Your personal tech fuck ups - This can't possiblly go wrong.

[Five or Six Stores]

When I was like 13 I dropped a portable hard drive like 3 feet onto my bed and my entire music collection got corrupted.

Recently I had to transfer all my photos off my phone, I borrowed a friend's microSD for this but it had a fake storage capacity and all my files disappeared into the ether.

 

[Elysian]

If it attaches to the backplate then brackets and screws are enough to set the cooler right, don't worry about it. But while you're spelunking, figure out if the new cooler inconveniences you if you add more ram. And figure out how to unclip/unseat the GPU, that is good to know.

Check the chips, if you bought it secondhand it might be registered ram or something.

I don’t think it’s registered, it’s a HyperX Fury stick so it seems like pretty bog standard epic gamer shit to me. I’m pretty sure it’s just busted.

I only have 2 ram slots but the cooler overhangs them, which limits me in terms of heat spreader height.

 

[seri0us]

Over a year ago I accidentally did an OS install to my data drive because that one was more preferable to have an OS on. Thankfully I had a backup. On the brightside, I got really good at backing things up and swapped what drive had what faster than I would've otherwise.

 

[Sunflower Samurai]

I did tons o troubleshooting things and thought my motherboard was dead on arrival but turns out the 24 pin power cable just wasn’t quite plugged in right and the computer started working after I wiggled it

Lmao exact same thing happend to me when i did a full PC clean, thought i had short circuited something along the way

to add to that, when i built my PC, i accidentaly jammed in the 3.0 USB cable with retard strength into the mobo, and bent the damn pins, tried to strighten some of them out but some broke off and i just had to live with that, to this day only 1 of my 2 3.0 USBs work because of my own retardation

 

[seri0us]

to add to that, when i built my PC, i accidentaly jammed in the 3.0 USB cable with retard strength into the mobo, and bent the damn pins, tried to strighten some of them out but some broke off and i just had to live with that, to this day only 1 of my 2 3.0 USBs work because of my own retardation

when I was building my previous PC the motherboard USB 3.0 connector broke off so I never even got to use front port 3.0

 

[Equivocal_Iki]

>want to try out a another DE
>sudo apt install kubuntu-desktop
>realize I don't like it
>sudo apt remove kubuntu-desktop
>sudo apt autoremove -y
May not be exactly what I typed but the lesson is if you want to try another DE do it in a virtual machine.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

In my early 20's I was dating a chick who's dad had an XP computer that was giving him issues like slowdowns and general shit just not working. Eager to help him out, I waited till he was gone so I could surprise him with a fully functional computer once I was through with it. After I thoroughly cleaned it, I noticed a bunch of external drive letters that appeared after the C and D drive (I think they were like J, K, L, etc...). I clicked on them, didn't lead to anywhere and just errored. I asked my gf what the fuck that was about and she said her last ex liked to play a lot of games on it and even had an external hard drive or two attached to it. So i removed them, thinking they were just ghost drives or something. However when I restarted the computer, the fucking thing wouldn't boot to windows anymore and got stuck on a black screen. I got extremely scolded by the dad because of it. He took the computer to Geek Squad, and they got it back to how it was before. extra drives and all.

 

[HarryHowler]

Back in 2003, I ordered pretty much a whole new PC based around a then-new Northwood-C Pentium 4. In my naivety about how RAM specs actually worked, I ordered some DDR466 RAM, thinking I could run it at 400MHz at crazy-fast timings. So, I set the system up with default settings, installed Windows, ran a few gaming tests, so far so good. Then, I went into the BIOS, set it it to faster RAM timings, rebooted...

And the motherboard fried. So did everything connected to it, and I mean everything. CPU, RAM, graphics card, sound card, network card, hard drive, optical drive, all completely destroyed. The only new thing that I bought that didn't get fried was, of all things, the PSU, which carried on working for another 5 or so years before giving up.

Fortunately, that was also when I discovered how little retailers actually bother checking gear you're RMAing, so I got everything replaced within a few days, changed up a few component choices (most notably from an Abit 865PE board to an Intel 875P board), and ended up with a very solid system. The only two things I took from my old system and therefore had to replace were the DVD drive, which was no biggie as it gave me an excuse to buy a DVD writer, and my graphics card... a Radeon 9700 Pro. Which I had bought on eBay. And couldn't afford to replace like-for-like. Though I did at least find a local store that was having a clearout on GeForce 4 Ti4200s in favor of the then-new GeForce FX cards, so I got by on one of those for the rest of the year.

