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."

Comments

In my opinion

[Jozer99]

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.

The keyboard lock..

[sr180]

Back in Highschool the 386 and 486 pcs had the old standard keyboard lock. By rubbing your shoes on the carpet, lifting them up and holding your finger milimeters away from the metal keyboard lock a static discharge would then hit the lock. Monitor would go black and an instant fried motherboard was the result. The school just kept replacing them under warranty claims. And these were dropping about the rate of one or two a week.

Re:The keyboard lock..

[whoever57]

By rubbing your shoes on the carpet, lifting them up and holding your finger milimeters away from the metal keyboard lock a static discharge would then hit the lock. Monitor would go black and an instant fried motherboard was the result.

I remeber when my employer had one computer that kept locking up (usually after several hours of unsaved editing). A similar technique was used to get it going again.

Re:The keyboard lock..

[AC-x]

I never thought you could actually kill PCs with static like that,

I built a flyback transformer driver, 25kilovolts or so (for a lifter ;) ), and decided to try and fry an old digital camera I had.

Nothing! High voltage arching right across the circuit boards and it was still working fine! The only thing I managed to do was over-saturate the LCD, but even that returned to normal after an hour or two.

I also remember someone's anecdote about working in a computer store with nasty carpets. The owner decided to prove a point by shuffling along the floor to a radiator holding a DIMM, then letting it spark across the DIMM. He then plugged it into a ram tester to show it still working fine.

Water In Monitor (CRT)!

[temojen]

Routed CRT internal voltage levels down VGA cable to motherboard. Bad bad, very bad. The magic smoke escaped, while making several bangs.

Re:Entire glass of coke

[ninthwave]

I knew a sound engineer who would clean out mixing decks with sprite. He would just dump it down the fader slots. I managed to get him to switch to plain tonic water. The theory being if you did not have it plugged in or on the liquid would not conduct and the carbonation would remove grime sticking the faders. You just let it dry before turning it back on and all would be well.

I only witnessed this act twice and it still gives me shivers.

Re:Most common problems

[robbo]

Wow, considering that very few people actually try to overclock, the percentage of overclockers who fry their systems must be pretty large. Any guesses? 80%? more? less?

Nearly burned down my house

[Bitsy Boffin]

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.

Re:Nearly burned down my house

[takochan]

I am starting to wonder if these PC fires might be due to the "exploding capacitor" problem from that era (where the Taiwan company that stole (and miscopied) the recipe for making capacitors, which then, after 5 years or so, pop, spilling eletrolyte all over a running PC motherboard).

I have read around the net recently several cases of fires happening (but someone was near the PC and shut it off right away, then saw where the smoke came from (around the board where the eletrolyte had spilled out of the pop'd capacitor) after opening it.

Urban legend or is this going to be more of a problem as PCs from this era start exhibiting this problem more as their capacitors 'expire'?

Re:Nearly burned down my house

[Reziac]

In the murky past, some corporate IT departments always made everyone shut down their PCs when they left for the night, because of the risk of the PSU catching fire.

I know someone whose old Mac's PSU caught fire -- flames shot out the back and caught the curtains and wall behind it on fire too! Fortunately she had a kitchen-sized fire extinguisher that got it under control before the fire department arrived, tho a chunk of the wall had to be replaced. Amazingly, the hard disk survived this abuse, with no data lost.

Re:Nearly burned down my house

[darrylo]

I am starting to wonder if these PC fires might be due to the "exploding capacitor" problem from that era (where the Taiwan company that stole (and miscopied) the recipe for making capacitors, which then, after 5 years or so, pop, spilling eletrolyte all over a running PC motherboard).

Well, the "exploding capacitors" that I've seen, are really more along the lines of "leaky capacitors" (hey, given the choice between "leaky" and "exploding", which one do you think people are going to use? ;-). The electolyte slowly leaks out and dries out to a light brown crusty substance. No explosions, there.

However, depending upon the capacitor's purpose, changing the capcitance (or changing the capacitor into a "not-quite-a-capacitor"), could also have Very Bad Effects. ;-(

Another (rare?) possibility is hairline cracks/fractures in surface-mount components (possibly caused by the way the device is soldered to the board, IIRC). Some years back, I ran into a web page that had some pretty detailed descriptions of surface-mount component failure modes. In some cases, surface-mount capacitors (I think) could pass some phenomenal amounts of current in some failure mode, easily burning an hole and possibly causing a fire. Very Scary Stuff. Unfortunately, the site that had the page took it down and started charging people to see it.

