Worst things that happened to your computers.

[KEVMAN569]

Bring your horror stories here.

I'll start off, once my sister managed to shove two disks into the disk tray and shut it.  My dad had to pry it open with a screw driver.  Poor computer 

[JC]

I haven't had much happen. While my younger bro was visiting me in DC when I was in college, he took my laptop out of my room to look for a wireless internet connection. When he came back, the CD drive was busted into pieces. He left the drive open while walking up stairs. He dropped it, watching it roll and break.

You can't trust anyone to take care of your stuff.

[Kuvio]

One time, a bolt of lightining hit right outside my room and knocked out all the power in my house. In doing so, it fried my computer internally. There was literally smoke coming from it. I opened up my tower to check what damage had been done. Everything was dead, if not melting. I can't complain too much though, it inspired my family to get a much much better computer in the process. It was a bittersweet moment. 

[nurd]

I dropped a laptop on my toes, once.

[133MHz]

I've been a little careless recently and managed to do the 'stack two discs into the CD tray' about three times. Fortunately the drive was unharmed, though it made horrible noises and one of the discs almost flew into the room. I've had my share of crashed hard drives and explosive power supplies in the past. Also one time I broke a memory slot.

[Flash1087]

A couple years ago my installation of Windows 2000 honestly just up and uninstalled itself. I came home one day to find my computer could only run in Safe Mode. Adding insult to injury was the fact I couldn't remove Windows 2000 after I installed XP, so a large portion of my hard drive is useless to me now.

To this day I have honestly no idea what happened.

[FamicomFreak]

hmmm nothing that horrible ever happened to me. Well around 10 years ago I turned my PC on and just kept hearing beeping sounds. Everything got screwed up oh nooooooo

[Raditz]

Well most recently one of my RAM sticks died so at the moment I only have 1gb. Oh and there was when my video card would get to 85+ degrees celcius. That sucked but a got a new cooler for it so he's ok now. : D

[MaxXimus]

The worst thing that happened to me computer wise is the ample amount of virus's I used to get before switching to an iMac. Also, I used to have an older Win2000 machine and I went out of the city for a week and when I came back, for some reason the screen saver didn't kick in so my desktop was burnt into the monitor.

[133MHz]

Why leave the monitor on for a whole week? Leaving the computer on 24/7 seems reasonable if you're downloading a bunch of stuff, running servers or something, but leaving the screen on seems like a waste of energy to me. Not to mention the wear imposed on it.

[MaxXimus]

It was more lazieness than anything. I may have also had bittorrent open.

[133MHz]

I may have also had bittorrent open.

Yeah, that's actually quite useful. But turn off the screen if nobody is going to look at it!!! . Seriously, that's just wasting energy (CRTs dissipate quite a lot of heat) and also putting unnecessary wear on it (CRTs also have a limited lifespan, just like lightbulbs).

Leaving the computer on to do useful work == good
Leaving the monitor on while it's not necessary == bad

[FamicomFreak]

Why leave the monitor on for a whole week? Leaving the computer on 24/7 seems reasonable if you're downloading a bunch of stuff, running servers or something, but leaving the screen on seems like a waste of energy to me. Not to mention the wear imposed on it.

That is so true! I always turn the monitor off if I'm not using it. Even when I turn the PC off and the monitor is on stand by I still turn it off. Lets preserve energy people!

[nurd]

That is so true! I always turn the monitor off if I'm not using it.

Heh.

I do, too.
No reason, just habit.

[UglyJoe]

First, a fun one:

My dad brought home a really old laptop from work (kinda looked like the middle one here).  I accidentally dropped it in our basement one time.  That's a couple of feet onto a concrete floor.  It still powered on, but the screen didn't work.  A few months later I dropped it again -- screen worked again!

Now, the real one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH_virus

This virus wiped out my family's desktop back in its hay-day.  I just got back from school today and, poof, all the files were gone.  I spent the evening reinstalling everything.  The next day, when I'm at school, my mom downloads some attachment and, poof, all the files are gone again   

I fixed it again and everything was good. 

Or so I thought.  Ends up, six or so of the computers at my dad's workplace got hit and were completely wiped.  I had to go in and fix things for them.  I made sure to install anti-virus software on all their PCs.  Annoying, yes, but I got paid. 

A year later, a bunch of their computers got hit again.  Way to go, Norton  .  I had to go in and fix them again.  This time, I installed the anti-virus software only on my dad's PC, gave him access to everyone else's harddrives, and showed him how to scan all of their drives.  But, I got paid again, so no worries. 

The next year, only a couple PCs got hit.  By this point, my dad was getting pissed that this happened every year.  To make things worse, he had run anti-virus the night before and ensured all of the computers were clean.  He did a bit more research into it.  As it turns out, one of the servers shared by all the dealerships was infected.  If one schmuck in any dealership across the country didn't bother to keep their PC clean, every dealership that connects to that server could get infected.  Weak. 

During that year, those servers were moved to an Internet-based solution.  The offending servers were disconnected, and I've never had to deal with that stupid virus again.