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

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WaterDeluxe said:
>Find a website that would let you download pirated versions of paid games on the appstore/google playstore as a kid
>Sounded too good to be true, but would work perfectly on my ipad
>Tell my cousins about it over the phone so we can play some shitty indie game together
>The second they press install on the website their 50 dollar kindles get nonstop porn pop ups
>Their parents ban them from using any form of technology for almost 3 years

whoops
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"You won't last 5 minutes in this game retard"
doge-junior-gets-caught-looking-at-porn.jpg
 
I finally found out why my PC would regulary crash when trying to play certain games. Back when i changed out my cpu i didn't update to the latest bios available. Now after multiple os reinstalls i finally decided to actually update the bios and everything just werks now.
 
I have a computer that was bought with grant money under a contract.

A few key points of the contract were:
  • everything bought with the grant must be reported
  • they are going to check the things bought with the grant occasionally
  • if the grant was misused or the purchases didn't match, the contract will be terminated and the money has to be paid back
The computer I bought was a prebuilt from a local IT shop with Windows preinstalled. I, being a Linux fan, naturally made a dual-boot setup since I couldn't uninstall Windows due to the contract. The problem was I was in a distro-hopping phase, so I reinstalled Linux quite a lot. Once I tried to do something different with the UEFI boot partition during a reinstall, and thus I managed to nuke the Windows Boot Manager one week before the mandatory checkup. Luckily, the main Windows partition was untouched, but I was unable to boot the OS. Miraculously, I managed to fix it just a day before the checkup by flashing a USB drive with a Windows installer and using the console to reinstall the Windows Boot Manager.

I think they wouldn't have noticed it, but better to be safe than sorry. Anyway, it wasn't a fun week.
 
Few days ago I decided to try and flash one of my server GPUs, a Radeon Pro V320 with a USB BIOS programmer. Unlike my successful prior attempts with flashing server GPUs, this one just would not write to the chip whatsoever. So now it is simply a $50 brick, until I can figure out why it won't flash :c
 
Squishie PP said:
Few days ago I decided to try and flash one of my server GPUs, a Radeon Pro V320 with a USB BIOS programmer. Unlike my successful prior attempts with flashing server GPUs, this one just would not write to the chip whatsoever. So now it is simply a $50 brick, until I can figure out why it won't flash :c
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Have you tried atiflash?

Most put it on a usb drive and then it boots into dos and flashes rather than plugging in via a programmer.
 
Have an old 2017 Dell AIO I got for free. It has an i7 in it, so it is by no means useless. Decided that I wanted to add a second hard drive to it in addition to the SATA SSD that I bought for it. I realize that there is an NVMe slot on it that I somehow never noticed, so I tested it with an NVMe from my main PC, and it works fine. I order a new one, plug it in and it is reconized by Windows and working fine, except I realize that my PC has no sound unless I plug in headphones. Since this is an all-in-one, it has built in speakers. I look at the manual and see no references to standard NVMe drives, just to the old NVMe memory modules that are used to speed up performance when the OS is installed on an HDD, which makes sense since the PC is from fucking 2017. It seemed that the drive was hogging all the PCIe bandwidth, preventing the speakers from working. I also realize that the NVMe SSD that I tried earlier was much slower than the one that I bought and had an identical capacity anyway. I transfer all the data from the old one to the new one via one of those adapters that allow you to go from NVMe to USB-C, then install the older NVMe into the AIO, and I have sound again.

Not the worst fuck up in the world but took a bit of time to figure out and reminded me of how tedious troubleshooting can sometimes be.
 
Merton J. Dingle said:
Have an old 2017 Dell AIO I got for free. It has an i7 in it, so it is by no means useless. Decided that I wanted to add a second hard drive to it in addition to the SATA SSD that I bought for it. I realize that there is an NVMe slot on it that I somehow never noticed, so I tested it with an NVMe from my main PC, and it works fine. I order a new one, plug it in and it is reconized by Windows and working fine, except I realize that my PC has no sound unless I plug in headphones. Since this is an all-in-one, it has built in speakers. I look at the manual and see no references to standard NVMe drives, just to the old NVMe memory modules that are used to speed up performance when the OS is installed on an HDD, which makes sense since the PC is from fucking 2017. It seemed that the drive was hogging all the PCIe bandwidth, preventing the speakers from working. I also realize that the NVMe SSD that I tried earlier was much slower than the one that I bought and had an identical capacity anyway. I transfer all the data from the old one to the new one via one of those adapters that allow you to go from NVMe to USB-C, then install the older NVMe into the AIO, and I have sound again.

