How to kill your computer Many people simply ignore the rule "if it aint broke, don't fix it" and end up annihilating their computer through a burst of static electricity or dodgy DIY. Back in 2002, El Reg ran a few pieces on the obscurer ways to kill a computer. Most of the links are dead, so we thought we'd have an updated look into this wacky world …
>Do you know any more ingenious ways to destroy a computer?
I'm not an evangelist for windows, linux, apple or any other OS and have various machines running the most suitable for a given task but if Windows 7 hangs one more time while swapping between users then I will have some photos for you and they won't be pretty.
Win 7 hanging on user swap? Graphics driver.
Dunno about others, but in the ATI world Catalyst 10.7 and 10.8 hang like that, but 10.9 doesn't. None of 'em handle suspend/resume gracefully.
10.10 (current) works and appeared to also suspend/resume in an initial test, but it also comprehensively fucks up the colours displayed with the 57xx series GPUs so I ripped it out. I may be putting my tail between my legs and going back to nVidia if these pillocks don't ship a working bloody driver for Se7en soon.
Thanks. It's an nVidia card and the graphics drivers are, as far as I've read, not particularly good. They seem to suffer from a memory leak problem. I used to be able to go about a week between reboots but since a windows updgrade last week, which included new drivers, it hangs at least once a day. I think I'll remove it and use the onboard intel graphics.
OOoooohhhh Look at ME! LOOK AT ME DAMMIT! I'm smashing Apple gear! I'm redefining guerilla flashmob anti-marketing against the capitalist corporate zeitgeist!
I bet he makes a tidy sum out of it. ahem.
If he had the balls he would crush a Bugatti Veyron live in the Top Gear studio. The Stig would then nut him to death and the world would be a better place.
Sorry, but but people who just smash up expensive kit are the same as the kind of tuckfards who have to have watches that cost more than 4 average houses: oxygen thieves we would be better off without.
And yes spellcheck, TUCKFARD is a word. Don't make me change the T & the F....
Coffee is not a patch on any sort of Cola drink for destroying electronics (and teeth)
Most laptops can be dropped down a drain these days, so if you sling yours onto the seat inside your car, make sure you retrieve it before someone opens the door.
Dropping your backup disk (USB, 3.5", aluminium case) a meter or so onto the laptop's keyboard is a good one. Especially if it lands corner down, dead centred on the laptop's hard disk.
Wow that looks like quiet a serious defect, any chance you can post the link to the original story that covered this potentially hazardous failing... Surely there *is* an original story for such a dangerous defect... it wouldn't have been passed over due to a certain brand name would it?
I once took my laptop to the mother-in-law's down in Cornwall. Woke up in the morning to a dead laptop. Turned out the cat had been sick and managed to direct it into the side-vent and toasted the motherboard.
Never did see any compensation for that and apparently the house insurance "didn't cover it".
Wasn't thermite covered here a while back? if not I demand to know why it hasn't, GO! DO IT NOW (was that subtle suggestion to loud?) I know its snowey but that'll just add to the fun when it hits the ice under the flap top.
Oh the dilema Flames or Goggles?
Oh God, please don't remind me about the time I replaced an American plug on a CRT monitor with a British plug. I correctly matched the USAnian colour-coded (color-coded?) wiring to the British Standard 100% accurately. Then FORGOT TO CHANGE THE VOLTAGE JUMPER.
Zing! Flash! Kaboom! Near instantaneous death.
A very clean alternative would be to just ship it once around the world. With a suitably chosen delivery service, your chances for the parcel to never again be seen on Earth's surface are better than 4 out of 5.
The best services are even able to convince you that you cannot have shipped the computer with them because it never existed in the first place.
But you can't call him entirely talentless -- anybody can hit a laptop with a sledgehammer; he'd have to be one hell of a hustler to parlay it into gallery openings.
(Also keep in mind that this is southern California, Promised Land of idiots who believe there's no reason for anyone to have any kind of firearm ever because they're scary and evil and bad, so the fact that he shoots some of the laptops counts for a little extra "transgressive" frisson. Never mind that I've known lots of people who grew up putting holes just like those into road signs -- if rednecks do it, it *can't* be art.)
