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Hardware IT

Most Common Ways to Kill a PC 593

Posted by Zonk 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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Most Common Ways to Kill a PC More

Most Common Ways to Kill a PC

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  • Obligatory Strongbad: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @06:54PM (#11612959)
    Like used! Slightly Shotgunned.

  • /. it? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @06:54PM (#11612964)
    easiest way ive ever seen

  • danger! (Score:5, Funny)

    by PopeAlien ( 164869 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @06:55PM (#11612973) Homepage Journal
    The most common PC killer? The Power Supply.

    I'm tearing mine out right now!

  • Most common problems (Score:5, Informative)

    by larry2k ( 592744 ) * <larry2k@mac.com> on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @06:55PM (#11612975) Homepage
    Most Common Problems:

    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)

      by networkBoy ( 774728 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @06:58PM (#11613010) Journal
      .001%
      Gunshot.
      Had a drive from a puter which was shot "it ran too slow".
      -nB

    • Water In Monitor (CRT)! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by temojen ( 678985 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:06PM (#11613119) Journal
      Routed CRT internal voltage levels down VGA cable to motherboard. Bad bad, very bad. The magic smoke escaped, while making several bangs.
      • Get one pin bent on a CRT display cable and you can surely and silently fry your mobo as well. That lesson cost me (okay, the client) about 3 pc's. Lesson -- check the cable pins before you plug it in.

    • Re:Most common problems (Score:4, Interesting)

      by robbo ( 4388 ) <slashdot.simra@net> on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:16PM (#11613243)
      Wow, considering that very few people actually try to overclock, the percentage of overclockers who fry their systems must be pretty large. Any guesses? 80%? more? less?

    • Re:Most common problems (Score:5, Funny)

      by k4_pacific ( 736911 ) <k4_pacific@yahoo . c om> on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:18PM (#11613258) Homepage Journal
      I saw a piece of hardware documentation once that said "semi-hot-pluggable". Wonder where that fits in?

    • PSU, Heart of the system (Score:5, Informative)

      by Man in Spandex ( 775950 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [vek.nsrp]> on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:33PM (#11613411)
      I'm not surprised that PSU related problems is on top seeing how it's the most important component of the computer but the one that people seem to pay the least attention.

      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.

      • Re:PSU, Heart of the system (Score:5, Insightful)

        by suckmysav ( 763172 ) <suckmysav@gmaiUMLAUTl.com minus punct> on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @08:44PM (#11614099) Journal
        Abso-fricking-lutely correct.

        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.

      • Re:PSU, Heart of the system (Score:4, Informative)

        by Ogerman ( 136333 ) on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @01:37AM (#11615913)
        I'm not surprised that PSU related problems is on top seeing how it's the most important component of the computer but the one that people seem to pay the least attention.

        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.
      • True say...

        On my System which is:
        Athlon XP2400+
        4x SCSI HD
        CDwriter
        DVD ROM,
        Soundblaster Audigy (with external Audigy Box powered from the computer)
        Radeon 9600, plus a lot of other toys such as wireless kb& mouse, card readers, etc..

        I used to get many blue screens on XP. Since i had a supposedly good 350 Watt Powersupply, which in fact it WAS a good powersupply, just not ENOUGH at full load. I thought at first it was just crappy XP, because Linux seemed to work better.... (actually it was because the pow

    • PSU and power issues? I can't imagine that. (Score:5, Funny)

      by scgallafent ( 854819 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:38PM (#11613470)

      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!

    • Modem (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ImaLamer ( 260199 ) <john.lamar@NospaM.gmail.com> on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:59PM (#11613694) Homepage Journal
      The number one killer of PC's, IMHO, has been the modem.

      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.

      • Keyboard BIOS (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Reziac ( 43301 ) *
        I once had a motherboard killed by a keyboard short -- or to be accurate, what died was apparently the keyboard BIOS. (This was back in the 486 era, when such things still had their own chips.) I accidentally hit the F6 and F7 keys at the same time, the nasty Focus keyboard objected by going PHZZT, and sent its protests off down the cable. ALL the lights on the main box came on, and stayed on until I jerked the cord out of the UPS.

