*WINNER* Win Cooler Master Silent Pro Platinum 550W PSU with Sonic Informed

This happened about 7 or 8 years ago. I resigned at my dead end call centre job that I hated with a passion to pursue a recognized qualification in Graphic Design.

I started working straight after finishing Matric and decided to take a 2 month break and visit my mother for the duration. She lives in a plaasdorpie about 2 hours from Cape Town.

Took my beloved pc with (I would've anyways) to kill the boredom...nothing happens in that dorp.

I plugged in the pc and watched some Anime the first evening. The following morning I got some error message at boot up. No problem...insert Windows disc and re-install. Play games, watch movies etc etc.

My mother is very old-fashioned and believed that EVERYTHING must be switched off in the evening. Fine, switch off pc and next day same error. My 40gb Harddrive was blowing its last breath unfortunately.

I had to re-install Windows XP, EVERY, SINGLE, MORNING for two months. After the first month re-installing wasn't cutting it anymore.
Had the harddrive in the freezer...threw it against the wall...shaked it and presto! working again.

Unfortunately they did not sell harddrives close by and I had to wait two months for a replacement.
I still remember the Windows XP code to this day...XKJWF-7K...
 
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I remember when I was a child, probably around 8 years old or so. We had one of those stupid PC desks with the space to put the PC on the side. The PC fell backwards, landing on the backside and the power cable pushed the plug of the PSU inside the PSU.

Eventually when I switched the PC on, there was sparks flying and kept tripping the mains. I was afraid to tell my parents about what I did to the PC :(

Sometime later they replaced it for me and my P2 233 was alive again :D
 
On a sweltering summer's day +/- 2 years ago, I was playing some COD with my mates. My desk was some what cluttered with random bits of odds and ends. I had a Coolermaster CM690 II chassis, brand new might I add, and had just recently installed my 2 new GTX SLi Graphics cards. Having no space on said desk to place icy beverage, i temporarily placed it on top of my chassis while i quickly cleared the rubble from my desk. Now having the attention span of a goldfish, I sat down and resumed playing COD, and in a particularly tense situation, I decided to rest my leg on my chassis forgetting the fact that i still had my cooldrink there. As anyone that knows the CM690 II chassis you will note that the top of the case has tiny holes all over. The result was not good. with Coca-Cola pouring down over the mainboard and graphics card it took mere seconds for the whole thing to go pop...

Lesson learnt. PC's are for gaming. Desks are for other things like coke, food and strippers
 
One of my worst horror stories was having a buyer for my Nvidia 7900 GTX and on the day I was gonna get my HD3870 I was lanning with a buddy and he told me: "hey, enough of your 15" CRT screen, here, use my extra 19" LCD" I wanted to turn off my PC and swop screens and he said ag no worry you can hotswap... cool let's do dis, unplug CRT, plug in LCD and...... 7900GTX all gone.... brokeness... what happened.... lawdy knows... luckily I bought that HD3870 a hour or 2 later, but still had to pay the full amount, and money was tight, so ja didn't score at all :/ just bought a new gfx card thats it and at that time just buying without selling aswell wasn't on the cards for me.
 
So one day (many years ago, first PC), I decided to see what that little Red switch (with the '230' on it) on the back of the chassis did.... Maybe it could go even faster!!! :cool:

"I have no idea what happened, I just heard a bang,some sparks, some magic smoke, then everything switched off ":p


Recently, a neighbour needed some help with their PC.
Okay,it can't install applications anymore, MS office wont even start. Corrupt windows or virus, either way, re-install was the best option. Windows XP CD was AWOL, but the license sticker was luckily intact. Their neighbour, a computer "fundi" brings her Windows CD over.
Fine, pop it in the drive, restart the PC.... :::loud vibration::: // Crack! {{Bang}} ::rattle:: ......
Windows CD exploded:wtf:
If I find the pic, I'll edit this post... LOL, It's one of those things you hear about and wonder how it can even be physically possible... IT IS!
 
CURRENT VALID ENTRIES


ALL ENTRIES ARE IN A NUMERICAL ORDER FROM THE FIRST TO THE BOTTOM OF THE LIST AS THE LAST.

001 [H]agan
002 Ichigo
003 Keepa34
004 Kuga
005 Lyt
006 weakest_link
007 Fenix_ZA
008 Alien
009 Mephisto_Helix
010 Edelweiss
011 aminfri
012 Macabre25
013 Hraffnir
014 Ryusuki
015 TBlaar
016 Dohc-WP
017 simon
018 okuhle94
019 Wyzak
020 Prophet
021 DCWarhound
022 Icenflame
023 orkoza
024 Deceptor
025 S1ght
026 BlaZing
027 Grimspoon
028 zero-g
029 java
030 Cobalt
031 Graal
032 PunkOnWheels
033 moondoggie86
034 Just1ce
035 BrendanMc
036 Dragonic
037 X-Gamer
038 Gimaru
039 HavocXphere






CURRENT INVALID ENTRIES

sandmanza - Pending 20 posts
muj33b - Pending 20 posts
H4VoC - Pending 20 posts
drdiebrein - Pending 20 posts
Psywulf - Pending 20 posts
The-1 - Pending 20 posts



Rules for this comp:

1. Post your hardware horror story.

2. Minimum of 20 posts required to enter.

3. You may only enter once.

4. Entrants must be residents of SA and Residing in SA.



SPAM WILL BE MONITORED STRICTLY!!!

Closing Date:

The competition closes Monday, 17 September 11am. Prizes not claimed by Wednesday 19 September 11am will be passed on to a new winner.


NO ONE IS TO POST ANYTHING ELSE OTHER THAN THEIR ENTRIES!!!! ANY FORM OF CONVERSING IN THIS THREAD WILL BE A DISQUALIFICATION.

