Slashdot Mirror
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
The most common PC killer? The Power Supply.
I'm tearing mine out right now!
air and light and time and space
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.
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.
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.
.001%
Gunshot.
Had a drive from a puter which was shot "it ran too slow".
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
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
Get a woman. You'll forget your PC was ever there.
The coolest voice ever.
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.
...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.
While in itally or (any other country that uses 230 volt power) switch the "voltage" switch on your power supply from 230 to 115 while the computer is running, a bright blue spark will fly out and you will have successfully screwed your computer.
(I actually proved this while in CAD class in high school)
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.
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.
Yeah I'll second that: I have Windows installed on my PC and it's never failed me ever since I installed Linux on my other partition!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I think the remaining 2% is for Layer 8 problems
The package said "Windows XP or better. Pentium Class Processor or better"... So I got a Mac with OS X
Here's a comprehensive list of failed software:
1995: Windows 95
1998: Windows 98
2000: Windows ME
2001: Windows XP
I saw a piece of hardware documentation once that said "semi-hot-pluggable". Wonder where that fits in?
Unknown host pong.
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.
That's why I always use quality fake components from Korea.
How the crap do you smoke a floppy? Or more importantly, why? ;)
Bad experience is a school that only fools keep going to.
Uh.. yes. 98 was stable as a rock compared to WinME.
Of course, 3/4 of the inmates at the local asylum are more stable than WinME.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
"Remove me, unsubscribe, take me offa list"
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!
College you say? Hate to break it to you man, those were all coitally related damage. The 'spilled water' group just tried to clean up first
This rating is Unfair ( ) ( ) Fair (*) Funny
Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.
"semi-hot-pluggable". Wonder where that fits in?
Halfway into the slot?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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"
that happened to me while i was playing doom 3 recently, actually. I shot it before it could finish spawning, but had to grab the chemical extinguisher anyway.
(kidding)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Are you sure it wasn't running a prototype of the dual-core P4s?
well, we know the most common server killer... slashdot. someone get a mirror up asap
Let it be a warning - install smoke alarms near your PC if you leave it running unattended.
<voice char="Agent Smith">
What good is a smoke alarm when you are unable to hear?
</voice>
It means you can plug it in when the device is lukewarm. If nessesary, use a hairdryer or a ice pack prior to insertion.
#include <signature.h>
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.
I only buy genuine Sorny, Panaphonic, and MagnetBox.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
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.
"semi-hot-pluggable"...Wonder where that fits in?
It depends. Has the warranty expired yet?
Evil is the money of root.
Darn, i'll have to avoid the mov instruction from now on.
This is a much better article on the subject.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
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.
through the vents of a 17" CRT seem to be rather effective in my unfortunate experience....
Shocking that such an event would happen to someone who calls it a "puter"...
"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!"
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"