What is your worst computer experiences?

I have had numerous, starting from my old Packard Bell with 17 inch crt in 1999. The CRT was a huge block and my desk was sitting at a wall but not touching it, and I was trying to lean over the desk to pick something up, leaned on the monitor and it crashed to the floor down the back of the desk with me and I was scrunched up in a ball, but I was fine, not sore and uninjured. The screen worked fine too. Then I was told of someone who had a similar experience with the exact same computer only a few miles away on the same night (that was odd) her PC got a surge from lightning strike and she got knocked back, bit shaken but uninjured.

Another experience was with a P4 motherboard I bought brand new, I couldn't get it working no matter what I did I still have it in the box, unused with a celeron D CPU and 512MB RAM (I think).

More recent than that was overclocking a P4 3.4Ghz with HT and it melting to the motherboard...couldn't afford a proper cooling system and thought it would be ok to try, whoops!

It was when my computer fell in the floor because the table broke. It still working.

When I turned on my computer, an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ system that had never been overclocked, it released the magic blue smoke for no reason. Both the motherboard and processor died and at the time that was the only computer I owned.

It was the PSU that decided that the cpu needed a little more volts,

Windows 98 device driver failure leads to harddisk failure, that I lost eveything, my old games from 1999 and first Program I made.

Edit: The device driver was MODEM driver. That's why

Worst computer experience is when I've actually used Windows Update on Windows ME. After some time connection went gone. Checking Device Manager and it says that modem is faulty. I rebooted, took 2 scans and Ad-Aware hanged PC completely. Rebooted, and on screen I see "Checking Primary Hard Disk...."... Doesn't stop. Rebooting... It continues until it comes that Hard Disk got error which causes completely destroyed PC. Obviously, I should never use Windows Update ever.

Another bad experience is thunderstorm where actual sparks came from modem and almost started to burn.

And final one is when I copy all virtual machines and all my work on new WD external hard drive. When I wanted to copy back... IT FAILED. Almost all my work was at risk, but luckily one guy copied all stuff back to PC and saved me from hell. Only Windows 95 ISO was damaged, but later backed up from other stuff.

The worst was I think when I browsed a site a few years ago and suddenly my anti-virus started to give me pop-ups about viruses in my computer. And not to long after that the computer shutted down by it self. When I started it again I got bluescreen, but I reinstalled Windows and then it worked again.

About 6 years ago, I got a virus that made my computer pop-up IE windows for no apparent reason at all. It was really annoying, and trying to close them just caused more to open. I didn't know too much about computers back then, so I decided to unplug my net and play some neat little Flash Games on my comp to pass the time.

So later, we tried our antivirus (Kaspersky Antivirus 6 I think was what we used back then) and let it scan. But, the virus seemed to keep corrupting it's virus databases! Then, we had to like boot into safe mode to remove it. There was adware, spyware, and some really weird autorun virus called tel.xls.exe that reinstalling Windows wouldn't get rid of.

There you go, my worst experience ever.

My second worse? Well the bottom line is, Windows 7 WILL NOT install over Windows XP.
I had that problem when me and my 'rents tried installing it that way. We tried running the Win7 setup on XP, booting it from the Win7 disc, and even installing through a bootdisk! All failed. It either wouldn't work, or it froze, or it got stuck on Completing Installation (same thing happened trying to installed Vista on VMWare for some reason). Every time it failed, the Windows 7 Boot Manager screwed everything up and I couldn't even get to XP anymore! Good thing we had a backup from Symantec Ghost, and we had to keep using that. About 5-6 tries later, we miraculously got Windows 7 up and running, dualbooting it with XP. Except, we couldn't do a Ghost backup with Win7, because somehow it put the Boot Manager on my XP bootup drive!

We've used Win7 for years, and it's getting slower and slower. Since it and XP have some incompatibilities with installing and booting, I plan to reinstall it sometime soon, this time with a clean install.

Doesn't the upgrade version allow you do to that? Anyway its always best to do a clean install due to compatibility issues from upgrading.

a machine from 2000/01/02 with XP SP2 on it. 128MB of RAM, 1 GHz Pentium, 80 GB HDD... Not to mention it ran Office 2007 and Nod32 which almost freezed it on startup...

Back when I used windows 2000, which was ages ago, I got BSoD 30 times in a row since I didn't realize it was a corrupt system file. My childhood fail.

The year was 1988 and my Amiga 1000 started burning from the inside, taking both a Macintosh Plus and my floppy collection. At least the house didn't burn down.

