe.
Feed it forbidden fruit.
The 300W PSU in this machine will be eleven years old, come May....
At the time, 300W was unheard-of outside of servers, and such a unit was very hard to find. But I'd added one too many gadgets in this case, and the original 200W PSU refused to power on (tho it still works, when not overloaded).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I installed the power connectors from the PSU to the mobo backwards(back when you could do that). Fried a capacitor. Capacitor was replaced, worked just fine.
I remember when I was 10 or 11 and we got our first 386 DOS/Windos 3.11 system. I loved to play around on it and taught myself all the DOS commands. My favorite was format c: because it counted up from 0 to 100% and at the end my parents would be furious because they lost all of their data. Their punishment (which I feel was/is cruel and unusual) was to make me learn to fix all the problems I created and from then till my dying day I will be required for any and all tech support they may need 24/7.
Why? Is a power supply some kind of new concept? Don't they have an IC for one of these things yet?
Install windows and boot to the "blue screen of death".
through the vents of a 17" CRT seem to be rather effective in my unfortunate experience....
My brother awoke one morning to the sound of electrical arcing coming from his PC. He could see an arc between the PSU fan and the power strip eighteen inches away. In a blind panic he yanked the power strip plug from the wall. I pulled the PSU apart and found several electrolytic capacitors whose insulation had blown off, leaving large charred areas across the circuit board. One of them had shorted out to a heatsink. The cooling fan was all but completely siezed up, which probably had a thing or two to do with the fireworks. I dropped a spare supply in on a whim and surprisingly enough everything worked.
One day he decided that he was going to build a Athlon 1.4ghz computer with a 135? (probably wasn't much bigger) power supply.
At the time I was working for him as a Cable modem installer because I wanted nothing to do with his customer service reputation, but I strictly told him that a 135 watt PS would NOT supply enough power for that pc.
In the end, every component on the PC had to be replaced due to his actions, he learned his lessons of the importance of power supplies and I won a $20 bet with his assistant
The moral? Never trust a bad power supply (or a idiot boss)
Welcome to the Internet.
As you were not familiar with Strongbad's e-mail, this is clearly your first day using it.
I think you will really enjoy it. It's a wonderful thing full of educational information, personal "web logs", news, and goofy stuff like a dancing hampster.
Good luck!
How to Destroy Your Computer, courtesy of Dan's Data
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Okay, I have to ask, what in the fuck is the gooey orange stuff?
My god...
Google doesnt browse logged in, and thus doesnt see sigs. Try again, moran.
Naughty Bunny.
What about clicking on those pop-ups that tell you your system needs "tuning for viruses [sic]"?
Tons of people I know get screwed by spyware, adware, and other junk that slows down their computer.
Their solution? Buy a new computer.
CC
CKSCIII
I'd think this was the number one cause of PC death and yet it wasn't on the list. Did Microsoft commision the study?
"Your computer is in a better place, Strong Bad. Actually, it's in the same place but now it's got a big hole in it!"
Another good brand, The Carnivale, with genuine two prong molded plug and an exterior case to prevent fall apart
In Korea only old people use fake components.
I could be wrong. I'm always wrong...
That sounds as a Microsoft product... just like the MS Semi-Cluster... which btw. can be emulated by some cmd-scripts and the NetSvc.exe from reskit (I've done it).
Abandon all hope ye who install Winblows.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
The automobile should be indestructable by now, instead they are more delicate than ever. /military/ spec.
I'm not down with pampering everything or it's my fault that it broke... If you blow a clutch up screwing around at least you weren't depending on it in a real crisis.
Go ahead and wax your fucking car every day and laugh at the fools who 'wonder why their paint is peeling off' etc, shit ought to be
Turn on, connect to internet.
My brother is your stereotypical pc abuser. The thing is piled up with spyware, malware, virusses,... If it's downloadable, he'll try it. Basically. Needless to say: performance on his machine get's shot to hell in the 30 minutes after I ghost his machine with a clean image (I should call the I A-Team to do a normal system cleanup) So to make things worse, he has the habit of banging on the sides of case whenever 'the thing goes slow'. Once, his puter died on me. The moment I took it up, I noticed a 'rattling sound': the whole shebang got loose. The soundcard did a 69 with the videocard and I won't get into the awkward position of both hard drives. I fitted everything back in place but I neglected to put the (heavily bend) sideplates back in. An hour or so later: we could hear a loud 'banging' noise coming from my brothers chamber: he couldn't kick the side so he went over to 'bang on the top' of the machine.
I'm still surprised he didn't use any auxilaries like axeshaped firestones, heavy bones and the like. My guess would be: the neolithicum is just something that happened to other people as far as he is concerned... *sigh*
The new store policy now includes a line: "Compressing your computer with the aid of hydraulic press or functionally similar means obviously voids your warrianty."
I was logged in as root once, and the keyboard fell on the floor, and it managed to press rm / -rf somehow.
Oh, alright, it didn't. But it would be amazing though.
Get your own free personal location tracker
All of my computers are at least five years old. Two of them are on permanently. They are still fine aside from the fans in one of them getting a bit groany and being in need of replacement. Quality power supply, or just good luck? Reckon it's going to just go BANG one of these days? :)
I've been visiting that site for a long time and read most of SB's emails, but that one is just plain random! :-)
"Band names", "Guitar" and "Duck pond" are classics!
