What's *your* latest mess-up?

[alexanna]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

^ Well it think it might qualify for the thread now.
This failure was fairly easy to notice, I guess I should have used a magnifying glass on the previous 3 attempts. Looking closer at the other CCFLs I installed there was a slight slit in the hot wire to the ccfl causing voltage to go to ground. It was very hard to see. The last one as you can see in the picture left some very good visual evidence on the blue wire, explains why it worked until everything was tightened down I need to get some small heat shrink tube and do a proper repair. Anyway I fixed it!

[skystormfarms]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

u don't want to know how menny times i have faild

[MXM]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

^ lol... just look at it like the good old Edison did--- (and I do) :

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

peace.

[dood]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Recapped a gx270 here at work... put it all back together, hit the power button... and nothing but an amber light came on. CPU and PSU fans would spin, but nothing else. Swapped the PSU, in case it was damaged by the shorted caps... same thing. Started pulling everything back apart to check my soldering; "Hmm, that CPU heatsink seems a bit loose". Yep, I'd put everything together but forgot to drop the processor back in.

For the record, the PC performs flawlessly WITH a processor installed.

[japlytic]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

When I was installing internal upgrades in my Eee PC:

One of the USB jumper pads for the wireless card slot broke off; so I had to trace them back to some round pads which went to the other side. I cut off the lines close to those pads to prevent stub interference and it was a bit difficult to solder to them, which necessitated a low wattage battery-powered soldering iron.
I soldered those pads to the TV tuner and it would not be recognized, so I decided to remove the jumpers on one of the external USB ports and connect it to the TV tuner. The tuner still could not be recognized, and the polarity of the data lines was reversed (usually not fatal to USB hosts and devices) and the TV tuner was recognized.
The pads for the USB port on the wireless card slot were soldered to the USB port of which its data bus was diverted to the TV tuner and this port now works perfectly.

When installing the USB Bluetooth module on the passive adaptor in the flash slot with the new antenna, the chip on the module got very hot; it was later found that the antenna needed a balun (hard to get) or DC blocking, of which a 100pF ceramic capacitor was installed between the point where the antenna goes (the antenna was removed) and the antenna on the screen.
The module could not be recognized, even after checking polarity; it was found that the passive adaptor was skewing the USB signals, so the Bluetooth module was connected to the jumpers for USB on the flash module (after removing the jumpers) and it was recognized.
Fortunately, the Bluetooth module was not damaged since it had an internal current-limited linear regulator, but with Bluetooth devices, you should not expect the range of Wi-Fi networks since a Bluetooth network is also a Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN).

[foxpro]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Well, its not my latest mess-up, it was 5-6 years ago. There were many mess-ups till today.

It was an important client HDD, 80GB Maxtor IDE desktop drive. As it was realy important, I decided to connect it first to one of my "service" PCs to make a back-up copy to another drive.
My service PC was smth like s478 MB, PCs dedicated for copying/virus cleaning/bad sectors cleaning purposes. It had a really long Optical drive, I don't remember the brand and it was not tighten with screws so it was peeking from the housing.
I attached the Maxtor drive and decided to take a look first with mhdd. PC power on and it started with check-ups normally. After few seconds I decided to push the ODD more to the back as it looked to me like it was out some more then usual. Then I hear something like electric burning sound and the electronics of the Maxtor drive burned in smoke. Pulling the power cable out was of course late operation, the drive was dead even before I started with checking.
It turned out that when I pushed the ODD to the back, it has shorted some jumper pins on the motherboard that were on the very edge of the MB and didn't have jumpers on it. It was a small housing and Optical drive overlap with the MB. It is strange that MB survived the shock and powered-up right after that, only the shorted pins were blue/violet colored a bit. It is also strange that everything else survived, only the most important thing at that moment burned in a second
Luckily I found the same electronics for the Maxtor HDD the very same day and there was no damage inside.

[Mad_Professor]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!

Well long story short I was doing a fan mod for a Playstation 3 and I ordered a kit from this guy.
http://killerbug666.wordpress.com/ca...sembly-guides/

Well it came and I put it together today and tested it the first time, and it worked. At that time I was using alligator clips to connect and test the PCB and it's components to a 12v 2Amp power adapter and 100k potentiometer.

The second time I tested it. I lost awareness of where the pcb was laying, and out of the corner of my eye I see smoke. I look over and I see it's sitting on a Playstation 3 component, at that very moment I freaked out.
I unplugged everything, hooked up the PS3 and test it and it did not come on. It had a solid yellow light and was constantly beeping 3 times while the fan went full rev. I had an *oh shit!* moment at that point. I switch it off from the back and waited and switch it back on, turn it on, it came up and work normally after that. *WHEW!*

Sad thing Is I fried the voltage regulator on the fan mod, it completely burned a hole through the housing. I don't know if the IC chip is ok but I can get another one at local Radioshack.