Not the worst fuck up in the world but took a bit of time to figure out and reminded me of how tedious troubleshooting can sometimes be.
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Seems like a shitty pc problem. At least it was free
 
Battlefield42 said:
Seems like a shitty pc problem. At least it was free
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Probably. Could be worse though, especially since it was meant to be for business rather than gaming. It can at least run some 7th gen games like RE5 at 60 FPS with a few small settings adjustments to account for the lack of a graphics card. The game also somehow looks great, with virtually no jaggedness at 720p with anti-aliasing turned off.
 
Merton J. Dingle said:
Probably. Could be worse though, especially since it was meant to be for business rather than gaming. It can at least run some 7th gen games like RE5 at 60 FPS with a few small settings adjustments to account for the lack of a graphics card. The game also somehow looks great, with virtually no jaggedness at 720p with anti-aliasing turned off.
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Reminds me of an issue that if you plugged a GPU in the second PCIe slot, it disabled one of the hard drives. Couldnt install Windows on this piece of shit until I figured out the issue.
Some motherboards shares PCIe lines between devices, disabling one slot or the other if you dare to use a 4x PCIe card or a M.2 SSD.

As a tax for this thread: I wanted to add a touchscreen for my raspberry pi for use with my 3D printer. They're selling 7 inch touch screens that can directly plug on a Pi Zero, theyre pretty nifty.

Now, the fuckup part: I 3d printed a case for the pi and screen, however I've been a bit too quick and already started gluing the screen on the plastic. I tried to install some m3 screw washers for screwing it in... It didnt fit. Didnt close like I wanted... So in my infinite wisdom... I tired to separate the screen from the case... with a knoife...

Turns out, glass is very fragile. It cracked, everything was fucked... I just threw the screen away and abandoned the touch screen once and for all.
 
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Many years ago I wanted to add more RAM to my desktop PC. I think I had 2 x 2GB and added another 2 x 2. The new RAM... was made by a different manufacturer. I honestly don't know what I was thinking.

Anyway, it worked without a hitch for a few months, but then all kinds of weird things started to happen and I couldn't figure out why. I spent a few days testing different hardware configurations (used my dad's PC parts) until I realized that the biggest problem was when I copying/moving files from one HDD to another - the files would get corrupted. Then I facepalmed, thinking "of course...".
 
Got a new mobo, a new CPU and new RAM sticks. Assemble the entire PC, plug everything in, turn the machine on.

Blank screen.

Start googling for answers, apparently this happens because the mobo doesn't like newer Ryzen processors but it can be fixed by flashing the BIOS. Download the BIOS, copy it to a USB flash stick, follow the instructions, wait for the little LED in the back to finish blinking, try to run the machine again.

Blank screen.

Redownload the BIOS and go through the flashing process again.

Blank screen.

At this point I was out of ideas, so I disassembled and reassembled the entire PC. It was especially painful since the custom CPU cooler I've bought not only was a poor match for my case but also had these ridiculous claps that are close to impossible to attach and reattach. Insanely frustrating to deal with.

Blank screen.

I start to accept reality that one of the parts I've ordered is fucked, but at the same time I have no idea which one is faulty, so I'd have to haul this entire setup to my friend so we can test whether this is the CPU, RAM or mobo. I reassembled the old PC so I can have a machine I can actually use and turn it on.

Blank screen.

Turns out that the HDMI cable got subtly unattached from the monitor in such a way that it looked like it was plugged in, but it wasn't. I've been building my own PCs since the early 2000s I have no idea why it didn't occur to me to check something so basic. After trying again with the new parts everything worked fine and I use this machine to this day.
 
A more recent fuck up, I bought a WiFi extender but I've then connected it to the wrong router instead of the primary one. Thus, once I got in range of the extender, my internet connection would drop and in general be unstable. I wondered for way too long (read 2 months) why this was the case, thus I've then unplugged it early this year. Just only recently I've decided to diagnose the issue and then I found out the mistake that I've made... yeah, apparently I have those "dumb blonde" moments too.
 
Just today - I bricked a Pixel 8 Pro while flashing it.

Bought it used locally for $300 intending to flash LineageOS on it, got it home, unlocked the bootloader just fine, flashed all the required files from their site, booted into Lineage Recovery and flashed the full zip. I've done this many times on a lot of Pixel models, and various other phones over the years, but for some reason this time, I rebooted recovery, and poof, it's dead.

My computer doesn't acknowledge it at all when plugging it in via various USB ports on my machines, holding the buttons in various combinations to try and get it into the bootloader/fastboot or a hard reboot does nothing at all. Plugging it into my wall charger seems to do nothing at all. I know I flashed the correct version since I got all the files from the Lineage page for the Pixel 8 Pro, and did all the same commands I always do (while verifying them on the site), and it's just dead. I don't know how this happened.

Well that sucks. I'm out $300, and I really haven't learned anything from this. 🥃
 
Sharpeteer said:
Just today - I bricked a Pixel 8 Pro while flashing it.