In 2008 when my computer was full of rogue antiviruses and luckly I resolved the problem afterwards.

Perhaps among the worst was when I was relying on a certain local refurbisher's system, a refurbished Dell OptiPlex GMT+ 5100, with Windows 98, Internet Explorer 4.0, Office 97, Windows Entertainment Pack, and Windows Entertainment Pack 2, and when it started displaying the "Keyboard Failure" message, only this time, unlike with previous experiences where the system continued to boot up but without the use of the keyboard, it also displayed the "Press F1 to continue, F2 for Setup" message underneath (it had a Pheonix ROM BIOS), and of course, I couldn't "Press F1 to continue" or even "F2 for Setup" without use of the keyboard, so the system was useless, and had to be returned (it was just the system unit, and not the peripherals).

Time passed, and eventually, it was time to pick the system back up after it was supposedly "repaired". However, when we got there (the place was run within a single story business complex), I could see inside the refurbisher's office one of the main people (it was run by a man and his Father) taking apart a tower model system, stripping it to the bare metal. When I asked if it was my system, he said yes. On one of the desks was the replacement system unit, a Dell OptiPlex GXi 5200M, and I even remarked about how it had the "Designed for Microsoft Windows 95" logo (I didn't quite realize that the refurbisher's didn't have any control over the logos), yet at the same time was also given an incomplete Apple Macintosh Quadra 650 (and to this day, I have not replaced the missing components in that system).

Upon returning the system, we set everything back up, and powered my system back on (or as much as we could with such a massive portion of it replaced, and without our consent I should add), only to be greeted by the Windows 95 OSR 2 logo.

Yes, my software bundle was downgraded. Windows 98 to Windows 95 OSR 2, Internet Explorer 4.0 to Internet Explorer 3.0, and Office 97 to Office for Windows 95 version 7.0. Worse yet, everything else that I had stored on that system was gone without a trace, as if it never existed, and we had to reinstall everything, not to mention that I tried as hard as possible to restore my desktop settings, and in all of this, I even had to cope with the software downgrade at that.

The only things that survived were Windows Entertainment Pack and Windows Entertainment Pack 2, and possible some of the extra drivers, and that was it, otherwise, with exception to the downgraded software, I lost everything. Fortunately, I was more into multimedia titles at the time, meaning that I was able to restore nearly everything else from my large collection of software-related media, but since then, I learned not to trust other people with service that you can carry out yourself, unless it's someone of whom you know can be trusted.

EDIT: I would also like to say that even as much as I might not have been able to fix the problem at the time, I had also learned more about handling such procedures following that incident, which means that I know have the comfort that such an incident will never occur again, since I can now handle these things myself.

WinPC, I know how that feels, I had an old Dell Laptop (forget which) but it ran Windows XP and one day it didn't charge anymore, and it only worked while plugged in, then after a short while, when plugged in, show it was plugged in, but it wasn't getting any electricity to it and by this stage the mousepad buttons didn't work. As I had got it from PC world, I phoned them and told them the problem. They sent out people to pick it up and took it away to be fixed. A couple of weeks later, it returns with only a new plug. I tested it and the mouse buttons still did not work and it still wans't charging, but it did work while turned on.

I thought this is OK, maybe its a driver issue causing the mouse buttons not to work. I used my USB mouse and checked from problems, none I could see, must be a hardware issue. Then for no reason, some of the keyboard buttons stopped working such as the letter D and F number keys. So back on the phone I went to PC world and complained. Again they sent somebody out to take it away.

I got it back and they had fitted a new keyboard, mouse worked too, but my original issue of the charging wasn't fixed! I had a third new plug for it with no fix. Not long later the screen turned dark and I couldn't see anything on it well, so I figured the laptop was very faulty or guys that looked at it had [censored] it up, so I complained again and they said I had used my max number of free fixes, so if I wanted it fixed again, it would cost me. Not this time. I still have the crappy broken laptop but got a new Dell with 3GB RAM, core 2 duo, 360GB HD, webcam etc... It had Windows Vista Home Premium. I was told when I got it, it could be upgraded to Windows 7 when it came out if I gave the model and serial of the Laptop. Tried numerous times and ways and was told I wasn't allowed the free Windows 7 upgrade. No matter as I got Win 7 Pro 32-bit installed on it later on when I bought it and used 64-bit on my main PC.

In short, don't trust the so called professional PC fixers, learn to fix things yourself.

