Your worst computer mistake, What happened and what did it cost you?
By HeXeD79
@HeXeD79 (41)
April 23, 2009 4:07pm CST
Just what the title says,
1. What was the worst thing you did on your computer?
2. What happened as a result
3. How much do you remember it costing you?
4. What is the maximum amount of viruses you have ever seen on a computer?
I'll go ahead and start:
1. I was messing around with this new device that allows me to provide more voltage to the ram. It was made by OCZ. It had a knob that allowed you to adjust the voltage and a LED screen that told you what it was set to when powered on. At first you are supposed to have the knob turned down all the way so you don't start off at max. Unfortunately I misread the directions and turned the knob the wrong way. I powered on the computer, heard a pop, and saw smoke. Needless to say my computer never recovered.
2. Burned the memory and motherboard
3. Had to replace the memory, motherboard, and cpu. At the time probably about 450$.
4. A little over 1000. Something like 1020 viruses/spyware/adware/malware.
2 people like this
4 responses
@smileonstar (4007)
• United States
23 Apr 09
First thing I want to say that I never know anything about computer until I broke one. I didn't know how much it costs cuz my cousin fixed it for me. I used to go online and searched and chat with friends. One day, I got an email that said something funny and I thought one of my online friend sent me some joke. So I opened it... uh oh!!! my computer turned blue and then it just pop up many and many things on it and it turned off by itself and didn't matter what I did, it won't turn back on. I didn't want to anyone. I waited until my cousin came back from school and used my computer. He told me i got viruses in and now he had change everything. He also told me not to open stranger email. Lucky me that he didn't charge me hehehe.... I din't know anything about viruses or anything, all i know is using it.
@bobbyjoe23 (52)
• Philippines
15 May 09
1.the worst thing - removed AVG free because it was not working
2.the result - booting system won't work
3. the cost - 600 pesos
4. virus - about 2,000 - mywife.gen virus
@amitksing (1323)
• India
27 Apr 09
Just like someone above said, the best way to learn operating computers is to go for trial and error method! You try, see if it works, if not, see what it causes, and this way, you learn a whole lot of stuff.
I too used this technique, and committed several mistakes. I'll share the biggest one:
1. What I did: I formatted my Operating System drive, without taking a backup of the data on the other drive.
2. Result: The other drive never opened (or I didn't come to a way to get it).
3. How much it cost: It cost me 20GB of my data, mostly entertainment related, but some of them being very crucial.
4. Maximum amount of viruses on a system: I have seen lakhs of viruses on my friends system. I don't remember the exact figure, but it were somewhere between 3-4 lakh. (1 lakh = 1,00,000)
@AndrewFreyne (6281)
• United Kingdom
6 May 09
I took some drastic action recently with my old computer and I fried the motherboard! This is the biggest joke. I completed a course in computer maintenance a couple years ago and the only problem was, I didn't have any practical experience. So, I decided to take my computer apart and put it back together again. This was a terrible mistake! I mean, the computer was working before I took it apart. When I put it back together again it just wouldn't boot. I guess I should have taken precautions like wearing an antistatic wrist strap or something but I didn't have that at the time. So, I have just bought a new computer and I'm not going to make the same mistake. Still, I have the old computer sitting around doing nothing. I have ordered a similar motherboard and I'm going to transfer the peripherals from the old board to the new board and I'm hoping that this will work. I guess I'm going to treat this as an invaluable learning experience regarding what NOT to do!!! Andrew
