Most regretful, stupid or funniest problem solving technique and you've done or heard of

You know of others who've done regretful things with problem solving computer issues, or you have yourself.

Be it an OS reinstall, incorrect handing of equipment etc

Share stories, make an interesting thread.
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I'll start

Whilst It's not the worst thing in the world that's happened, there seems to be a common problem recently amongst 7970M users where occasionally the sound card will stop working.

My Driver for Soundblaster corrupted probably a week ago the card was still there; i just lost the ability to use the program and customisation abilities.
Then earlier this morning, the card wouldn't boot and i had no sound.

I tried a few methods to resolve it; eventually gave up and tried an OS reformat incase firmware or a driver was causing the issues.
.
.... 20 Minutes later after the OS had been reinstalled, I googled solutions again and the problem was solved by a power drain.
... a friggen power drain could've solved it without an OS reformat. UGH. Now an hour or two reinstalling drivers.

long story short, i did an OS reformat when it wasn't needed
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on someone elses behalf, an issue I can't get over; because I find it so funny would have been from my local tech.

I had issues with a m18x and a motherboard quite a while ago; had to get the whole mobo replaced; the technician who worked on it pulled the computer apart, replaced everything one by one as you should; got all the way to the end and HDDS weren't detected

So; the tech pulled apart the back plate, used a screw driver to pry the latch up that attached the motherboard HDD cable to the HDD caddy ..... and he breaks the latch; I was annoyed as hell as it rendered my drivers useless; but funny thing was, he came back 2 days later; replaced the motherboard once again, and did exactly the same thing LOL

I ended up having three motherboard replacements.

Share your stories!

 

I had a problem with my R2 once and was having corrupted Windows and BSOD. The computer came with a 750GB hard drive that I had swapped for an SSD and I put the 750GB hard drive in as a D drive and put all my data on it, including photos, music etc. I had the D drive backed up on a portable 750GB drive.

During the troubleshooting process the Dell tech suggested that the SSD was at fault because of "incompatibility" with the computer. Over the course of a day I installed several different drives and formatted and did clean installs. By about 10:30 that night I tried once more and installed a 750GB drive and hit the format button when I realised I was wiping my data drive. I had already wiped the backup during the fault finding. Lost all my digital photos which really upset me. The problem ended up being the motherboard.

Second problem was on my R3 and it suddenly decided that after 10 minutes of operation it would fail to a BSOD, every time. I was in Russia this time and had limited access to spare 2.5" drives I could install. After the last time I was not touching my backup drives ever again to aid in fault finding. I thought my SSD might be the problem so did a low level format with no reported problems. I did a clean install and after 30 minutes the BSOD returned. I had another small 128GB HDD that I bought when 250GB was a BIG drive so I installed that and something similar happened with another BSOD so I know I have a hardware problem and it is dead until I can get Dell to come and fix it

It was now Saturday afternoon and I must have a working computer on Monday so Sunday morning walked down to the local computer shop expecting to buy a small 15" to get me by until I get back to Australia and can have my R3 fixed. Well I ended up walking out with a new R4 because..... well it was there and I really wanted it .

The computer came with a 1TB hard drive only so next weekend I decide to install my SSD in the new R4. I remove the 1TB drive and install my SSD and about 30 minutes into installing Windows I get a BSOD. Later testing proved the SSD was at fault and the 128GB HDD was also dead and probably had been for several years.

I eventually installed a new SSD in the R4 and did a clean install on a 750GB HDD in the R3 which I eventually gave to my daughter. I actually like the R4 better than the R3 so I am not too upset

 

M15x

Issue - lots of red static on the LCD.

Internet diagnostics - card or cable dead/faulty.

Things I did - bought a new dell Oem 7970, a new hsf, new LCD cable, full reinstall, full system dismantle and going over every single item, to make sure everything is grounded properly.

Actual issue - LCD cable not plugs properly, and what pissed me off was, that I unplugged and plugged that cable 10+ times, yet managed to not do it properly every bloody time.

Got few other jems from my it history, but the most memorable one is relating a fast food store. I worked in IT at that time and had a junior working with me (less than 2 weeks on the job for him). Stores had this massive issue of black soot from ovens (4 ovens each store running 16hrs at a dtretch) getting collected inside computers and switches and causing random overheats and shutdowns in Aussie summer. My solution was simple, every tech had a compressor in the boot of company car with proper moisture traps, we would just take the computers to car park and blast them one by one to clean them out. I taught this fella how to do it in the car park.

The one day i had to run to another store and i left him alone, noobie decided to do it inside the store in the corner, whole make line and crap loads of mixed dough (it was a pizza chain) and cooked food coming from ovens was covered with light layer of dust and soot. Petty much ended costing the store almost 2k in food wastage.

 

During my military service: I was asked to fix a computer that kept randomly restarting. I was told that people already tried to re-install OS, checked for viruses etc. I though it wasn't a software issue, but hardware overheating. So I just opened the machine and I saw the biggest amount of dust in my life. It must be like 2-3cm thick around the CPU area! How I fixed it? I got the tower, opened to a nearby APCs' repair station and I used one of their "air guns" that use for the APCs to blow all the dust out! Needless to say, my uniform looked worse than the days I spent training but the machine was fixed ;-)

 

Problem solving? I don't have a good story around that.

But I did overclock an old AMD K6 to 1.4ghz and watched it glow red and start on fire.

 

Burnt out a GTX 780m within a day. Don't quite know how. Combination of bad connections, ageing motherboard and panic.