        Much testing later (involving a POST card and some mix-and-match with an ide
        • As to modems, I've wondered about that... My modem cables all run thru a heavy-duty surge unit; one hopes that helps

          It doesn't. I did the math once on the Surge protectors I was selling at Sears -- the best one we had, with the $20K protection policy -- it could handle 2500 joule if I recall.

          Assuming room temperature and nice even numbers (so 25 deg C), that could boil:

          2500_J ~= 600 cal.
          600cal/(75deg C) = 8

          That is a whopping 8 ml of water.

          How much energy you think is in that lightning bolt traveling d

      • Re:Modem (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Bri3D ( 584578 )
        It wasn't worth the hassle to replace the motherboard/USB controller card/whatever on your $3000 custom-built system? I personally sign up for all warranty settlements I can just to show the manufacturer how important it is to make non-faulty hardware.

    • Re:Most common problems (Score:5, Funny)

      by ion_ ( 176174 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @09:43PM (#11614615) Homepage

      15% Assembly and moving

      Darn, i'll have to avoid the mov instruction from now on.

  • A complete list? (Score:3, Funny)

    by jm92956n ( 758515 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @06:55PM (#11612977) Journal
    Odd. They omitted placing a Microsoft OS onto a computer as a sure-fire way to kill it.

  • Elvis Technique (Score:4, Funny)

    by rednip ( 186217 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @06:57PM (#11612996) Journal
    Personally, my systems tend crash after applying the Elvis Technique for Irritating Home Electronics (Handgun).

  • In my opinion (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jozer99 ( 693146 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @06:57PM (#11612998)
    In my opinion, the most common killer is spyware. With $400 computers, people are more reluctant to clean their hard drive every 4 months and take security precautions then to just throw the computer in the trash and head back to walmart.

  • The #1 killer: (Score:5, Funny)

    by EvilStein ( 414640 ) <spamNO@SPAMpbp.net> on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @06:57PM (#11613001)
    Slashdot the crap out of it. 9 comments and I get a "Connection Refused" error trying to load the link.

    Let me guess, they tested out the "Most Common Ways to Kill a PC" on the web servers, eh?

  • Interesting (Score:5, Funny)

    by bonch ( 38532 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @06:58PM (#11613008)
    I would have figured dust would be #1. I've cracked open my parents' Windows PC every six months or so only to discover the horror of a totally alien world caked in a layer of gray-brown fuzz. Like the Cowboy Bebop episode, I half-expect a new species of organism to form from the unique atmosphere. If I start seeing a human Martian face forming on the soundcard, I may just end up throwing the whole thing away.

    • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)

      by PedanticSpellingTrol ( 746300 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:10PM (#11613174)
      Obviously you've never worked on a heavy smoker's computer if ANY amount of fluffy gray dust can still bother you...

      Once you've seen the gooey orange stuff, you'll be thankful for mere hairballs.

      • >Once you've seen the gooey orange stuff, you'll be thankful for mere hairballs.

        Either way, they say licking it off is the best way to get rid of it.

      • User Negligence (Score:4, Funny)

        by AzureLunatic ( 628957 ) <silenceshadow@yahoo . c om> on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @09:30PM (#11614494) Homepage Journal
        A former roommate told me a story about how he'd killed one of his computers. Seems he left the thing on the floor in his room.

        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.

    • Re:Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pipingguy ( 566974 )

      That's why big, slow, quiet intake fans (with easily-cleaned external and accessible filters - I.E., panty hose held in place with a clip-on finger/cat paw/infant toe shield) sucking lots of CFM is the next big thing in PC cooling.

      As long as static pressure is taken into account, this can be a nice, easy retrofit kit for existing removeable case sides. I was going to draw and upload a concept drawing but my scanner isn't working.

      If you are interested in R&D and have bucks I also have a relatively c

  • The keyboard lock.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sr180 ( 700526 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @06:58PM (#11613011) Journal
    Back in Highschool the 386 and 486 pcs had the old standard keyboard lock. By rubbing your shoes on the carpet, lifting them up and holding your finger milimeters away from the metal keyboard lock a static discharge would then hit the lock. Monitor would go black and an instant fried motherboard was the result. The school just kept replacing them under warranty claims. And these were dropping about the rate of one or two a week.

