Greatest IT Screwups You've Ever Done
- Thread starter Wolvenreign
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>Saw a 120GB unformatted partion on a laptop with a 120GB HDD
>Attempt to format it. OS deleted.
Hehe. XP-days..? Or even before that?
Yeah. XP
Gotta love XP. I miss those nLite days.
Slow connections. Making the ultimate WinXP install disc.
When I was young, I learned to use my dad's PC the hard way. "What's this directory called DOS? I never use it. <delete>"
I also recall recovering a CRT screen with a faulty on/off button. I fixed it...but learned later that those screens have liquids in them that could explode when handled wrongfully (and yes...you could say that was EXACTLY what I did).
Installing windows millennium should have warned me, but I still went and installed windows 8. It was reasonable (though kind of retarded that it works best if you hide/remove everything that makes it windows 8)...but it got screwed up on windows 8.1 again (I admit...pirated version).
One of the biggest screwups at work was my fault, though I still blame stress. Amongst one of the few dozens of mails that arrive on a daily basis (and have to be handled "NOWWWW!!!!") was one from human resources that had a "user out" excel sheet file in it. Which is exactly the same file as our "user in", but with an included extra date right below. So I opened the file, saw that <random guy somewhere in another part of the country> had left the company about a month earlier, shrugged to myself as our HR department rarely (if every) delivers these notes on time, and deleted the user.
Later that day, I got a call from the supervisor of said guy. he couldn't access his account anymore. A bit puzzled, I told him I removed the account on request of HR. At the same time, I bring up the file. And while on the phone, I realise the error: I had misread the user in date for the user out. The poor fellow wasn't to leave the office for two more months, so he still needed that account. And quickly, as he had a night shift coming up.
Worst part of it was that granting permissions, recovering rights and all that jazz takes a whole lot of research. I spent practically the rest of the day making sure that everything was okay again and retrieving his mails. Him and his superior understood my situation and were happy I did everything I could to solve it, but man, I felt bad about that situation.
I also recall recovering a CRT screen with a faulty on/off button. I fixed it...but learned later that those screens have liquids in them that could explode when handled wrongfully (and yes...you could say that was EXACTLY what I did).
Installing windows millennium should have warned me, but I still went and installed windows 8. It was reasonable (though kind of retarded that it works best if you hide/remove everything that makes it windows 8)...but it got screwed up on windows 8.1 again (I admit...pirated version).
One of the biggest screwups at work was my fault, though I still blame stress. Amongst one of the few dozens of mails that arrive on a daily basis (and have to be handled "NOWWWW!!!!") was one from human resources that had a "user out" excel sheet file in it. Which is exactly the same file as our "user in", but with an included extra date right below. So I opened the file, saw that <random guy somewhere in another part of the country> had left the company about a month earlier, shrugged to myself as our HR department rarely (if every) delivers these notes on time, and deleted the user.
Later that day, I got a call from the supervisor of said guy. he couldn't access his account anymore. A bit puzzled, I told him I removed the account on request of HR. At the same time, I bring up the file. And while on the phone, I realise the error: I had misread the user in date for the user out. The poor fellow wasn't to leave the office for two more months, so he still needed that account. And quickly, as he had a night shift coming up.
Worst part of it was that granting permissions, recovering rights and all that jazz takes a whole lot of research. I spent practically the rest of the day making sure that everything was okay again and retrieving his mails. Him and his superior understood my situation and were happy I did everything I could to solve it, but man, I felt bad about that situation.
I placed a Celeron III-powered (accidentally fooled my PC into thinking that it was a Pentium III by means of a crafty Socket 1 adapter ) PC equipped with a GeForce 2 MX (or was it an FX...? ) in an aquarium filled with 11 liters of transformer oil, stuck a peltier plate between the CPU and the radiator and glued it together using silicone for epic passive cooling. As a finishing touch, I added a blue halogen lamp (yes, I know it's hot, I didn't have any blue LED's handy) and an aquarium air pump to blow bubbles from under the motherboard to make it look pretty.
