Your personal tech fuck ups - This can't possiblly go wrong.

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乙乙乙 said:
you mean like dunking the whole thing in a bowl of rubbing alcohol? i did read something on google about soaking in alcohol but felt unsure about it as the only thing they sell here is 75% ethanol with isopropyl and i wasnt sure it'd be safe. i did apply it to the sides to try and dissolve the paste but it didnt seem to help.
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bit late but the rest is basically distilled water so yes it's safe. Would even be safe if the CPU was powered tbh. I just poured it very liberal over everything. Higher concentrated 99% isopropyl has the disadvantage that it evaporates very quickly. It's actually not that good for clearning. In the lower concentrated stuff though sometimes there's something added that either tries to cover the horrid smell or makes it impossible to drink the stuff without throwing up and that can ruin your day, as it won't evaporate and leave whatever you tried to clean covered with it, so don't use that stuff.

General Emílio Médici said:
It was a neat trick, kind of surprised I never heard of anyone doing something like it intentionally to make a machine safe from unwanted snooping by family or coworkers when you need to be extra safe.
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When I'm not entirely sure about the hand-config I made of a particular kernel (especially with new hardware) I just put it on an usb stick and let the kernel load from the stick, but load the rest of the system from the drive. It's interesting how you got something "linux" when you tried to boot off the drive without stick and that you mentioned the computer still being responsive to input but text scrolling by and errors coming up means probably the kernel didn't panic (because it couldn't find a root partition/hand over to init) but couldn't find system files that were probably on the usb stick. Around the time /usr used to be it's own partition, so probably that. Still doesn't quite explain what happened to XPs boot manager or the boot selection but interesting at any rate.
 
AmpleApricots said:
bit late but the rest is basically distilled water so yes it's safe. Would even be safe if the CPU was powered tbh. I just poured it very liberal over everything. Higher concentrated 99% isopropyl has the disadvantage that it evaporates very quickly. It's actually not that good for clearning. In the lower concentrated stuff though sometimes there's something added that either tries to cover the horrid smell or makes it impossible to drink the stuff without throwing up and that can ruin your day, as it won't evaporate and leave whatever you tried to clean covered with it, so don't use that stuff.


When I'm not entirely sure about the hand-config I made of a particular kernel (especially with new hardware) I just put it on an usb stick and let the kernel load from the stick, but load the rest of the system from the drive. It's interesting how you got something "linux" when you tried to boot off the drive without stick and that you mentioned the computer still being responsive to input but text scrolling by and errors coming up means probably the kernel didn't panic (because it couldn't find a root partition/hand over to init) but couldn't find system files that were probably on the usb stick. Around the time /usr used to be it's own partition, so probably that. Still doesn't quite explain what happened to XPs boot manager or the boot selection but interesting at any rate.
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The text flash was quick, and then the screen went black with a single line of white text that said something like "files not found try again" in a style quite similar to what I today know is linux terminal command speak, which would then repeat if I pressed any keys. I don't know if I ever tried to start the PC and only insert the Pen Drive once it was on that screen to see if the computer would then suddenly understand and load from the USB. I wonder if it would have worked, would have made a really neat trick as if I was inserting the "command key" to boot up the Gaming Station😎.

Looking back with the benefit of knowledge I think that because I asked the Ubuntu setup to use the "entire drive" of the USB, it tried to create a boot sector/partition on it, failed, and defaulted to the actual HDD and wrote there. Because the install was meant to be using the entire disk it also flagged the files it wrote as the ones that the BIOS should default to when loading the OS so the windows loader got shoved aside.
 
Found a list of old email addresses, including one of an old girlfriend, and going on an Internet detective hunt that lasted an entire day.

When I finally do locate her on the clearweb, I quickly find out that she's faking a mental disability to get a tugboat-funded lifestyle, verified by a chat that reveals her as far too smart for someone who's supposedly a major tard. Worse - her parents are either duped to hell or actively helping the scam.

I regret the waste of my hope more than the waste of my time.
 
One morning, while I still had sleep-brain, I decided to install a new release of Knoppix to a spare thumb drive for shits and giggles. Accidentally installed on an external hard drive instead, losing 7 TB of multimedia.

Fortunately I had just done a full backup two months before, but fuck I will never forget that feeling in my stomach when I realized what I had done. Beyond amateur bullshit.
 
innocent jogger said:
One morning, while I still had sleep-brain, I decided to install a new release of Knoppix to a spare thumb drive for shits and giggles. Accidentally installed on an external hard drive instead, losing 7 TB of multimedia.

Fortunately I had just done a full backup two months before, but fuck I will never forget that feeling in my stomach when I realized what I had done. Beyond amateur bullshit.
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Most major image-flashing utilities now make you check a box to even SEE the hard drives or confirm a yes/no dialog specifically because of this. Wasn't always the case, unfortunately.
 