Right now, I'm placing an order at digikey to get a replacement voltage regulator.

[Fir3Chi3f]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

I needed a new cell phone and my little sister wanted the latest iphone 4, so she gave me the old one. The battery on the thing was terrible and I ordered a new battery off ebay. After letting the iron heat up a bit, it still wasn't melting the solder very well. Well I kept turning the temperature up and burned that solder point right off the iphone logic board.

Didn't even try to fix it from there and used an old motorola flip phone until I was due for an upgrade.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Anything that has a battery wired to the board, i splice the wires. Healthier for both PCB and battery.

[lauren]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

So I was trying to take apart a Toshiba laptop, so see if I could fix it. The problem was that the display kept flickering, so I was trying to get to the inverter, to see if I could fix it that way, but I broke the stupid connector for the keyboard. Well, that laptop went into the trash pile soon after that.

[Fir3Chi3f]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Anything that has a battery wired to the board, i splice the wires. Healthier for both PCB and battery.

That is a good idea and I'll likely use it next time I can

[momaka]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

My latest screw-up...
Accidentally double-clicked on an exe file that was a worm and got my computer infected. Yeah, don't ask...

The story is, I scanned some documents for my mom and she gave me her memory stick to save them there. Plugging the flash drive in the computer didn't get it infected because I have Autoplay/Autorun on Prompt by default. Anyways, so I created a new folder to place the files. But then I noticed a file called "regsvr.exe" with a hidden folder icon on it. I clicked (once) on it so that I could see details about this file on the side and in the status bar, but this stupid Dell mouse has really soft buttons that are sometimes intermittent and double-click on stuff. So this thing ran itself. Immediately, Zone Alarm asked me if I wanted to allow this file to connect to the internet. I clicked Deny and then proceeded to shut down the computer since I had to go somewhere. When I came back and started the computer, Zone Alarm asked me again if I wanted to give internet permission to this file. That's when an alarm went off in my head - after all, that "regsvr.exe" file was on the memory stick when I clicked it and ZA warned me. But now that the memory stick was removed, I then realized what this was.

I opened Task Manager, and there it was, "regsvr.exe". I know all of the processes that should be running on this computer, and I know that "regsvr.exe" was never one of them.
...select>Del>Enter

So then, I decided to do a search for every file that was created that day (first ran CCleaner, though, so I wouldn't pick up temp internet files in the search) and sure enough, 2 instances of the file came up - one in C: \Windows, another in System32.

The search also revealed some other new suspicious files: "setup.exe" with the same weird hidden folder icon as the regsvr.exe and "autorun.inf" - both of which were placed in my network shared folder (which I use as a file drop box when I use other computers in the house). There was also a file with the name "svchost .exe" (note the extra space between "svchost" and ".exe"). This one I forgot where I found, but I deleted all of these files anyways. Also found 2 instances of this worm in my restore point for the day in System Volume Information. This was Window's fault for backing up those files, though.

Next, I ran CCleaner and looked at my startup processes. As expected, regsvr.exe was listed there. Deleted that. Then decided to cleanup the registry. But when I tried to run regedit, I got a warning that registry editing was disabled by my administrator (but I am the administrator! ).

So next I fired up MalwareBytes and let it scan. MalwareBytes didn't find anything other than the bad registry keys which disabled registry editing, which was more than enough. After fixing that, I got regedit working again.

So moral of the story (there is one?) - be careful with other people's memory sticks, and if they have suspicious files, try to avoid left-clicking on them if you have a crappy mouse like mine . Better yet, delete them on sight.

In my case, I didn't expect my mom's flash drive to have any viruses. After all, this is her work flash drive and the computers at her workplace have Symantec/Norton Antivirus and a bunch of other "heavy, well-known" security programs. I guess this shows how useless paid security software can be. Then again, I tried the memory stick on a Windows 2000 laptop I have for testing whatever (even created a special limited user account for this) and neither AVG 7 nor MalwareBytes actually picked up the infected regsvr.exe file.
So in the end, it all comes down to how well you know your system and know what should be running and what shouldn't.

As far as that's concerned, don't be fooled if you see processes like "regsvr32.exe" or "regsvc.exe" - those are legitimate processes! But "regsvr.exe" isn't.