(Soon after I saw that, a co-worker's laptop got Real Hot, and something burned a nasty hole in the bottom, and scorched a piece of desk, too, I think. I always assumed that it was some kind of surface-mounted device failure, but that was just a wild guess on my part.)

Re:Nearly burned down my house

[shippo]

There's a particular model of Digital Terresital TV set-top box, sold only in the UK, that suffered from this fault. One of the capacitors on the main board has a habit of exploding after a year or so of use. Most have either died or had the component replaced now, as the model hasn't been made for at least 2 year. However, it's possible that there's still the odd one or two still in use, or even sat on the shelf of a supplier somewhere.

Re:This is so true.

[ScrewMaster]

Odd ... in 1985 or thereabouts I worked tech support for Mindscape at the Consumer Electronics Show (technically I was a programmer but we got hauled off to McCormick Place during trade shows) and the C64's drove us nuts. That show was in the dead of winter, the air was bone dry, and we had a row of Commodore 64 machine set up to demo our games. Every time one of the sales guys would touch one of them without grounding himself first ... zap. Blown video chip, blank screen. We had to keep a stack of spares just to get through the show.

Re:Corrupted Power Absolution

[UserChrisCanter4]

Unfortunately, that's not always the case. This assumption was a pet peeve of mine, when I used to work in the computer repair business. I'd have some guy talking up the specs on his computer, and they would usually be impressive up until he bragged about the 450 Watt PSU that he picked up for $35.

Not only do cheap PSUs introduce stability issues, but a lot of PSUs take things down with them when they blow.

My favorite example is an absolutely spectacular one involving my brother's friend. He had a 1.4Ghz Athlon (back when that was impressive), along with the requisite DVD, CD-Burner, brand new GeForce 3; the whole nine yards. The PSU blew. Both optical drives ejected and shot sparks from inside. HDDs presumably lost their motors (they never spun up again). Mobo died, CPU died, sound card died. The only thing that survived was the video card, which was at least a small consolation since it was still top-of-the-line.

PSU replacements did tend to be my second most common hardware repair (HDDs were first), and most of the time they didn't damage anything, but I saw enough problems then that I'll only buy reputable PSUs now.

Modem

[ImaLamer]

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.

Re:Modem

[Bri3D]

It wasn't worth the hassle to replace the motherboard/USB controller card/whatever on your $3000 custom-built system? I personally sign up for all warranty settlements I can just to show the manufacturer how important it is to make non-faulty hardware.

PSUs

[tarksum]

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 :/.

Nothing beats this.....

[neo_mushroom]

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

killer cats

[petsounds]

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.

Not overclocked but modded a AT 'a little bit'

[hurfy]

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 :(

Re:Interesting

[pipingguy]

That's why big, slow, quiet intake fans (with easily-cleaned external and accessible filters - I.E., panty hose held in place with a clip-on finger/cat paw/infant toe shield) sucking lots of CFM is the next big thing in PC cooling.

As long as static pressure is taken into account, this can be a nice, easy retrofit kit for existing removeable case sides. I was going to draw and upload a concept drawing but my scanner isn't working.

If you are interested in R&D and have bucks I also have a relatively cheap cryo solution and prototype case layouts.

Keyboard BIOS

[Reziac]

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.

Stupid ways to (almost) kill a PC: The paperclip

[piano-in-a-box]

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.

So my server got owned by /.

[TetryonX]

I wonder how many slashdot-related server deaths have occurred. Surely a human DDoS must have some lasting effect on servers.

That reminds me...

[beetle496]

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.

Re:Components that have failed in my PCs:

[toddestan]

And with Windows, replacing the motherboard either means reinstalling Windows, or messing with a ton of driver issues (unless you are so lucky to be replacing the motherboard with an identical one). But replace the power supply, and Windows is none the wiser. That fact alone makes changing power supplies far, far easier.

Re:PSU and power issues? I can't imagine that.

[cbdougla]

We had just put a new electro mag lock on the computer room door to go with the card swipe system we had been using elsewhere for quite some time.

There was a button marked "door release" on the inside of the computer room that you would use to disengage the lock.

However, it seemed that the somewhat impatient cleaning crew didn't read english so well. So, instead of pressing the button marked "release", she pushed the big red button underneath the clear lexan box. This button happened to be the UPS kill switch. It instantly shut off all power to and from the 150,000 Va three phase, wall-sized UPS. And, of course, every computer in the computer room. THAT was an interesting day.

more

[jago25_98]

- 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.

So there i was...

[GotSanity]

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.