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Most Common Ways to Kill a PC
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Feb 08, 2005 06:53 PM
from the don't-let-out-the-magic-smoke dept.
from the don't-let-out-the-magic-smoke dept.
Sparky the Service Center Dude writes "PCstats covers the most common ways to kill a PC in this "what not to do" guide. Everything from exploding capacitors, to cat hair, to dodgy components and overclocking account for users killing their own PC's. The most common PC killer? The Power Supply."
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Obligatory Strongbad: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obligatory Strongbad: (Score:5, Funny)
Most common ways to kill a PC
See previous article, regarding Windows Longhorn Beta.
Parent
For those not familiar with Homestar... (Score:4, Informative)
You should also visit the homepage at:
http://homestarrunner.com
HILARIOUS! I recently was introduced to Strongbad, and it is absolutally hilarious! Watch the emails, funny as hell!
Parent
/. it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:/. it? (Score:5, Funny)
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danger! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm tearing mine out right now!
Re:Not Funny: Fake Components China (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Not Funny: Fake Components China (Score:5, Funny)
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Most common problems (Score:5, Informative)
26% PSU and power issues
23% Bad gear and user negligence
13% Heatsink related
15% Assembly and moving
10% Lightning strike and static
3% Computer cruelty
6% USB related
2% Overclocking
Re:Most common problems (Score:5, Funny)
Gunshot.
Had a drive from a puter which was shot "it ran too slow".
-nB
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Re:Most common problems (Score:4, Funny)
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Water In Monitor (CRT)! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Most common problems (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Most common problems (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Most common problems (Score:5, Funny)
Halfway into the slot?
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PSU, Heart of the system (Score:5, Informative)
What people must understand is that they need a PSU that have the most stable rails (such as the +5 & +12 rails) and that isn't made by Mr. Bingo Bongo. Sure you can save around $20-30 going with a cheaper PSU but that action is a gamble. Are you a gambler? My friend sure was. Bought some power supply made by some unknown manufacturer and he's still surprised that it was the cause of his exploding CD-Rom.
People in general should take power supply reviews more seriously and consider to spend the extra bucks to hafve something that will work for years as you want it to.
Parent
Re:PSU, Heart of the system (Score:5, Insightful)
The spec's written on most el-cheapo Chinese PSU's are about as accurate and truthfull as the wattage claims written on the box of those $25 "1000 WATT" PC speakers you bought at the local PC market. The difference being that if you blow up your craptastic speakers you just need to buy new speakers, but a bad PSU can cause you to re-purchase a completely new PC.
It amazes me the number of "tech heads" out there who will pay AU$900 for a top of the line GPU (just to gain another 3fps in Doom 3) but will try to run it and their P4EE off a $15 SangChoyBow "500 WATT" powersupply.
Incredible.
Parent
Re:PSU, Heart of the system (Score:4, Informative)
At one of my jobs, a client had a lab full of fairly new computers with cheapo supplies. I kid you not: within 1 year, 25 out of 40 supplies failed and in three cases the motherboard and CPU were destroyed in the process. When I came onboard, I made it a policy that any machine found to crash at random would immediately have its supply yanked and replaced with a quality one. (indication of pending failure..) User complaints dropped rapidly as reliability instantly went up.
What people must understand is that they need a PSU that have the most stable rails (such as the +5 & +12 rails) and that isn't made by Mr. Bingo Bongo. Sure you can save around $20-30 going with a cheaper PSU but that action is a gamble.
It's not even just stable rails. (although this is one indication of quality..) I've found by examination of fried supplies that the cheapo varieties don't have much in the way of protection circuitry. All power supplies die at some point. That's a given. The quality ones just die gracefully and don't take the rest of your hardware with them.
As for price, the amazing thing is that there's not always that much difference between a quality budget supply and a total garbage one. I've found 300W Fortron (FSP-300) supplies in the $25-30 range. They're not top of the line, but I've yet to have a problem either.
Parent
PSU and power issues? I can't imagine that. (Score:5, Funny)
Last week's issues:
#1 - Call from remote office. Server isn't working.