By the way, this is the article I found after cleaning up my computer and the flash drive:
http://amiworks.co.in/talk/how-to-re...oruninf-virus/

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

I have Autorun disabled entirely. I just told my friend a few days ago to stop reinstalling his Windows because he has that infected flash drive and as soon as he plugs it in the whole system goes to hell again. I told him how to disable Autoplay so that he can clean it after reinstalling the OS, without getting the OS messed up again.

[larrymoencurly]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Things have been OK with me for a while, knock wood, but I had an analog TV that would intermittently show snow, so I slapped it. That cleared up the picture but knocked a big hole in the side of the cabinet. Resoldering the tuner fixed the snow problem, but the cabinet had become so brittle that I don't think it could have supported the weight of the CRT, so I tossed the TV. It was only 12 years old.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Things have been OK with me for a while, knock wood, but I had an analog TV that would intermittently show snow, so I slapped it. That cleared up the picture but knocked a big hole in the side of the cabinet.

It was only 12 years old.

"Only" 12 years old. Tell that to the Samsung in the living room - it's only on its 11th year, and the tube has worn out, i had to realign everything because it looked like crap (convergence, focus and so on), and it started blanking the picture whenever it would feel like it. It would go blank, then back on, then blank again... till you got annoyed and turned it off. A protection was kicking in when it shouldn't have. I solved that by raising the heater voltage a little and lowering the blue level. When adjusting in the service menu the blue level was the only thing which could trigger the blanking once set past a certain value. Incidentally i also noticed when i did convergence that the blue line is always slightly thicker and out of focus than the red and green, so it's clear that the blue cathode is worn out more than the others.

The image had a bluish tint as well so after decreasing the blue level it's all good now. Hope it STAYS fixed, coz next time, to the trash it goes. But so far looking good - it'll now work at 20% higher contrast than before adjustment without looking like crap.

[Ami Sapphire]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

The first one:
I was repairing a a cheap RF modulator I planned to repair for years. It had a broken RF connector at the TO TV location. Initially had a perfect re-soldering job, but forgot to reinforce the connector, so it broke off. I then nearly burned the trace off the board trying to fix it again. Rectified the issue, and even had a clear picture through the modulator, too! This device will probably go to Mom after this.

The second one:
Ignoring Cyrix2's floppy drive issues. Cyrix2 is a computer I play old DOS and Windows games on. The drive's light was blinking rapidly when trying to create a Startup disk as a test run. Even reading the disks were problematic: opening text files just to find out the text loaded to a certain point and the remaining text ended up missing. Closing and reopening them showed all the text on the document, therefore I thought nothing of it. I found that weird. It took data corruption on two floppy disks, one corrupt disk for ruling out the drive, and some system instability to realize I needed to try a new floppy data cable. It seemed to work so far, as I was successfully able to make a startup disk after that.


@Th3_uN1Qu3
Got a Samsung TV from the late '80s, either 1988 or 1989. Some things (silly quirks):

• it has contrast/brightness issues, as it would flicker between a darker picture and a lighter picture at random.
• on an occasion, if you turn off the TV, the channel display would turn off, the sound would turn off, but the CRT itself would stay on.
• on an occasion, when you turn on the TV, the Program feature turns on, and with it, the sound would mute itself. You would have to turn off the Program function, turn off the TV, turn it on again, and press the Volume + button until you start to hear sound.
• it has recently started to shut off by itself. This is rare.

This really happened:

Samsung TV: Jobs. *shuts off*
Sis (sarcastically): Eh, who needs them?

I only made a connection of the TV shutting off to the unemployment rate in Michigan, although vaguely.

[joshnz]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

I tried tho open a ipod without the "tools" i crack the screen

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

The drive's light was blinking rapidly when trying to create a Startup disk as a test run. Even reading the disks were problematic: opening text files just to find out the text loaded to a certain point and the remaining text ended up missing. Closing and reopening them showed all the text on the document, therefore I thought nothing of it. I found that weird. It took data corruption on two floppy disks, one corrupt disk for ruling out the drive, and some system instability to realize I needed to try a new floppy data cable.

Lucky bast**d. I had a bad disk kill two floppy drives.

Also the laptop i bought this year for DOS games is a 12" and had an optional floppy (which obviously isn't present on mine, just a worn CD-ROM drive that won't take rewritables and takes ages to do anything unless the disc is 100% clean). It does have an USB port, but everything needs a driver in Win98, and i don't have anymore USB drives, just some memory cards, and the phones. All of which i couldn't find a driver for. It has infrared but again, without a driver, it will only receive. Not send. I had to use a serial cable and a Win98 virtual machine on my main computer to save data when i upgraded the hard drive from 6GB to 20GB. It came with a 3.2GB drive, i dropped the 6 gig in, totally forgetting i had the 20 gig. It took me 2 months to finally decided to go thru the whole replace-reinstall-copy-paste. I like it tho - the old drives would whine (you know, that noise low rpm drives make). The 20GB doesn't.