I was at a friends updating his laptop to Windows 11. His nephews were over and his laptop had a terrible battery and had to be plugged in to even work properly. It’s about halfway through the install, when his nephew runs in and trips over the cable and unplugs the computer. Installation stops. Panic starts.
Windows has a feature where if installation stops, it will not boot properly unless you do the process of removing the half installed version and trying again, which on a garbage laptop took about 2 hours to even do.

Other mention would be on my second PC build, I tried to turn the computer on with the power supply button and panicked when it didn’t work (It had worked fine on my first build), just to realize I had plugged in the front panel properly and was not pressing the right button lmfao. Felt like a total dumbass for that one.
 
Jinx - Seethe (9).png

>Accidentally reformatted an entire partition (unrecoverable) when trying to make room for another OS
 
My friend (age 15-16) used to imagine himself as tech-savvy and would constantly talk about planning his future PC, considering the best parts, overclocking his groaning GPU to play Witcher 2 at 10 FPS instead of 5. He played through the whole thing multiple times, mind you, it did not stop him. One time he gave me his old 4GB RAM and an HDD drive as a gift. I plugged the HDD in alongside the one I already had (mind you I had a crappy 2000s PC, friend guided me on what went where) and the computer started to lag like crazy. Yeah, we did it while the computer was running, expecting a new hard drive to pop up on the UI. So that idea went nowhere, it was swiftly detached. Then, knowing it was an operation requiring a turned off PC, we plugged in the RAM into an empty slot I had. Launching the computer, a spark happens, I smell something in the motherboard, saw smoke and immediately crouch down to see nothing happening. Computer won't budge, had to send it to service.

Computer worked fine since then, but my friend felt incredibly sorry. Still kept trying to gift or even sell me his old computer parts. I did not accept a gift from him ever since. And about his big plans for a future PC? He bought a prebuilt one and was scared to open the case because the service dude told him not to. What a guy, I swear lol
 
I attempted to move my windows partition to the left 16MB after deleting the MSR partition (on purpose since my research showed it to be irrelevant to desktop), and well the process failed part way so now windows doesn't boot. I only was really using the windows partition at the moment for playing morrowind vanilla but now my save file is gone. That's the thing I'm most upset about, but at the same time I now have an excuse to not get back into destiny or cod warzone. So I guess my fuck-up has a silver ligning.
 
I remember accidentally installing Windows (95 or 98 or NT4) on D:
That's not really a problem except some programs things would shit themselves, I guess they didn't use the environment variables to find the Windows folder.
 
15 years ago i downloaded and tried to install some skins for Widows Vista (the OS i was using at the time) as you can imagine i pretty much ended up destroying my Windows installation, i wasn't able to use my PC for a few days until a friend was able to download and burn an ISO of Vista on a DVD i was able to restore everything i fucked up.
 
Young and dumb me installed a water cooling radiator backwards piercing the heat exchanger coil.
To my credit, there was no manual provided and water cooling was extremely new (not that my AMD Athlon XP 2800+ really needed it) and the screws provided were very long as well. Good thing I made that pump test or else my Radeon 9800 Pro would have been done for.
 
As a retarded, poop-smeared child, I would routinely google "online multiplayer shooter game free" and download whatever looked interesting onto the family computer. My mom would constantly yell at me about putting viruses on the family computer.

Now, as a brilliant, poop-smeared adult, I still managed to fuck a craptop with viruses just last year after pirating some VST plugins.
 
from 2013-2017 i used to abuse my old Inspiron 531 pc. every time the fan would start blowing i'd get infuriated and knock it on its side.
shit still ran too after years of that. thing couldn't even run minecraft past 720p.
ultimate pc rage i wish i caught on tape.
Then i tried to upgrade it to windows 10 one time and shit got poisoned by the Blue Balls of Death. (BBOD)
 
>went on ebay to get le server mobo
>got the package with cpu's and ram
>was really excited to decided to start building the server (c602 Asrock dual socket board with xeons and ecc ram)
>put last cpu in, dropped the cpu into the pins, took out saw 5 pins bended
>start rebending pins with a card
>managed get all pins looking normal again
>put 2nd cpu in socket
>build system
>power on
>no beep or uwu
>decided to take out 2nd cpu
>still no beep or boot
I basically fried the motherboard somehow, spent month to try fixing, thought it was the cpu's, the ram, the psu, bought everything again except the mobo (because expensive at the time)
Decided to go OEM CTO servers since
 
bruh lmao, I'm now forced to restart my entire digital life because my external hard drive completely killed itself and I didn't have a chance to back it up. It's a Western Digital and it's been like 2 FUCKING WEEKS since I bought it. I've learned my lesson now but this is so cruel. I had roughly 2 terabytes of archived content.

The only thing left for me is my password manager database. I don't know what to fucking do. I should create a more resilient off-site backup solution so that shit like this doesn't happen again. BUT, I can't un-spill the milk. Shit's over for me. I'm in for a great reset on my digital life.

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