    • By rubbing your shoes on the carpet, lifting them up and holding your finger milimeters away from the metal keyboard lock a static discharge would then hit the lock. Monitor would go black and an instant fried motherboard was the result.

      I remeber when my employer had one computer that kept locking up (usually after several hours of unsaved editing). A similar technique was used to get it going again.

  • One easy way not on the list (Score:3, Funny)

    by jcknox ( 456591 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @06:58PM (#11613015)
    1. Install web server
    2. Post link to it on Slashdot

  • The very, very, very best way... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @06:59PM (#11613040) Homepage
    Get a woman. You'll forget your PC was ever there.

  • Corrupted Power Absolution (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @06:59PM (#11613041) Homepage Journal
    Don't those stats mean the most common way to recycle a PC is just to replace its power supply? I've pulled several working PCs out of the "trash" (NYC curbside - cleaner than a dumpster, dirtier than a Toronto dumpster). I had a "$2000" stereo system I rescued from yuppie abandonment by merely replacing its "motherboard" and speaker fuses.

    • Re:Corrupted Power Absolution (Score:4, Interesting)

      by UserChrisCanter4 ( 464072 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:36PM (#11613440)
      Unfortunately, that's not always the case. This assumption was a pet peeve of mine, when I used to work in the computer repair business. I'd have some guy talking up the specs on his computer, and they would usually be impressive up until he bragged about the 450 Watt PSU that he picked up for $35.

      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.

  • This is so true. (Score:5, Funny)

    by alan_dershowitz ( 586542 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:00PM (#11613050)
    I had a Commodore 64 for years, it suffered through insane adversity. My mother threw it across the room in a rage when we wouldn't come to dinner, my dad dumped an entire can of beer into the heat vent by accident when he was checking his wristwatch. It was dragged off a rickety TV dinner tray when cords were tripped over at least weekly. It always still worked. That thing was built like a tank. In the end, the power supply died.

    Yeah, I know it was replaceable, I didn't have any money.

    • Re:This is so true. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:30PM (#11613386)
      Odd ... in 1985 or thereabouts I worked tech support for Mindscape at the Consumer Electronics Show (technically I was a programmer but we got hauled off to McCormick Place during trade shows) and the C64's drove us nuts. That show was in the dead of winter, the air was bone dry, and we had a row of Commodore 64 machine set up to demo our games. Every time one of the sales guys would touch one of them without grounding himself first ... zap. Blown video chip, blank screen. We had to keep a stack of spares just to get through the show.
    • "my dad dumped an entire can of beer into the heat vent by accident when he was checking his wristwatch.

      You see, this is why I refuse to wear a wristwatch. Haven't had one for twenty years, I'm too afraid of accidentally wasting some beer.

  • The power supply... (Score:5, Funny)

    by CupBeEmpty ( 720791 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:02PM (#11613078)
    ...or my girlfriend who plugged a Maxtor powercord into an S-video out port on the back of the shuttle that I gave her. Apparently they fit in and run 6V into the motherboard effectively toasting your average Shuttle. I am suprised girlfriend, siblings, or parents didn't make the list.
    • >I am suprised girlfriend, siblings, or parents didn't make the list.

      They excluded girlfriends as they aren't a common enough threat, but I have to agree with you about parents and siblings...
    • I remember when I was 10 or 11 and we got our first 386 DOS/Windos 3.11 system. I loved to play around on it and taught myself all the DOS commands. My favorite was format c: because it counted up from 0 to 100% and at the end my parents would be furious because they lost all of their data. Their punishment (which I feel was/is cruel and unusual) was to make me learn to fix all the problems I created and from then till my dying day I will be required for any and all tech support they may need 24/7.

  • Water/Coitus (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:02PM (#11613082)
    Speaking as someone who has worked at a college computer store, I would have to say water/beer is the biggest enemy to the life of a computer.