 

In college around year ~2000 I thought I would get into modding so I bought a big heatsink and fan for my voodoo 4. I screwed up though and accidentally scratched the card with the screwdriver. I ended up using pencil lead to create a new contact, I had to redraw the contact every few weeks but I managed to get by for a few semesters doing that!

 

when I was executive support for GSK, I one day got a call from our CEO's wife when she was on a visit with others to the US... anyways.. I was on a ball that night, and when I heard her voice just as she was describing the issue.. I resolved it before she could finish her sentence.. or open her PC or give me her GUID... it was like 20 seconds into the call.... the next 2 minutes was filled with praise and her expression of being stumped. I got a pretty good review and my team leaders were happy... though I got reprimanded for not following procedure..

however I had to explain how I saw who was calling and went ahead and fixed a few things in her account asap... top tier level execs sort of get me on my seat standing and ready for action - these guys make billion sof dollars and every second of their time can be worth thousands of dollars.. so I just did what I could...

around the year 2000 I had been tech supporting veriphone users (credit card machines) , and I had to instruct a guy how to short one piece with a butter knife in the most odd sort of places if he didn't want to send it in for repairs which would have cost him hundreds of dollars. Knowing the issue, I improvised and helped him do it. I got fired shortly after, for being careless... but I got results, and my timings for fixing issues was 1/5th of anyone else in the company and had better reviews then others too.. but, since customers pay per call+ per service/hour, I was of no use ...LOL...

Once in an interview for Matrox, I was being tested on loading up and fixing a codec for some equipment, and it was being timed... and I was failing hard... was given 5 minutes and a few pages to read for instructions, and yet 20 minutes later I still couldn't do what was asked of me. It was a simple right click select an option.. and I grazed by the issue/ resolution like 3 times.... Usually, I grasp things very very quickly, and learn very fast - but I just totally screwed up, and didn't get the job. :S

Once, I was connecting 3 PSU's together (you know the 15th wire, usually green, the one that gives the signal HIGh 1/0 when connected to a ground/black wire, to turn the PSU's on) I misplaced a plug, and connected two of them in parallel while others were in series.. shorted my tough power 1200 and it caught fire, nearly melting my face off as I was close to it when it half exploded one of the smaller mini 650watts PSU's inside of it (thermaltake toughpwoer is a set of two PSU's inside)...

For a college project, I turned some 5400rpm drives, which I knew were actually stocked from same bins as 15,000 drives (they were SCA SCSi's a passing OEm backplaned required - interface braneed onto some scsi drives for cheaper retailing form oem builders-anyways) - tuned them into super beasts upwards past 15,000rpms, but soldering some extra pins and shorting them, knowing what I was doing, and doubling the voltage to a few things.. anyways... imagine some garbage drives from the year 2001 outputting 400mb/s ea. totally maxing out two 320iscsi planes in raid 1/0.... my professor was like ? you should go back into electrical engineering and forget about IT... just as he said that, when we were shutting one system down, one of the drives I didn't put some screws back on, had its platter and crap eject itself - we had this disk on the ground spinning for like 5 minutes as we cracked up laughing... it looked as if it wasn't moving, but anything we touched it with would ricochet off like a ...

I once was soo poor in college... and this sounds odd.. but seriously I did this.. I sued to carry around a analogue telephone that we built in class (not really for the class but just a small project for fun with some of my bench partners) anyways, I had no telephone line at home.. I really was poor no joke... but I used to climb telephone poles, bring this phone with me, and just crimp a few wires to other peoples lines, wherever I could fine a pole.. and i'd sit 40ft up , on a pole, with a makeshift telephone calling buddies over for a party and stuff...

neighbors who knew me thought I was some mad genius frankinstein mad scientist or something, they called me all kinds of wierrd things.. anyways, those are some of my stories...

Oh I had over charged a NiCad battery once with a car battery charger - and had it exploded. it was those 7.2 volt batteries for RC cars, it was a decently balanced battery too so it charged really well.. but at 70 amps 12v it charged and exploded in like 20 seconds... (was 40C rating, with 8 gauge wire, but only a 1.2 amp cells..LULZ). I learnt to eventually super charge batteries, (also fixing them and balancing them really quick) by using the same charger, for over two minutes - though, having to store the batteries in liquid nitrogen all wrapped up in tightly packed aluminium...

 

I love these stories about going to great lengths with no money to achieve something, good one guys

Heres one of mine. Remember early first generation pentiums that had the intel heatsink and fan glued to the processor?

Well, I wanted to overclock beyond what the stock fan would allow.. but I was a very poor teenager. SO I thought, how can I generate the most airflow with what I have in my home?

The solution? A balloon on the end of the household vacuum cleaner, wrapped around the top half of the heatsink. I tell ya, I got like an extra 30mhz out of it.. AND if you yelled really loudly, you could still maintain a conversation with someone next to you.

Pulling air through those fins made the vacuum double its usual volume. Haha

Will post up if I remember any more.

-Tristan

 

That's incredible. 30Mhz!!!

 

I was having an issue where the half the time from a cold boot, the internal screen wouldn't activate. When I called in to solve this, the tech thought it would be a good idea to create a separate drivers folder for my video card and install the drivers there, instead of the normal route. Not only did this not solve the problem, it caused the laptop to run on a generic VGA driver, since now it couldn't even recognize the 9400 integrated card. It took another call and some careful excising to remove the electronic tumor this helpful, out-the-box-thinking technician implanted in the system, and he got a horrific review afterward that I'm sure screwed up his QA score immeasurably.

On the positive side, since his screw-up was reversed, I haven't had the issue that sparked the initial call. So there's always that, right?