B'dum tish! I'm here all week - try the veal.
No seriously (Just for Jason T up there) a few of ways to accidentally kill a PC include;
- disconnecting the fan
- plugging it into a socket that isn't earthed properly
- Using it to rest a drink on and then knocking said drink over and soaking the power supply (when switched on)
There are, of course, many more ways to destroy the build while leaving the hardware intact - the best one I saw was one twonk who, faced with the agony of migrating to new hardware, decided the best thing to do was to export the entire NT Registry from his laptop and import it onto his new PC. Classic.
with a gateway laptop, and it would not die... Though in place of unpredictable liquids, i simply shorted the PS cable, but still close enough... I never did try direct input of 110v, but i know that would have done a lot more than simply trip a fuse on the board, and would have been obvious damage.
I not only stopped the fans, I sealed the vents and put it in a 115 degree oven running burn-in tests from a linux DVD... nearly a day and I got the CPU and HDD hot enough to melt the casing, but it was not going to die...
I actually have pics of one truly exploded HP Laptop which "went off" when I was in college. Our friend had just bought it about 2 weeks before so it was still new when this happened. He had the laptop on and was carrying it under his arm when it suddenly started sparking and leaking battery acid. He proceeded to lay it down on the ground, and ran to the bathroom to wash off the acid.
Meanwhile, another guy tried to open up the laptop because there was smoke coming out of the thing. He had just opened up a bit when it started sparking again... and then proceded to detonate. It burst up in flames, exploded two times more, one of them expelling a battery cell about 10 meters away from the laptop, leaving a hole like an Alien chestburster had burst out of the laptop. We all stood dumbfounded watching the whole thing, until the security guard brought the extinguisher to stop the fire.
This happened about 2 years before the "exploding laptop batteries" pandemic, so when my friend called HP to tell them that the laptop exploded, they didn't believe him. It was until he sent pics from the exploded laptop that he got a free replacement and an HP public apology being made to him and to the college.
Hell, I still have the pics somewhere in my HDD. I should probably send 'em...
I was thinking let a TSA person look at your laptop. My favorite is an idiot that set his laptop on a hot burner.
I had a coworker tell me about an user that put his laptop in the oven, forgot about it and turned the oven. I called bullshit on that one. Then one day I saw on the news how an idiot burned his house down by forgetting that he put fire works in the oven to hid the from the kids .
Before the days of keyed ATX power supply connectors, AT power supplies were connected to the motherboard with two separate connectors side by side.
These were not keyed, the trick was to keep the black wires together in the centre. I once reversed this arrangement on an IBM 286, magic smoke ensued.
386 era power supply died. Having a fuse inside, yes I could replace that, but I only had a 2.5 amp rather than a 2 amp fuse, close enough.
All back together turn it on, wow the pure white light from the computer, case a really good image of power supplys grill on the wall. Intense! Pull it all apart and the control circuitry had dissapeared, just a few metal legs left....
Note to self, only replace fuses with the correct values.
"I doubt a 2amp fuse would have saved you - something was very wrong. Fuses are just not that sensitive anyway"
Now stop and think about what you've said. He had to replace the fuse. Why? Because the original fuse had blown. Yes, the original fuse Had Blown. It HAD BLOWN. It's quite likely that any replacement 2A fuse would also blow. If you don't understand why...
Laptops and PCs that have worked flawlessly for years last about 1 week. Dead drives, jammed keys and operating speeds that make turtles look like speed junkies. I just don't get it.
I now only give away old stuff, cause I know I won't want it back.
The people in the videos seem to have some serious anger issues and way too much spare time.
I can't be bothered with doing anything apart from leaning across and dropping broken stuff into the bin.
