You know how I said I shouldn't be allowed near a computer?

Someone remove the things from me, because I KEEP BREAKING THEM.

Let's see. I was at work the other day, and a computer's power supply failed. I replaced it, but in doing so had to unplug one of the cooling fans because it was in the way of a cable I needed to remove. Problem was, the inside of the computer was so dusty I couldn't see where I was meant to plug it back in. I sprayed some compressed air around a bit to clean it up and all was well, right? Wrong. In doing that I'd fried the motherboard. -_-

Fast forward to this morning. My old laptop has Linux on it, and I boot it up every now and then to do some geeky stuff on it. Today was one of those days - it had been unused for 2 weeks, nothing out of the ordinary for it as it's sat for months without being touched. I put it on and - BEEP BEEP BEEP FIZZ FIZZ BANG. Smoke starts coming from everywhere. D: D: D: It went no further than that, thankfully, but I can assure you the thing's dead :P Looks like there was a short circuit of some kind... Yeah. RIP laptop :(

So, that's computer #4 I've killed (Well, it's the same as #1 really, but seeing as it's a different motherboard and stuff, I'm counting it as a different computer), and #2 this week. Some might say I'm getting rather good at this.

I'm going to get the hell away from this computer (current laptop) before it too explodes. I have no idea how I managed to build a PC without frying it (been going one month so far, and everything seems ok :S) as I don't really seem to be cut out for this whole thing.

Yeah. Excuse me while I go into hiding now...

Edit: I took the whole thing apart and it seems the connection between the motherboard and the power inlet has burnt out - I took some pics if you're at all interested (yes, I'm sad like that), they can be seen on Flickr.

Bear in mind this computer was by no means well, so it dying completely was probably not something that should have come as much of a surprise. I dropped water on this thing too many times to count, almost broke its processor, dropped it/knocked it more than I dropped water on it (and that's saying something), took it on holiday several times to different climates it probably didn't like... Add to that the fact that its screen backlight was going, its power connection was loose (yes, probably should have remembered that before using it today -_- ), the motherboard had already fried itself once and been replaced, and the battery had died about 3 or 4 years ago. Nonetheless, it's sad to see it go - it was my 18th birthday present and my first computer that was really mine. It was 6 years old and for a cheap, generic model, that's about 2 years more than I would have expected it to last with me as its owner anyway :P

...and I think I'm one of them.

Let's see, in my lifetime of computer usage, I have:

• Completely killed 2 computers (both needed their motherboards replaced)
• Crashed every computer I have ever used (I am not joking)
• Corrupted countless Operating Systems
• Almost broken a processor
• Messed up a new computer within days of getting it
• Spilt water all over my laptop (twice) which then killed its keyboard
• Bought an expensive mouse and then broke it

...and then today, I broke my right shift key (the one I always use - I hardly ever use the left one) when I was cleaning my keyboard. I think I am a danger to these poor machines. :\

Please note: Due to the popularity of this article among people looking to break a computer, I feel compelled to mention that this article will NOT tell you how to actually physically break or otherwise render a computer unusable. This is a sarcastic title that makes fun of a mistake I made with my computer. If you really want to break a computer, I recommend a hammer.

You will need the following tools:

1. A week-old laptop, present from relatives preferred
2. Um...that's it

Note: no brain is required for the purposes of this tutorial.

Method:

1. Make sure you have finally finished customising and configuring your new laptop after having spent the last week getting lost in its preinstalled Windows Vista.
2. Decide to be geeky and install a second Operating System. You have done this before (it was a fluke, but no one has to know that) so this should be no problem at all.
3. Run through installation of said Operating System, making sure not to miss the part about partitioning the hard drive.
4. Yay, new OS installed. Reboot! Windows will then say it cannot run.
5. Realise you have completely messed up the partitioning and therefore have chopped Windows in half. Rectify this mistake by simply deleting and reformatting the partitions of the hard drive that you want back.
6. Reboot! Your computer should now display a lovely error message saying the boot partition is corrupted or similar. Congratulations, you have now completed this tutorial.

Oh yes, that was me yesterday. I've had this laptop a week and I've broken it already. Luckily I was able to repair most of the damage without reinstalling everything (yay rescue disk) but some things (e.g. wireless) are still broken :( Blah.