Thanks
​
 
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Ok, so this is a story I hoped to forget, but if you insist.

I bought a new keyboard, because my old one died a horrible death to a can of Guinness. So with hangover and all, the next morning I decide to try and open this thing up and try and clean the unwanted substances off the keyboard sheets and see if it will work. Okay, so I was too lazy (and hung over) to undo all the screws, so I just wedged my screwdriver into the middle of of the keyboard and stuck my fingers in there to have a feel. To my absolute horror, the screwdriver slid out, and for some reason the edges of the bits that slammed down onto my fingers were as sharp as a cut can of tuna. So it dug into my fingers with excessive ease to what I'm guessing was the bone, and blood started gushing all over. I swore and called my fiancee and she laid me down on the bed whimpering, and faint. lol, anyway that's my hardware story. Never again will I attempt to fix messed up keyboards.
 
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Brought a portable HDD to a friends place & connected it to his PC. Friend's brother sits down on a swivel type chair thing & spins around abruptly...catches the power cable of the ext HDD with his foot. External goes flying across the room at approximately mach 3. *blink*

RIP external hdd...
 
A client of mine brought in his PC for backup and replacement (hdd faulty) etc. Now this was a pc that was used in a car dealer's workshop with lots of manuals and important information on it. Late Friday afternoon and my thoughts aren't where it should be and i am talking nonsense with one of my technicians. Took out his HDD, plugged it in to one of my workshop pc's and began to backup. Can't remember the program i used (was more than 10 years ago) but long story short, the program didn't backup to the external HDD and i wiped their HDD. Loaded their OS on the new HDD and Monday morning took it back so they can work on it.

Took the external drive i used for backup, to restore but it was empty..... Now panic set in. I could see never doing business with them or any of their employees.

Went back to the office and searched for a recovery program (phoned all the suppliers) and got only get really expensive one's. Many things went through my mind as i wondered how they would react to my mess and just as i decided to go and see their manager the lightbulb goes on in my head. The backup program saved the information on my hdd in the workshop machine!

Lesson learned? Do not sit and talk nonsense when you work with important info.
 
A year or so ago got my i7 with a 580 CII and a new Asus Mobo. Installed everything the weekend and while testing the setup Thunder and Lightning arrived and as I reached for the plug the Line got hit and blew my 1 day old setup. 2 cores of the i7 gone, but the rest seemed to be working insurance claim and reset 2 weeks later then the mobo for some reason was also affect and blew my i7 again on startup. After replacing the mobo, RAM and the CPU I realised that the GPU was also not functioning. This was replaced with my own money since insurance only covered the first replacement.

To my delight 2 months later after saving up again, 3 CPU's and 2 Mobo's and Gpu's later The problem was fixed by replacing all parts....

Lesson learnt when lightning strikes replace all pc Parts not just those tested......
 
No real horror stories from my side either...The Pc gods have smiled upon me over the last few years.
I had a client flick the little red switch on the back of his psu, not knowing what it does (Drops 230 to 115 volts)
He phones me almost in tears saying he killed his pc..He described it as making a pop sound followed by some blue smoke.
Rig was fine but the PSU died.

In hind sight, I should have probably stuck a lable over the switch:

Danger-Do-Not-Touch.jpg
 
Back in the day, I was using my brother's old 33k baud modem, which was either a PCI or ISA model. I had an ISA SCSI card in the slot next to it. For some strange reason (probably a bad modem), it would only get detected 1 out of 5 times by the motherboard. My frustration grew each and every time I turned the PC on. Turn off the PC, reseat the card, try again.

Finally, I snapped. I grabbed the modem and yanked it out while the PC was still running. That's when I noticed the puff of smoke come from my SCSI card. A piece of copper from under the coating split in half and was sticking up. Thankfully, a bit of solder and some electrical tape later, it was back in working condition. (I think I chucked the modem out the window though)
 
Hmm my story is bough a brand new motherboard and cpu and put it all together, after starting up the pc nothing works and sent it back but in the sending back I accidentally put the cpu protector on the inside of the clip while trying to close it bending most of the holes.
 
Very very long ago we had a Pentium 100Mhz PC that started giving us issues. So we opened the chassis and started it up to see if we could spot anything. Lo and behold smoke started to rise from the CPU and we scrambled to turn it off. Suffice it to say we had to let that PC go. :(
 
Was at a lan and a buddy decided to add an extra drive while we were setting up, unfortunately he already had a couple of drives connected with a molex connecter splitter thingy. He ended up overloading the psu, next thing we see smoke and a strong burning smell when he switch it on. Funny part was that he started to panic not knowing what to do with us shouting shut it down.

Eventually we switched the plug off and helped him rearrange some power connectors, and oddly enough everything still worked :)
 
Last year my power supply killed over 3TB worth of hard-drives, it would seem because it was just getting plain old (I think I had that PSU for over 4 years). Luckily I took it out and replaced it before it took out the rest of my pc, but I'm always on edge now... There's something about the loss of so much information that changes a person :/
 
When i was in standard six my step dad for the first time bought a brand new computer(not one he just put together from other peoples old spare parts from their pc's he used to fix) he was so chuffed with his new purchase that we were not allowed to play games on it unless he was at home and besides we still had the old pc that we could play on. So one friday my step dad and my mom went out and left us kids at home with my gran to look after us. after asking them to play on the pc we were told no and us being the naughty kids(my brother and me) we were decided we would wait until they had left and would then switch the pc on and play. this particular friday it also happened to rain and there was a bit of lightning. we disobeyed another of my step dads rules and played on the new computer when there was lighting. so as you can imagine as murphy would have it lighting striked and hit the pc frying it. we got such a good hiding the following morning and were not allowed to touch a pc for a good couple of months.
 
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