- Old CRT Flyback Transformer
- Piezo Lighter (The Igniter part)
- Plasma ball + Tin foil
- Camera flash gun (Cap Wired the Evil way to low current devices will soon make them pop)
- Tesla coil
- LHC (Let see what a Hi Speed atom does)
- Power utility Sub Station (Temp fuse)
- Give it to a child that likes taking stuff apart
- Steel Mill Steam Hammer
- Volcano
Back in the dark ages I did PC hardware support for a big bank. 1000's of pc's.
All pc's where under repair contract from dell, IBM etc.
Once in a while you had one pc who always crapped out on irregular intervals without repoducable cause on a blue screen or freeze etc.
So to make sure we got those replaced and not returend "without fault found" we simply lifted the processor, put some tin foil under it, put the processor back with the foild between the cpu and the socket, and hit the power button, pulled the plug , removed the tin foil and made a call to get a new mainboard.
solved.
a fellow student who uttered the fatal "I know about computers" before pushing nice and hard to seat the new processor.
The one that should have just slotted in with Zero Insertion Force. Cue bent legs (like I said, it was a while back) and even worse, something went crack on the mobo and it refused to work even with a new processor.
so TLDR; saying "I know about comupters" or similar leads inevitably to issues.
Another fine way is to not bother with thermal paste. Yep, it's a couple of quid extra, but saves so much in the long run.
I wonder what the people at Foxconn have to say about all this mayhem.
"Jesus Mary and Joseph.... Gian Mai, lookit what they're after doing to that iPhone! FFS... all our blood sweat and tears put 'to making these yokes and would you ever look at it, all those yanks want to do is destroy them? For art it would seem. Jesus Christ on a bike....God help us all here."
I worked for a UK PC manufacturer who received a monitor rma'd from a university down south..... On close examination it had in fact been pissed upon, though whether by student or lecturer was unclear.
We also received a near dead PC from a customer of a well known PC hardware store that exhibited all manner of unexplained instability. One team had disconnected all the external indicating LED's but left it powered up. As a PFY, I then set upon it and performed what amounted to a hotswap on the processor...... Thankfully, a warped motherboard and broken CPU socket, caused by finger trouble at the factory (something large and metallic betwixt board and case) had already ensured both board and processor were past their sell by.
Outside of that there was the old and knackered Apricot FTS, a big beefy server in a sturdy steel overcoat, that was assisted at the end of its life off a 1st floor fire escape directly into a skip......Batteries already removed thankfully...... "Regardez !"..... Boom ! Talk about a drop test.
I would imagine readers in the USA have disposed of annoying/excess/scrap hardware with more technological/ballistic means at their disposal.
"Tompert saw his kids fight over an iPod Touch. To show them it was just a silly
gadget, he smashed one up in front of them"
And he's proud of doing that? Sure, I understand kids should know there's more to life than staring at a screen, but it's not exactly a great message to be sending out about wasting the planet's resources.
You have to warn people not to view that video while they're eating. I almost choked to death when the monitor hit back.
sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD was right on when he said "Install Norton on it". I've seen it work like a charm for PCs, and on several generations of Macs, too. I'm convinced that Peter Norton set out to develop a virus that people would not only install voluntarily, but pay for.
But there's better than that. After freelancing as a Mac operator at dozens of ad agencies and other firms (in the USA), the best way I've ever seen to inflict the maximum damage, anguish, and expense in the course of destroying a computer is to set up the permissions on an OSX machine so that no-one except IT can fix it.
- Years ago, a Cyrix 586 motherboard, install the RAM taken out of the 486 that preceded it without checking voltage ratings. Seemed to kill that one.
- Place beer beside laptop on desk when home from holidays. Forget new kitten in house. Kitten sees mouse pointer moving, pounces for the kill, becks all over the keyboard of a new Vaio (years ago when Vaios were good).
- Get PCs shipped over from the old office in the states. Forget to switch the voltage on the PSU and plug them in. Do it twice for extra BOFH points.
- For those who enjoy horror/torture flicks. A pair of pliers to any resistors, capacitors on the motherboard. A slow painful death entails.
- Buy a Dell laptop. Push charger into socket. Note charger lead falls out, socket now in the internals of the machine.
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