Office manager was cold, so she bought a 1500W electric space heater. She needed a place to plug it in and there just happened to be an empty outlet on the UPS that fed the server, which was conveniently located right across the hall from her office.
Plug in heater, heater kicks on, high current starts, battery backup melts down, and server goes into SSF mode (Sparks, Smoke, and Flames). RAID card burned out and the machine is pretty much toasted. Defintely a power issue.
That office needed a new server anyway.
#2 - Call from dentist's office. Computers won't connect to the network and they are getting weird errors. Drop by office to inspect. Reboot computers and everything seems to work fine.
Network swtich and router are located in a cabinet in the darkroom. There is a single cable that comes out of that cabinet from the UPS that feeds the network equipment. They are short on outlets in the darkroom.
When some of the employees need to use the film duplicator, their solution is to unplug this plug that doesn't seem to connect to anything important. (Never mind that beeping sound in the background!)
Network doesn't instantly fail, since the equipment stays on UPS for ten minutes. Since they don't have instant feedback to realize that what they're doing is bad, they never associate the bad action (pulling the plug) with the bad event (all computers quit working).
Power issues. Yep. Sheesh!
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Modem (Score:5, Interesting)
Lightning usually doesn't even have to enter into it. Everytime the phone rings you get voltage running into your PC.
Once I heard a long ring and the PC never turned back on (well, for a year at least. Later the machine was revived but using any PCI slot mysteriously disabled DMA. On a 333Mhz machine you can imagine boot times).
Another killer was USB related too. Microsoft's Trackball Optical [microsoft.com] cable shorts out occasionaly which for some reason killed my $3000 custom-built PC about 3 years ago. Someone here on Slashdot told me I can get a refund or some sort of offer but it wasn't worth the hassle.
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Re:Most common problems (Score:5, Funny)
Darn, i'll have to avoid the mov instruction from now on.
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A complete list? (Score:3, Funny)
Elvis Technique (Score:4, Funny)
In my opinion (Score:4, Interesting)
The #1 killer: (Score:5, Funny)
Let me guess, they tested out the "Most Common Ways to Kill a PC" on the web servers, eh?
Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Once you've seen the gooey orange stuff, you'll be thankful for mere hairballs.
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User Negligence (Score:4, Funny)
Now, his living spaces tend to be trash heaps; it was only constant nagging from his ex-fiancee and me that kept mold from growing in their room when he was living with us. So this did not surprise me at all when he told me what happened...
For whatever reason, ants decided to visit his computer. Ants. I guess he might have spilled something in there, probably Mountain Dew. He saw the ants crawling in and out of his computer, didn't pay much attention to it, and turned the thing on.
Poof. Fried.
I laughed at him.
An ex of mine wound up with a few extra chips in his computer (chocolate and dorito) owing to leaving it open, but never before or again have I heard of ants infesting someone's computer.
Parent
The keyboard lock.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The keyboard lock.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:The keyboard lock.. (Score:5, Insightful)
When kids are 12 years old, I can see it a little, but 22-25? Cripes. I wanted to punch him in the head and it wasn't even my car.
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One easy way not on the list (Score:3, Funny)
2. Post link to it on Slashdot
The very, very, very best way... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The very, very, very best way... (Score:4, Funny)
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Corrupted Power Absolution (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Corrupted Power Absolution (Score:4, Interesting)
Not only do cheap PSUs introduce stability issues, but a lot of PSUs take things down with them when they blow.
My favorite example is an absolutely spectacular one involving my brother's friend. He had a 1.4Ghz Athlon (back when that was impressive), along with the requisite DVD, CD-Burner, brand new GeForce 3; the whole nine yards. The PSU blew. Both optical drives ejected and shot sparks from inside. HDDs presumably lost their motors (they never spun up again). Mobo died, CPU died, sound card died. The only thing that survived was the video card, which was at least a small consolation since it was still top-of-the-line.
PSU replacements did tend to be my second most common hardware repair (HDDs were first), and most of the time they didn't damage anything, but I saw enough problems then that I'll only buy reputable PSUs now.
