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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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
heres the Mirrordot copy incase the thing totally dies: http://mirrordot.org/stories/4ec4acbeb790ac0270a10 94afdd09d56/index.html
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)
Routed CRT internal voltage levels down VGA cable to motherboard. Bad bad, very bad. The magic smoke escaped, while making several bangs.
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.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
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.
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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.
"Remove me, unsubscribe, take me offa list"
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.
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!
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!
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"
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.
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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....