...No, that's not the f***-up - the setup was awesome. I just dropped a screwdriver into the acquarium one day - it shorted the motherboard and fried everything - that's the f***-up.
) PC equipped with a GeForce 2 MX (or was it an FX...? ) in an aquarium filled with 11 liters of transformer oil, stuck a peltier plate between the CPU and the radiator and glued it together using silicone for epic passive cooling. As a finishing touch, I added a blue halogen lamp (yes, I know it's hot, I didn't have any blue LED's handy) and an aquarium air pump to blow bubbles from under the motherboard to make it look pretty....No, that's not the f***-up - the setup was awesome. I just dropped a screwdriver into the acquarium one day - it shorted the motherboard and fried everything - that's the f***-up.
I was trying to help my friend with his laptop one day because his Windows 8 installation was acting like shit. Made the mistake of trying to downgrade to 7, and now his laptop restarts half the time into a "which OS do you want to boot" menu, despite the fact that 7 never made it anywhere. Tried to reinstall 8 via the official install disc my friend received from Dell, and I don't know if it's because I fucked up with 7, but 8 just won't reinstall now. Shortly after that, he lost the ability to reboot using anything beyond forcing the computer off via the power button. It still works though, and I feel like half of those problems came from his already shitty Windows 8 installation. At the same time, I can't help but feel that I broke a few more things.
On a physical hardware side, I was trying to fix the charging port on my old laptop and made the mistake of leaving the motherboard exposed in a small dorm room with two other people living there. Got the new charging port installed fine, closed up the laptop, reattached everything, annnnnd, the laptop won't boot anymore. I had left a charge in the battery for the sake of testing, but the laptop was no longer responding. It probably has something to do with making my friend laugh as he then spit water all over the room. C'est la vie. Good bye, old shitty laptop. At least I can game on the one I have now.
On a physical hardware side, I was trying to fix the charging port on my old laptop and made the mistake of leaving the motherboard exposed in a small dorm room with two other people living there. Got the new charging port installed fine, closed up the laptop, reattached everything, annnnnd, the laptop won't boot anymore. I had left a charge in the battery for the sake of testing, but the laptop was no longer responding. It probably has something to do with making my friend laugh as he then spit water all over the room. C'est la vie. Good bye, old shitty laptop. At least I can game on the one I have now.
Tried to replace the battery in my EZ Flash 3-1 card and snapped the main board in half.
Blue-screened my Windows XP netbook but had no backup so I had to have a friend install Windows 7 Ultimate (all we had at the time) and it was slower than a Twilight fan's thought process.
Pales in comparison to my dad's ultimate cock up though. Spent 3 days downloading what he thought was the torrent for a complete set of guide books to the Final Fantasy games. He clearly didn't know what 'hentai' meant as what I ended up with was about 15,000 files of cartoon porn. He never did get the hang of torrents. Spent a week downloading a film for my little brother only for it to be in Spanish, spent 4 days downloading another film only for it to be a screensaver that didn't even work. So my biggest computing failure is being related to that idiot.
Blue-screened my Windows XP netbook but had no backup so I had to have a friend install Windows 7 Ultimate (all we had at the time) and it was slower than a Twilight fan's thought process.
Pales in comparison to my dad's ultimate cock up though. Spent 3 days downloading what he thought was the torrent for a complete set of guide books to the Final Fantasy games. He clearly didn't know what 'hentai' meant as what I ended up with was about 15,000 files of cartoon porn. He never did get the hang of torrents. Spent a week downloading a film for my little brother only for it to be in Spanish, spent 4 days downloading another film only for it to be a screensaver that didn't even work. So my biggest computing failure is being related to that idiot.
How does getting 15000 files of Hentai qualify as screwing up? Sounds like a father-son bonding moment.
I placed a Celeron III-powered (accidentally fooled my PC into thinking that it was a Pentium III by means of a crafty SLOT-1 adapter
...No, that's not the f***-up - the setup was awesome. I just dropped a screwdriver into the acquarium one day - it shorted the motherboard and fried everything - that's the f***-up.