I plugged up an 8gb IDE (I think it was IBM brand) hard-disk to my computer, to test it out, maybe install linux on it. Well, you guessed it: it started making this thick, smelly white smoke, and had scorch marks all over the bottom. Haha, I guess my 750W PSU was too much for the little guy (just joking).

it was a few years back when my server was purely for personal backup, mostly for disk rips, it's all going fine till windows stars playing up, so i dust off the spare G4 and start playing around with it, when using a very old 3gb hdd to get the jumper settings right i put a full disk on top of the 3gb hdd, bam, shorted out the data drive with 160gb of data on it, to this day i haven't recorved all the data :/

For three years I had to run windows XP with 64mb of ram, IE6, forgot the processor but know the pc was made for windows 98 and was *very* old, Eventually and finally that thing died, and I upgraded many times since...

My old HP TX2.
It ran a bit hot, but worked fine otherwise...until just after the warranty expired. Then, it started crapping out and no amount of cleaning/restoring/etc. could fix it, and i'm ill-equipped to fix any hardware issues there could be.

I usually take care of my PC config's/parts
but call it dark cloud, every time I upgraded some crap happened

when I bought my 1st PC in 2000, my motherboard died 2 days after coz of electrical surge
then 2 years later AGP slot died
then 1 year later graphic card fried
then 2 years later again graphic card got fried
then 1 year later HDD died on me
the next year MOBO died
6 months after that again MOBO died
then 1 year after that my RAM sticks got fried by crap city grid

could be crap related that I live in hood thats built on top old Roman cemetery -_-

The first time i saw the bsod.I was young back then and the bsod kinda scares me makes me go under the sofa lol

The second worse is when i opened my laptop and the lights were on but not the screen,it scared me cause that was when my laptop was new.Luckily i was able to fix it.

Probably the worst thing that happened to me was when I was a small kid and knew nothing about computers. ("knew nothing" as in asking Dad to power-on the computer for me).
We had Win98 on my then-new K6-II PC. Dad kept a lot of recordings of me singing all sorts of kindergarden songs and talking with him in English (non-English person here). It was supposed to be a nice memory from the past, but guess what ?
One day, the boy of some of my father's work friends sneaked on the computer and wiped it clean !!

Years later, I wasn't skilled enough in recovering data from hard drives and in the mean time, the HDD died (a trusty old 4GB Quantum Fireball). Now its too late and those recordings are gone forever...

On the bright side, I had water pouring down my internet cable ! Fried a good bunch of ethernet cards that way and now their driver diskettes litter my house xD

My Nan still has her Fuijtsu siemens desktop from 2001 with a Pentium 4 and we upgraded to to 1GB of RAM and 250GB hard drive. It has XP Pro and Aviria Anti-virus. It still works!

I bought my Compaq Presario CQ40 from March 2010. It started BSOD (see the topic "BSOD on my new laptop!!!") 1 month later. When I win in Warcraft 3, it BSODs again because of the display driver. Using Windows Update, it fixed the problem. But in October 2010, it started BSOD again. It says it cause of the modem. The BSOD became worst, and my computer repairer fix it by reinstalling using the Windows 7 DVD that supplied with my laptop. In 6 March 2011, when I was searching for something in YouTube, the mouse became crazy. I slammed the mouse, and it didn't fix the problem. I slammed very hard, and my laptop died. I started the laptop again, and it says the hard drive cannot be found and the ACPI.sys was the cause. I used the Windows 7 DVD to repair it, and it took long time. My computer repairer brought my laptop home, and he fixes it by reinstalling again. On friday, the laptop comes to live again.

My worst experiences would have to be my laptops failures.
I have an Acer Aspire 5737z with 4GB of ram and I think it has a pretty powerful dual core CPU in it too.
Well to the story, One day I was happily browsing the internet and running virtual pc and running virtualbox on the laptop which was running and still is running Windows Vista Home Premium.
Suddenly I got a BSOD and the laptop restarted.
It was all fine and ok.
Recently it started to have another problem.
Sometimes when I booted it up it would tell me that windows could not boot and there was a problem.
I tried letting it fix it but it took to long so I restarted the computer and it was all fine.
That was 2010.
In May 2011 the laptop started doing it again.
Even worse now, It would do it everytime you booted up the laptop.
In the end I just let it fix the problem and it has been fine as of June 2011.
But at some point I think that laptop will have a major problem and die.
But right now I have to live in fear of my hard disk in my desktop failing when I don't have any backups.
And I am not exactly happy at the thought of having my entire Linux ISO collection erased.
Taking all the vmdx files away with it.