Foot tends to be moderately effective but painful.
5 _2 2_04/tjmonitor.wmv
I recommend against fist.
Chainsaw is divine. Explosives are nice, but very dangerous and require significant clearance due to shrapnel. Pickaxe is very unique and piercing, and fireaxe has real severing power as well as a little known blunt end which is every useful. Sledge is the best. Blunt. Force. Trauma.
http://boole.org/breakshit/cicadabbq_breakshit_
But the #1 way to destroy a PC is by assigning it to any person who has ever uttered the phrase "I am not a computer person"
- follow slashdot Voodo ribbon cable foding article; sharp solder on motherboard underside shorts IDE cables
I've cooked about 6 AMD XP's. Even with heatsink fitted properly. Heatsinks can be backwards and gap not really visible. They crumble too.
A blog I run for the wealth
Mom insisted upon running the sweeper Sat. afternoon. Charged up the whole house, fried my laptop backlight. Yet another reason to wear headphones and drown out the p's: I can hear the static cling, and know when to get the hell out!
sitting in my pc workstation technical support class when braindead college student #1 brings in a stick of 512mb ddr wrapped in tin foil. He says to me, "Hey, my ram seems to be having a problem so I brought it in for you to look at it." He then produces a stick of ram wrapped snuggly in tin foil (for protection he added). I didnt have the heart to tell him that even if it wasnt his ram that was having the problem it sure was going to have a problem now.
Last summer we had a ground strike at our neighbors house's backyard (about 75' from my house, about 10' from theirs). Trashed their house pretty bad, to the point of even melting a hole in their propane feed line. Nasty bolt
So while I'm watching the fire department, cops, etc...show up at their house (The occupants were all scared shitless, but otherwise fine), I decided to go check the National Weather service. I had mistakenly forgot to turn it off before the storm, so I just sat down and started typing. Worked fine.
Except it said the network cable was unplugged. Huh?
Long story short: 6 (yes, 6) trashed NIC's, 1 trashed router, 1 trashed motherboard, 1 trashed VCR, and a trashed thermostat. Before you ask me about line protection, etc, consider this: the thermostat for the furnace is not on line power. It's battery powered. As for the computers and router: all are on UPS's. Big (2000VA+) industrial ones. Yes, Virgina, the power does suck where I live. The UPS's all reported a mild line spike (147v, if memory serves), but nothing crazy.
As best anyone can figure (though I'm open to other ideas), the spike got in one of two ways: either though the grounding wires (which would make sence, except for the UPS's protecting that line, too, and that still does not explain the thermostat), or some sort of strange transient voltage created in the wiring of the house by having that much current and voltage passed so close (sort of like creating a big A/C alternator).
Point being: when Mother Nature decides to pWn your equiptment, she's going to!
Chris Knight is my hero.
what about caffeine and a jorb well done?
What about Duvvacell?!?
I guess they just don't make computers like they used to.
Input error. Replace user and press any key to continue.
Last weekend, my boss got a new telescope with some kind of webcam attached. He installed the software on his shiny tablet PC, went out, and shot some nice Saturn pics. They are not available anymore. After 5 minutes Windows crashed and never woke up again. He had taken the running system from 25 C inside to -15 C outside, so the hard drive crashed because of the temperature difference. It is cold dead...
Our VP of IT decided to "water" his pcu one day. Got a shiny new machine out of it. He probably reads this. Hi, Jef!
Slashdot...
Ride the DDoS wave!
Another one was something I did. I was just learning how to build PCs, and this was back before the PSU connectors could only fit one way. Anyway, there were four wires you had to wire from the PSU to the case on/off switch. I got them in some sort of bad order, because from then on, anytime you plugged that PC in, and tried to switch it on, it'd reset the breaker for the whole electrical circuit. It took my a couple of tries to realize it wasn't a coincidence that everytime I hit the power button, all the lights went off. What's worse, is this happened to be on the same circuit as the CRC server room.
The upshot is, that socket shouldn't have been on the same circuit, and they fixed that right quick!
It's the shit inside the water that is conductive. Not the water.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
This must be the third time I post the nice image of my rat and the computer he ate. See also a detail of the destruction.
I've found that pouring iron filings inside monitors and power supplies creates quite an interesting display when powered on.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
My favorite way of euthanizing an old pc is to update the bios, and in the middle of the write, kill the power.
...because Plutonians are teh suck
been there, done that
dbcad7
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Yeah, that's how I kill a PC.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
I popped open one of the failed PSUs once and found that, yes indeed, the blown caps were made by that company in Taiwan.
If your machine has a PSU from Deer, replace the unit ASAP, even if it's working fine right now. It will eventually fail.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
It was a great one. Some computer game blew up his monitor. If that article still exists anywhere, and someone has a link to it, I would love to get it. That was a great site.
Happy goldfish bowl to you.
I took my desktop through the airport, now it doesn't run. In fact the fan(which I replaced) got broken somehow. Its ok, it was adequete, but now I have an excuse to buy a new PC.
God spoke to me.
Oh! And compy just peed on the carpet... :-D
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
I actually own a palsonic TV (in australia). As for fakes i have also purchased Nik (nike) shoes and Fanty (fanta) and a cola beverage with a strangly familiar red and white logo "cola" although not quite the same taste...