    "OMG! I was just having a drink and chatting with my girlfriends online, and I accidentally spilled it on my laptop! Daddy, buy me a new one!"

    On several occaions, I have also run across a laptop that was damaged during...um...let's just say "coital activities". Those definitely make the hall of fame.

    • Re:Water/Coitus (Score:4, Funny)

      by hobbesx ( 259250 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:43PM (#11613526)
      I have also run across a laptop that was damaged during...um...let's just say "coital activities"


      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 :)

  • Two words... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JackBuckley ( 696547 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:02PM (#11613083) Homepage
    Windows ME. Seriously, all trolling aside, this is the worst operating system known to man.

  • Mirrordot copy (Score:5, Informative)

    by Phil246 ( 803464 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:03PM (#11613084)
    heres the Mirrordot copy incase the thing totally dies: http://mirrordot.org/stories/4ec4acbeb790ac0270a10 94afdd09d56/index.html [mirrordot.org]

  • Pah! (Score:3, Funny)

    by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:08PM (#11613142) Journal
    I've been running with the same 250w power supply for ten years now, and I've never had a prob...

  • Salt (Score:3)

    by Skevin ( 16048 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:13PM (#11613206) Journal
    As those of your who live in beachfront houses already know, salt tends to destroy lots of things around the house. My office was in a Malibu beach house right up against the ocean, and all machines we got were completely rusted over within the year. Maybe manufacturers don't think about corrosive elements in the air...

    Solomon Chang

  • Nearly burned down my house (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bitsy Boffin ( 110334 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:20PM (#11613284) Homepage
    Just a couple of weeks ago a PC nearly burned down the house. I was out the front and heard frantic calls, came round the back to find smoke pouring out one of the windows, I mean thick acrid black smoke. Neighbours had already called the fire brigade.

    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.
    • that happened to me while i was playing doom 3 recently, actually. I shot it before it could finish spawning, but had to grab the chemical extinguisher anyway.

      (kidding)
    • Are you sure it wasn't running a prototype of the dual-core P4s?

    • Re:Nearly burned down my house (Score:5, Funny)

      by compwiz3688 ( 98919 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @08:38PM (#11614057)
      Let it be a warning - install smoke alarms near your PC if you leave it running unattended.

      <voice char="Agent Smith">
      What good is a smoke alarm when you are unable to hear?
      </voice>

    • Re:Nearly burned down my house (Score:4, Interesting)

      by takochan ( 470955 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @09:40PM (#11614590)
      I am starting to wonder if these PC fires might be due to the "exploding capacitor" problem from that era (where the Taiwan company that stole (and miscopied) the recipe for making capacitors, which then, after 5 years or so, pop, spilling eletrolyte all over a running PC motherboard).

      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'?

      • I am starting to wonder if these PC fires might be due to the "exploding capacitor" problem from that era (where the Taiwan company that stole (and miscopied) the recipe for making capacitors, which then, after 5 years or so, pop, spilling eletrolyte all over a running PC motherboard).

        Well, the "exploding capacitors" that I've seen, are really more along the lines of "leaky capacitors" (hey, given the choice between "leaky" and "exploding", which one do you think people are going to use? ;-). The e

      • There's a particular model of Digital Terresital TV set-top box, sold only in the UK, that suffered from this fault. One of the capacitors on the main board has a habit of exploding after a year or so of use. Most have either died or had the component replaced now, as the model hasn't been made for at least 2 year. However, it's possible that there's still the odd one or two still in use, or even sat on the shelf of a supplier somewhere.

      • Crap caps? Highly likely! (Score:3, Informative)

        by SIGBUS ( 8236 )
        At my office, there are a bunch of white-box computers. Every one of them had a PSU made by "Deer Computer" in them. Every last one of them eventually failed, and a couple of them took out hard drives or CD-ROMs as well.

        I popped open one of the failed PSUs once and found that, yes indeed, the blown caps were made by that company in Taiwan.

        If your machine has a PSU from Deer, replace the unit ASAP, even if it's working fine right now. It will eventually fail.

    • In the murky past, some corporate IT departments always made everyone shut down their PCs when they left for the night, because of the risk of the PSU catching fire.