This really happened:

Samsung TV: Jobs. *shuts off*
Sis (sarcastically): Eh, who needs them?

Epic. Here's my version (not involving a tv tho):

Girl: Do you want a brother? (her brother who's 12 now is giving her trouble)
Me: Nope... Always wanted a sister... but i'll settle for a girlfriend.
Two hours later... yup, i got a girlfriend alright.

It's funny. I haven't seen this girl in 3 years. I asked her out. She said yes. And now she's my gf. The original reason i wanted to go out with her was that i've heard she's hanging out with druggies, and her father (a family friend) won't like it if he finds out. Based on her behavior yesterday... those druggie friends of her must be real stupid not hitting on such a hot chick. Coz... only two things have changed about her in these three years - she got a little taller, and she's grown some real nice boobs. And the most important aspect - she still sticks like glue. Yummy.

But, this will probably be detailed in some other topic at a later date. Keep an eye out. I really hope it won't turn into a mess-up.

[momaka]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

It was only 12 years old.

12 years is nothing for a CRT TV (if it's properly made).
We have an old Philips that is about 30 years old. Has gone through a lot in its life. Also have an old Crown that is about my age (21). That one has only been repaired twice in its entire life, and I think it was SMPS issues both times. Picture on both sets is solid (but that doesn't happen very often because the cable TV is just plain horrible where they are).

Girl: Do you want a brother? (her brother who's 12 now is giving her trouble)
Me: Nope... Always wanted a sister... but i'll settle for a girlfriend.
Two hours later... yup, i got a girlfriend alright.

And how is that a mess up?

----------------------------

We (my family and I) had a big mess-up on Monday when the kitchen drain clogged up. Now, my dad and I have unclogged many drains before, but this one was a little different since the blockage wasn't in the U-pipe under the sink, but somewhere further under the floor (the drain pipe for the kitchen sink goes horizontally, all the way under the kitchen floor - about 4 meters). Because of that, my dad and I decided to try a new tactic - use Crystal Heat drain unclogging chemical (Sodium Hydroxide-based).

Originally, my dad wanted to just pour that stuff in the sink and then run water, but we have a disposer and this chemical (or powder, rather) strictly warns not to be used with disposers. Since I always read the instructions, I knew that and instead I took out the U-pipe on the drain, then put a different (dry) U-pipe so that I could pour the chemical in. Then I attached it to the wall-end of the pipe. Next I poured water. The chemical started reacting, so I thought, "okay, let's leave it for a few minutes, then we'll see if the pipe is unclogged". After 15 minutes, I went back and poured more water in hopes that the drain would be unclogged - but it wasn't. It just filled up the U-pipe and that was it.

Last time we had a similar thing happen where this chemical didn't work from the first time was in the bath tub. So back then my dad just poured about 4 times as much as the instructions say and the bath tub got unclogged.

Remembering that occurrence, my dad again suggested that we pour more Crystal Heat (after emptying the U-pipe, of course) - and we did - lots.

And then the inevitable - the chemical started reacting, back-pressure pressure started building up in the pipe, and sewage water began to erupt from the U-pipe like it was a fountain. Sure we had a tray under the U-pipe, but this thing was like a geyser. (Having read the instructions before, I anticipated that this would happen).
If only this was the end of it, though...
That Crystal Heat chemical creates nasty toxic fumes when it reacts with water and because there was water everywhere under the kitchen sink, the kitchen quickly began filling with fumes. My dad couldn't even believe it, so he was just standing there.

After getting my parents out of the house, I went back in the house and opened some windows, then went back out.

We had to wait for about 1 hour before the fumes finally cleared enough to go in. After this, we bought a snake from Home Depot, and that was the end of it - we got the job done in under 30 minutes.... if only we didn't hesitate to buy it before that, this could have been avoided.

Had to clean up lots afterwards, too, because that tray we had under the U-pipe was aluminium. The warning label did warn that this chemical dissolves aluminum and brass, but my dad didn't really believe me and told me to just leave the tray in until the fumes were gone. Of course when we went back, the tray was missing its bottom.

Other than that, the rest of the day went okay I suppose .

----

Hope I'm not boring anyone to death with these long posts.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Did you take it on video or not?