Most Unique Computer Breakdown?
<div class="IPBDescription">Craziest thing they've done...</div> Pretty straight forward: What's the most interesting/destructive way your computer has ever gone cahoots on you?
My #1:
I was fortunate enough to NOT have this happen to my computer, (at that time, it was the old Pentium 166); it happened on my friend's computer. I had bought a cheap copy of a game back in Malaysia, which I lent to my cousin. When I got it back from him, I noticed a crack along the center of the CD, (not actually cutting though the the actual data part of the CD, but it might of been a factor of future events). There was no way I could play the game on my 166, so I went to my friend's house to try it. So we put the CD in, it starts installing, then
<b>BOOM!</b>
The CD drive itself justs pops out half an inch!
My friend quickly shuts down his computer and we take a look: The CD literally blew to pieces inside his drive. Shaking it sounded like shaking a box of broken glass shards inside. Heck, A shard of CD actually blew out so hard, part of it was sticking out of the back the CD. My friend later told me that the CD drive had already been acting wonky as well, but I still suspect the CD crack was the main culprit.
Remember folks: Refrain from buying illegal goods and stick with the original.
My #1:
I was fortunate enough to NOT have this happen to my computer, (at that time, it was the old Pentium 166); it happened on my friend's computer. I had bought a cheap copy of a game back in Malaysia, which I lent to my cousin. When I got it back from him, I noticed a crack along the center of the CD, (not actually cutting though the the actual data part of the CD, but it might of been a factor of future events). There was no way I could play the game on my 166, so I went to my friend's house to try it. So we put the CD in, it starts installing, then
<b>BOOM!</b>
The CD drive itself justs pops out half an inch!
My friend quickly shuts down his computer and we take a look: The CD literally blew to pieces inside his drive. Shaking it sounded like shaking a box of broken glass shards inside. Heck, A shard of CD actually blew out so hard, part of it was sticking out of the back the CD. My friend later told me that the CD drive had already been acting wonky as well, but I still suspect the CD crack was the main culprit.
Remember folks: Refrain from buying illegal goods and stick with the original.
Comments
bolt of lighting struck the house, turned ON the TV, fried the computer, of course I didn't do it, but I did get to play golf with the computer, and a sledgehammer was my club (it was an old piece anyway.)
maybe that's what happened.
my old harddrive, a IBM, just stopped working, after a power-cut, it's was after that my parents decided that i needed a new harddisk... luckily it wasn't completly destroyed, apparently it's just a bit unstable...
youre thinking virus, right? no, the programs were lsass.exe, thats part of windows itself. so i turnit back on, and it wont start.... i leave the room in despair, come back later and the comptuer works perfectly.
in one hour, same exact thing happens. oh i forgot to mention it had started making ponging noises, like a motor starting up and getting the power cut 17 times in a row.
finally, ive got the case open and im looking around (it was too unstable to do anythign while its on) and i burn myself touching the harddrive!
my new 7200 rpm 20 gig drive was faulty and voerheated itself to a good 51 degreez celsius, or 130ish farenheit.
so i had some ice packs and paper toweling resting on it for the next few hours and it worked fine, except for the majority of windows had been corrupted by falling read/write heads, i had to reformat 3 times and buy a hdd cooling fan. now my computer has 3 fans in a five inch drive bay pointing directly onto my hdd, and shes never given me another problem since.
After a lot of taking things like RAM or the video card out and putting them back in, I didn't see anything wrong. I finally decided that I might as well vacuum the dust out of my case while I had it open. I found a moth that had fried itself on the motherboard near the pins you plug the power/restart buttons to.
I've since installed better grills on my 80mil fans.
one day, when i was out at school, there was a powercut.
my dad turned my pc on to check it was still working after the power came back on, and everything was fine.
i come back home from school, turn on the computer and... zilch. nothing. turns out there was something wrong with my gf2mx400.
i take the card round to a friends house and plug it in. nothing works. i take a agp card and plug it into my mobo, it works.
no big deal i decide, and go for an upgrade - mobo, gfx, psu.
my brother gets hold of my old pc and plugs it in, turns it on and... one all singing and all dancing computer.
sooo...
what was the problem??
what was the problem??<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Want to know why computer engineering is such a difficult field? It's hard to make a product that breaks down specifically when the user needs it most, requiring a repairman or new replacement to be paid for. Your computer probably wasn't used to your brother, assumed he was a repairman, and went through the "magically re-awaken" sequence.
i think it may have been my case.
my brother runs it w/out the case, but i checked it when it was in the case.
hmm...
Sweet.
run awaaay. aaaaarrrrggghhhh
When I upgraded from my 586 to my p166, my video card died. Dunno how or why, it just did not work in the P166. Likewise, when I upgraded from p166 to my 300mhz Celeron, my Voodoo1 stopped working. Had to go buy a Voodoo2. Darn ;)
Similarly, my friend had his DVD-ROM die when he upgraded his old CDR drive to a new one. Also when he switched out his mobo's his GF2MX died so he had to get a GF3...
Wierdness.
Oh and here's a wierdo story to go along w/ the thread:
My friend (same friend as above) used to actually have a "curse" about him in regard to computers. Every computer he touched broke, without fail. Literally, just TOUCHING it.