      I know someone whose old Mac's PSU caught fire -- flames shot out the back and caught the curtains and wall behind it on fire too! Fortunately she had a kitchen-sized fire extinguisher that got it under control before the fire department arrived, tho a chunk of the wall had to be replaced. Amazingly, the hard disk survived this abuse, with no d

    • Let it be a warning - install smoke alarms near your PC if you leave it running unattended.

      I have a few questions that could pretty easily narrow down the cause.

      First, did you have the computer on a surge protector or UPS? If so, was it still working properly aftwards, or did it show that it needed to be replaced?

      Did your power supply's fuse blow, or not? All the power supplies I've ever taken apart have had fuses.

      If the fuse didn't blow, and the surge protector/UPS wasn't overloaded, then just about

  • True Story (Score:5, Funny)

    by HonkyLips ( 654494 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @07:24PM (#11613323)
    Ok, this actually happened.
    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.

  • Hydualic Press (Score:5, Funny)

    by Graemee ( 524726 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @08:09PM (#11613782)
    A guy I once worked with had a customer of his computer store get so frustrated with the "flaky" PC he bought, that he sent it back to him as a 6x6" cube. He used a hydualic press of some kind.

    To quote my friend "I didn't know if I should call the cops or laugh, but it made a great paper weight"

  • killer cats (Score:3, Interesting)

    by petsounds ( 593538 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @08:27PM (#11613933)
    I've never had cat hair kill a computer, but a few years ago my cat killed one. She has a penchant for tipping over glasses. Especially ones filled with liquid. Actually you might call it a bit of a neurosis. Anyway, one day I was away from my desk for a few minutes, and sensing a golden opportunity, she dumped a glass of water onto the strip-style surge protector below. The surge protector, not exactly of the highest quality, must've overloaded and sent a spike into the computer, taking out the motherboard, several PCI cards, and RAM chips with it. Needless to say, I use an APC UPS located in an area not easily reachable by falling water now.

    But I would guess the biggest PC killer is brownouts. I worked at a startup for a while where the admin chose not to use any surge protectors on our computers. I suppose he assumed because we were in a fairly modern office complex that they had clean lines. It took him a bit to figure out why he had to keep supplying me with new power supplies every few weeks after the previous one would die.

  • CD-ROM Digital port (Score:3, Funny)

    by moose5435 ( 761162 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @08:47PM (#11614133)
    My friend was working on one of his computers one day and saw one of those small connectors coming out of the power supply not connected to anything.
    Anyways, he thought it needed to be plugged in somewhere and what better place than the little 2-pin port on the back of a CD-ROM drive.
    It looked like it was meant to be plugged in there because it fit, and he decided to turn the computer on.

    White smoke was everywhere. Something inside the power supply exploded, killing the cdrom drive, and everything in the computer.

    That just goes to show that even if the plug fits, it might not always be the right place to put it.

  • Surge Protectors (Score:3, Informative)

    by Brandybuck ( 704397 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @10:13PM (#11614858) Homepage Journal
    I'm a firm believer in surge protectors. Years ago (back when the Pentium 100MHz roamed the plains), a lightning storm decided to play havoc on the neighborhood.

    When I came home from work, I smelled ozone and burnt plastic. Looking around I noticed that the surge protector power supply plug was melted and fused to the wall socket. Though ruined, the surge protector did its job. Nothing attached to it was affected by the lightning strike that hit the powerline outside.
  • This [dansdata.com] is a much better article on the subject.

  • Cat vomit (Score:3, Funny)

    by ceallaigh ( 584362 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @11:33PM (#11615382)
    through the vents of a 17" CRT seem to be rather effective in my unfortunate experience....

  • more (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jago25_98 ( 566531 ) <slashdot@phon[ ]pw ['ic.' in gap]> on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @06:14AM (#11616776) Homepage Journal
    - follow slashdot Voodo ribbon cable foding article; sharp solder on motherboard underside shorts IDE cables

    I've cooked about 6 AMD XP's. Even with heatsink fitted properly. Heatsinks can be backwards and gap not really visible. They crumble too.

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