 

[Manul Otocolobus]

"I don't need this little interposer board for the video subsystem on this laptop, all it appears to do is reverse the pins for the internal monitor connection. I can just plug it directly into the motherboard by reversing the cable and use the board for something else"

*ZAAAP* *Magic Smoke*

Oh... that board was the voltage level shifter circuit... So, I just blew the video interface, and the monitor... Huh...

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

and my graphics card... a Radeon 9700 Pro. Which I had bought on eBay. And couldn't afford to replace like-for-like.

Oh, you couldn't afford to softmod the low-end 9500 into a 9700?

Just kidding, but computers were wild for a couple of years because Intel, AMD, ATi and Nvidia never saw the enthusiast space exploding like it did. You could unlock an Athlon with a pencil, turn a GeForce into a Quadro, make a cheap Radeon into an expensive Radeon and Intel accidentally released a very powerful and very cheap dual-cpu platform supporting parity, ECC and registered RAM while also creating an extremely powerful sub-$1000 computer. All of them did this by accident.

 

[HarryHowler]

Oh, you couldn't afford to softmod the low-end 9500 into a 9700?

Managing to flash-fry close to $1,000 of hardware by incorrectly setting the RAM timings is the kind of thing that can put you off running things out of spec, at least in the short-term.

In all honesty, I think I just grabbed the first thing that would have given me some display output and been halfway competent at playing games, since I needed to get by on my older PC for the time being and didn't have a backup graphics card. Though I do remember being surprised at how cheap the Ti4200 was compared to the nearby FX5600 cards, and thinking "man, I'd had to be the guy that gets talked into buying one of those" (and this was months before it was widely known how utterly dogshit the FX line was when it came to running DX9 code).

 

[Honk Hill]

Circa 2003/2004 I forcefully inserted RAM the wrong way in a socket 478 board and heard a pop on boot. Fortunately only killed the Mobo and RAM.

Was upgrading my system while eating a burger, thinking I'm a lot smarter than I actually am.

Dude in the PC store was so impressed he did a return to manufacturer warranty thing on the mobo despite the char marks and gave me store credit.

 

[Terra Pax]

Reading all these stories of tech-literate people makes mine worse.

About 7 years ago I decided to replace the CPU in my tower and a bunch of those components, but I was so impatient that once it was all done I couldn't be bothered to properly reattach the side-panel and never did. I also used to sit in an armchair at my desk rather than a computer chair so I was a bit lower than normal and used to use my tower as a coffee mug stand. Calamity obviously ensues when one day I say back down and hit the tower with my knee, causing coffee to spill over the lip and drip into the computer fucking everything.

Ah shit, figured it was time for a complete overhaul anyway so I bought replacement parts for everything and put them all together, literally just by taking photos of the existing set-up and replicating like-for-like when the new stuff arrived. Thing is that no matter what I tried I could never get the side-vents to spin up again. A few months later summer rolled around and the computer would last like 10 minutes before overheating. Impatient as-always I went down the road, bought a £15 desk-fan, placed the tower on its side with the panel off and point the desk fan into it. No idea how I put up with the fucking noise for so long.

Then months later I'm playing something and a little orange mote catches my eye as it flies into the air moments before the machine shuts down. Evidently some dust shorted something and ignited. I went to a work colleague, had him build me a computer - water cooled this time - and I've never touched it since. It's getting pretty old now so that time is coming up again.

 

[Funny Yellow Dog]

Made the mistake of having my PC shipped... with my massive 2080ti still in it. Lucky the securing screw held and only one of the latches on the PCI ports popped out.

Don't ship your PC with a massive card still hooked up.