One time back when I was in high school I was working on something in Adobe Premiere in my computer apps. class, he came buy and jokingly put his index finger on the case, joking about his curse. Within 5 minutes, the hard drive had died and the computer had to be sent off to dell (they had a contract and couldn't just put in a new hard drive, heh). About 6 months earlier, I was on a different computer, he used it for a minute, and when he was done the CD-ROM drive was dead. Also his computer never worked right for years, but that was probably more due to buying the least expensive parts rather than quality ones. Naturally, I never let him near my computer. :P
Luckily, his curse seems to have lifted, as he doesn't have these problems anymore heh.
Practically every single thing in my computer, and electronic things we buy, are broken.
DVD player
CD player
Toaster
4 Video Cards
Video card cooling fans <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> (happened to my current one)
Hard Drives
CD-ROM drives
Modems
Monitors
RAM
CPUs
Speakers
Games
Faxes
Phones
Dishwashers
Video Cameras
<!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
my monitor broke down
the funny thing about it:
I still had warranty on it, so I didn't had to pay but I got a mock-bill (just for the protocoll I guess?) and it cost about 7 (seriously) times more to repair the damn thing than I paid for it when I bought it new (they must have sent it back to japan I suppose).
EXCELLENT IDEA! THAT WOULD BE THE MOST ENERGY SAVING FEATURE! A MONITOR THAT STAYS OFF PERMENANTLY!!!
Thank God the start button can be accessed with a ctrl + esc...
With the new comp, I think it did the same thing as well, only it came from the "Log out" feature.
got damn annoying
my surge protector doesnt protect form surges...
and it constantly w@nks me about.... have to be very careful.
2nd time, tha capasitors around my prossesor exploded(overclocking by 200Mhz on a 600mhz comp will do that)
3rd time the fan on my vidio card stoped causing all sorts of weid stuff to show up on my screen.
I baught a digital watch thing from spain AGES ago, it was fine, then it apparantly ran out of batteries, so it got put somewhere for a few years.
A few years later, I'm after a watch, so I get bored, pick up the watch (which was apparantly dead) and I whack it against a table.... it suddenly springs to life - but here's the spooky bit -
EVERY digit/number/whatever had the number 6 on. (eg 66:66:66)
On every single mode on the watch.......
My at least most annoying computer failure was this:
Had a BSOD and pressed reset, waited for it to restart and nothing happened. I could hear that it didn't get far in bootsequens so I crack open my lid and inspects the diagnostic leds that my mobo has. Hm possible cpu error...
Not good.
So I got in contact with the place I bought it from (www.dataparadiset.se great supportdepartment) and he advice me to start janking out all the components and to see when it starts working again.
It didn't.
Even tried another power supply with no use. Alas there was nothing else to do than to send my mobo, cpu and memory back. A couple of weeks went by (thank god I saved my old computer) before they sent me some new components since they couldn't either find something wrong. So I rebuilt my computer again. This time I only put in the mobo, cpu, memory and grafic card and it worked like a charm. So I rebuilt everything, hit on and....
It didn't work. So what was wrong? Then it hit me, the case. And lo and behold. It was my fairy resetbutton that was jammed. All those weeks over something so simple. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
It worked like a charm. Then, a few errors. Windows I thought, Microshaft still hasnt ironed out the bugs in the damn system.
Months pass with the errors growing larger and more deadly.
It got to the point where any application could not be run for more then 15 minutes without a restart, which the comp would do of it's own volition.
Finally, me and my brother get to troubleshooting. We switch the Duron with the Athlon. Still screws around. We throw the Athlon in another mobo. That comp got errors similar to mine.
What happened was this. The mother board was faulty to begin with. It had a red digital display that from the very start was displaying errors. My brother and I believe that the mobo slowly accumulated errors over time which eventually crippled the mobo. Although the mobo could still work. The mobo then slowly cooked the Athlon. When we took it apart, we noticed that the Athlon had a charecteristic burn mark of a burnt out CPU, yet it still worked =\. Anyhow, the motherboard smelt of burnt relays, so we had to throw the motherboard at the warranty people.
What followed was a full year spent running WinXP on a P3 450 with about 64 MB ram, and let me tell you, I didnt call that Piece of crap "Nuts and Bolts" for nothing. The hard drive would crunch non stop, on anything, even the most trivial movement of the mouse could set it going.
After this foray, we went on to burn out two A:\ floppy drives via self combustion in the same day when I had to copy some vital assignment papers on it. Needless to say, I eventually found a way to get my work in, but the smell of burnt electronics was unpleasent for the week or so it hung around.
One last thing, never flip the voltage setting on your powersupply from 240 - 110 and run it... EVER...
Practically every single thing in my computer, and electronic things we buy, are broken.
DVD player
CD player
Toaster
4 Video Cards
Video card cooling fans <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> (happened to my current one)
Hard Drives
CD-ROM drives
Modems
Monitors
RAM
CPUs
Speakers
Games
Faxes
Phones
Dishwashers
Video Cameras
<!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sounds like you have some 'dirty' power. If you live in an area that receives power surges, it could be the culprit.