Bought it used locally for $300 intending to flash LineageOS on it, got it home, unlocked the bootloader just fine, flashed all the required files from their site, booted into Lineage Recovery and flashed the full zip. I've done this many times on a lot of Pixel models, and various other phones over the years, but for some reason this time, I rebooted recovery, and poof, it's dead.

My computer doesn't acknowledge it at all when plugging it in via various USB ports on my machines, holding the buttons in various combinations to try and get it into the bootloader/fastboot or a hard reboot does nothing at all. Plugging it into my wall charger seems to do nothing at all. I know I flashed the correct version since I got all the files from the Lineage page for the Pixel 8 Pro, and did all the same commands I always do (while verifying them on the site), and it's just dead. I don't know how this happened.

Well that sucks. I'm out $300, and I really haven't learned anything from this. 🥃
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Does it have a hardware issue like a busted connection to the screen or a bad battery+port connection. A temperamental connection might mess up the stuff you sent over via usb too.
 
Le b0wski said:
Does it have a hardware issue like a busted connection to the screen or a bad battery+port connection. A temperamental connection might mess up the stuff you sent over via usb too.
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I spent a few hours on this, and I think I know what's wrong - the only sign of life I could get out of it was by installing a Windows partition, plugging the phone in, and it will appear in Device Manager for a split second under the name "Pixel ROM Recovery" then disappear again with no other signs of life.

I researched this device name, and everything I've read on it in various forums point to the hardware itself being fine, but it's a security trigger thanks to Google's Tensor chip, and it's in a locked down state. There is an internal tool to restore it, but it's not publicly available, and it requires mailing off to Google. That's of course assuming they'd even honor the claim considering I bought it used with no receipt, and I unlocked the bootloader which their warning screens say will void any warranty anyway. And whatever money they'd want is honestly not worth it for a $300 phone anyway, especially considering I do not even have a real Google account at this time.

So I know what's wrong with it, but I still have no idea how I messed it up considering I followed all the same steps I did for my other Pixels, including the Pixel 4, 6, and 7a. But this time it just killed it.

Bad ending.
 
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Sharpeteer said:
I spent a few hours on this, and I think I know what's wrong - the only sign of life I could get out of it was by installing a Windows partition, plugging the phone in, and it will appear in Device Manager for a split second under the name "Pixel ROM Recovery" then disappear again with no other signs of life.

I researched this device name, and everything I've read on it in various forums point to the hardware itself being fine, but it's a security trigger thanks to Google's Tensor chip, and it's in a locked down state. There is an internal tool to restore it, but it's not publicly available, and it requires mailing off to Google. That's of course assuming they'd even honor the claim considering I bought it used with no receipt, and I unlocked the bootloader which their warning screens say will void any warranty anyway. And whatever money they'd want is honestly not worth it for a $300 phone anyway, especially considering I do not even have a real Google account at this time.

So I know what's wrong with it, but I still have no idea how I messed it up considering I followed all the same steps I did for my other Pixels, including the Pixel 4, 6, and 7a. But this time it just killed it.

Bad ending.
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It just sounds like the recent "anti-rollback" is working and whatever guide/images you used haven't been updated since that was added. Had the phone been factory reset and updated to latest versions when you got it?


You should be able to adb into the phone and restore those google/factory images or use a usb-sd otg adapter with the files in the root folder or a recovery folder with the right name for the ROM Recovery to detect them. When it flashes up on the computer it's likely just looking for the files internally and then via usb before shutting off.
 
I transferred some data over from an Android to an iPhone. I disabled something on WhatsApp during the transfer, now a conversation spanning years of messages now is completely lost on my end. I think I enabled iCloud backup for it, then deleted it somehow.

AND I didn't think to keep the old phone just in case some shit didn't seamlessly go through. Fuck.
 
moowatica said:
A friend commissioned me to service his laptop. Paid me a good deal for it and upfront. I fucking broke his fan.

The laptop still works but now it needs and external fan so it wont overheat
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Jeez, can you readily buy replacement fans for this kind of laptop? No need to forwanwan your hardware but if you can easily fix it, why not do it?

As a thread tax, I got some valve index controllers. The best thing about it is NOT it's quality, since their joystick are utter schite. I was curious if I could open one of the defective controllers and check how I could replace the stick.
Thing is, every buttons have a ribbon cable for capacitive touch. It is VERY easy to break it by popping the joystick out... Luckily I fucked up the hardest part to NOT fuck up, meaning I have a better chance to repair it WITH the broken stick sensor than WITHOUT.
In my defense, Valve made a product that was hardly servicable. They should've used a soldered/socketed wire like the Steam Deck. Easy to break, but also much easier to fix.
 
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