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This is so true. (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I know it was replaceable, I didn't have any money.
Re:This is so true. (Score:5, Interesting)
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The power supply... (Score:5, Funny)
Mirrordot copy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mirrordot copy (Score:4, Informative)
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Nearly burned down my house (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway they arrived in a couple of minutes and went inside and put it out. Luckily there were two windows open and a good breeze blowing in one and our the other so the damage was minimal (all smoke went straight out the window).
The PC was completetly incinerated though, I've never seena anything like it, the hard drive was actually warped from the heat generated in that steel case. The plastic fascia was gone, just, not there any more, the motherboard, well what loosly resembled one was pretty much ash. The solder holding the ICs obviously melted and they had popped off etc. Luckily, it wasn't my PC, and it was only an old P200 or something, or I'd be up shit creek.
It burned right through the carpet immediatly under the case, and burnt a good impression into the wooden floor beneath. Burnt a chunk out of a couch next to it, but it was caught early enough that there wasn't really any other damage.
I can't see what caused it, the heat generated inside the case was incredibly intense, basically anything inside it that could vaporise, did.
Let it be a warning - install smoke alarms near your PC if you leave it running unattended.
Re:Nearly burned down my house (Score:5, Funny)
<voice char="Agent Smith">
What good is a smoke alarm when you are unable to hear?
</voice>
Parent
Re:Nearly burned down my house (Score:4, Interesting)
I have read around the net recently several cases of fires happening (but someone was near the PC and shut it off right away, then saw where the smoke came from (around the board where the eletrolyte had spilled out of the pop'd capacitor) after opening it.
Urban legend or is this going to be more of a problem as PCs from this era start exhibiting this problem more as their capacitors 'expire'?
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True Story (Score:5, Funny)
One day our secretary comes to me and says her keyboard isn't working properly. I just assume it died naturally and so I grab a replacement from a pile in my cupboard and hand it over. 30 minutes later she comes back and says that the one I gave her is broken too. Now that seems strange, so I go to her system and do a full check, thinking that either her motherboard is faulty, or something is shorting out the keyboards, or she has some practical joke walware like the old Amiga virus which re-mapped keystrokes but only if you typed fast enough. After a thorough check, I confirm her system is OK and both keyboards are indeed dead. I take another spare keyboard from the cupboard, test it on my computer first to make sure it works properly, and then give it to her. 5 minutes later I decide I better check to see if it's OK, so I walk over to her desk just in time to see her take a bottle of spray'n'wipe, spray a massive amount directly into the keys, wipe them off, then bang the keyboard upside down against the edge of her desk to dislogde any dirt which may have been there.
The 3rd keyboard she got that day was a new one so she didn't have the urge to clean it. It still works.
The funny thing is that I felt an immense sense of relief knowing why they broke. 3 keyboards "mysteriously" dying in an hour is something I don't understand and makes me nervous, however stupidity is something I do understand and just accept.
Re:True Story (Score:5, Funny)
Eventually he just called it a loss and sold all the parts to other people in the dorm (I still use that sound card too!). Later I discovered that the case itself was cursed. Not even kidding! Nothing would run out of it, ever. It has the amazing ability to render any setup inoperable, even with a new PSU. Discovering this, I of course did the logical thing and gave it to a guy I didn't like very much who was building a computer himself.
Parent
Hydualic Press (Score:5, Funny)
To quote my friend "I didn't know if I should call the cops or laugh, but it made a great paper weight"
Re:Mirrordot? (Score:5, Funny)
While in itally or (any other country that uses 230 volt power) switch the "voltage" switch on your power supply from 230 to 115 while the computer is running, a bright blue spark will fly out and you will have successfully screwed your computer.
(I actually proved this while in CAD class in high school)
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Re:Entire glass of coke (Score:4, Interesting)
I only witnessed this act twice and it still gives me shivers.
Parent
Re:Water/Coitus (Score:4, Funny)
College you say? Hate to break it to you man, those were all coitally related damage. The 'spilled water' group just tried to clean up first
Parent