Badass, man.
Mistaking 15000 files of porn for a guide book to Final Fantasy 12 is a fail whichever way you look at it. Especially when if he'd actually checked the torrent before he started it he'd have noticed that the folder names were stuff like 'Cock and Lockheart'.
I've never had a cooler rig in my entire life - 24 degrees celsius at boot, a maximum of 44 degrees celsius under stress. Didn't smell very nice though.
I've never had a cooler rig in my entire life - 24 degrees celsius at boot, a maximum of 44 degrees celsius under stress. Didn't smell very nice though.
How hot does it get in Poland? My 212 EVO gives me 17 degrees at boot on the occasion. (AND NO, I DON'T LIVE IN THE TUNDRA.)
Pff-- Sonny, back then we didn't have them new-fangled inventions like "heatpipes"*.
That being said, it does get pretty hot here in Poland during the summer - think 40 degrees Celsius or slightly above at the height of the summer season. Worry not though - we get really cold winters too!
*Actually, I made that build relatively late and heatpipes were already available - this was just something I built for the heck of it. That, and nobody made heatpipe-based radiators for Socket-1 or 370.
Setting my wifi router to exclusively use 5GHz dual-band 802.11n, then realizing that none of my devices (Including the laptop I used to set it up) support dual-band 802.11n.
(To be fair, it was around 3am and I was a little... out of it. It sounded like a good idea at the time...)
(To be fair, it was around 3am and I was a little... out of it. It sounded like a good idea at the time...)
Not really an IT screwup as such but I remember when I was building my first ever PC many years ago and the case was a pretty cheap and nasty job. Anyway, I needed to install the CDROM drive in the case. So i took of the plastic front panel covering the drive bay and noticed that you get a nice rectangular sheet of metal covering just underneath that. Anyway, i was bending it, pulling it forwards and backwards to loosen it and it wouldnt budge. So in the end in frustration I yanked at it and it came free, only to slice the palm of hand open on the metal covering the drive bay below. I pulled my hand out and saw a one inch long cut that was horrendously deep and i remember laughing for about 5 seconds because it want bleeding but I could see right into my hand. This was short lived however and pretty soon the claret was going everywhere, all over the carpet and table. It scared the hell out of me to be fair! Still got the scar today about 15 years later from where i had a bunch of stitches.
When I was young, I was in the middle of installing a BIOS update on a friend's laptop when it powered off. Almost right on cue, he came into the room and said, "Oh by the way, my laptop is turning off randomly. I think it's overheating." Fortunately, I was able to short the jumper and get it working again.
Am I the only one who keeps reading "bondage moment" in the above sentence? Also...I really don't want the mental image of the result, but...I CAN'T STOP IT!!!
Ahem...on-topic: I forgot the fan of my previous rig. I was sort of new to building my own pc back then. Most things went pretty well, but getting the extra large fan to fit on the CPU/motherboard was a PITA. I remember a tremendous fear that my research was wrong and that it just wouldn't fit, even though I could literally read in the manual that it should work. There was glue on pretty much all parts EXCEPT the CPU and it took me nearly half an hour to find out how those spring jacks work.
When I build my new pc about a month back, the very first thing I did when starting to install that fan was watching a youtube video on it. Twice. With lots of breaks. Even though I felt stupid because how tremendously simple the mechanism actually is.
kristianity77 reminded me of something.
Many years ago I was playing with a 486 I had managed to assemble from donations and junk from a computer fair. Power supplies back then came with all sorts of extra power supply sockets.... one of which just so happened to fit perfectly in the CD drive digital audio socket I think it was.... cue magic smoke and 486 vintage magic smoke no less.
Many years ago I was playing with a 486 I had managed to assemble from donations and junk from a computer fair. Power supplies back then came with all sorts of extra power supply sockets.... one of which just so happened to fit perfectly in the CD drive digital audio socket I think it was.... cue magic smoke and 486 vintage magic smoke no less.
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