 

[Magicicada_septendecula]

A long time ago, I installed a Linux distro over my external hard drive. I still can't tell how it happened, maybe fat-fingered an arrow or the tab key. I had installed operating systems before and always installed on the right drive. A few minutes after committing to the install, I notice my external drive seems to be making a lot of noise. It didn't take long for it to dawn on me what was going on, so I pulled the plug on the external drive and restarted the install. When I was able to get a look at the contents of the drive, it was now filled with files names like ˩̬˧░╢╬▓҈ʬ and astronomically high file sizes (and even weirder, files that were allegedly a negative number of bytes). I found some software to recover files as long as they weren't overwritten and fortunately, most of what I lost for good was just the digital hoard that I had no real use for anyway. Since then any unnecessary drives are removed before any OS install.
There was one major failure with my phone. One Tuesday just as a major snowfall was beginning, I dropped my white iPhone SE in the parking lot getting into work. I didn't notice my phone missing until lunch time and guessed it must be in my car, and of course didn't find it. I had an old flip phone reactivated get me through the week. By that Friday, the snow had melted and not even noticing, I parked in the same space I did on Tuesday and found the iPhone getting out of the car. When it was dried out, it could boot up a few times but the touchscreen didn't work and eventually it just stopped working altogether.

 

[PhoBingas]

One of my biggest was quite a while ago. 2004ish I had just got a cd burner off a friend and was in a hurry to get it into my spare desktop I used for movies and music. I had a few drinks before I decided it would be a good time to put it in. I put the power connecter in upside down and totally killed the drive and broke the molex connecter too. It was a bit before I bothered getting a new PSU and cd drive but I decided to splurge and get a DVD burner, making damn sure I got the power connecter in the right way before I powered it on.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

A while ago windows wouldn't boot after an update. It threw up the "can't find OS blah blah run [utility]". I know how to fix this, of course I know how to fix this.
First idea: nope, didn't work
Second idea: nope
...
Fifth idea: let me take an actual look to see that the drive works and windows is still there... my external drive is now C: and real C: was now G: which is meant for USB sticks. Well that's easy to fix. It didn't work.
...
Eight idea: noooo

I spent two-three hours doing decently advanced troubleshooting and my tech fuck-up was hubris. What I did should have worked and after a couple of attempts I should have realized that because it didn't work the problem probably wasn't what I thought it was and that means the fix would be something I hadn't even remotely considered.

Going into the BIOS and setting it to always UEFI instead of 'auto' fixed it immediately.

I believe that most people make this kind of mistake at one point or another. It doesn't matter if it's computers, programming, car repair or whatever you feel you are skilled at. You might use your most advanced level of knowledge and advanced solutions that somehow doesn't work without considering that the problem might be very simple, because not recognizing a simple problem and having trouble with it is for idiots and you're not an idiot.

 

[Anal Eclipse]

My dumbass bought cable extensions and tried to cram the GPU extension cable into my Fractal Design Focus G case and it ended up causing the GPU to blackout periodically. Luckily I had a backup GPU cable and my dumbass never thought to use zipties to kinda hide the extra GPU connector. I ended up only using the 24 pin extension cable to make my PC look nice.
Edit: Before I was aware of what thermal throttling was, I would play gta v on my $600 Dell G5 5587 (FUCK YOU DELL AND YOUR OUTSOURCED SUPPORT) laptop and that bitch kept blacking out. I didn't know what the temps were like because my ass didn't use MSI Afterburner. Thank god the CPU had integrated graphics but I didn't know what an integrated and dedicated graphics were at the time. So I looked up tutorials and decided to reinstall my GPU driver using DDU and it did work only for a fucking day. I also didn't know what artifacting was at the time. I sent the darn laptop to Indian tech support and they just replaced my "logic board" like who tf calls a motherboard a logic board nowadays? I thought this would work but nope I came to terms it was the goddamn GPU and that it was most likely unsalvageable. I did manage to fix it temporarily but holy the CPU temps were goddamn high as always even at idle and it would blue screen. Now it just boot loops into DELL recovery environment and triggers that annoying ass BIOS speaker. That dumpster laptop is sitting under my bed collecting dust. I managed to snag the ram stick out of it as a car keychain decor. I will also tinker with the ssd and reverse engineer the laptop to see how shitty DELL is at making such atrocities of computers.

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

I accidentally deleted my older brother's Perfect Dark save where he had 100%'d the game on Perfect Agent.

 

[SalmaoneSlaamper]

I had a 5v sata cable and I tried hooking 2 drive (10v each). Turning it off and realizing immediately what I did wrong was not fun.