We rely on technology every single day of our lives but unfortunately, it's not always perfect. It can let us down, whether it outright fails or simply doesn't work as we're expecting it to. For this bounty, the idea of which comes courtesy of @Damien Mason in our Just About Tech suggest-a-bounty, we want you to tell us a tale of when you last had a tech failure!
Whether it was something catastrophic or just a minor inconvenience, 30 of the best stories can win $2 apiece. Bonus points if you can dramatise your tale and put us in your shoes!
First, either my Intel Core i9-11900K or the Asus ROG Maximus XIII Hero it's plugged into gave up the ghost. It caused my desktop to bluescreen whenever it did anything strenuous and no amount of troubleshooting could solve it. This is the failure that inspired my suggestion for this bounty.
Then, my Samsung Galaxy Flip4 screen broke. The hinge just couldn't take it anymore, even though I hadn't had it much more than a year. This forced me back into the metaphorical arms of my Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G, which - you guessed it - died on me a month later. The backlight died on the capacitive touchscreen despite the phone still being on and responsive. This is an issue Samsung was apparently aware of but did nothing about for years.
I've learned several things from my experiences here:
I am incredibly lucky to work in tech media, otherwise I'd have pulled my hair out by now
I will likely never go for a foldable again. They're neat but simply introduce another point of failure for little in return
I will likely avoid Samsung from here on out, especially now I'm running my first-ever iPhone
I love the look of that foldable phone, but I think the glass technology is just not quite there yet. Read it from several people that the screen cracked somewhere around the folding even though they were using it as intend, didn't scratch or punched it with anything, it was just folded and placed down on a desk, opened it and it was cracked.
I used to love Samsung but they became so expensive, I can't justify that much money for a device which I'm then being forced to replace when security updates don't apply to it anymore in a few years.
Agreed on the tech not being there yet. I used it as intended and the screen just stopped lighting up when unfolded. It'd flicker when it was half-closed, so it could be a connection thing. Either way, the amount manufacturers charge to repair these things, there's no way I'd recommend anyone chance it. I miss my clamshell, but it's just not worth the hassle.
I had a Fold 4 for quite a bit. Genuinely it was like a tablet on demand and I loved it. It was the “candy bar” form I didn’t like. Either too narrow or too wide was my opinion.
I didn’t have any problems with it; it always worked as demanded. But, it was not primary phone material. Folded form factor needs to be wider
I had a 2nd hand fold 4 a while back & agree. The big screen was really nice, but I mostly used it with it folded in the end & the screen was just too thin. Whencombined with the bulk & weight it just wasn’t worth the hassle. Sold it back on within about 6 months & got a pixel 8. I also wasn’t massively pleased with, but there was nothing specifically up with it (until there was, but that’s for the bounty entry).
Unfortunately it was just this past weekend. I have an older laptop which has never had any issues and, in fact, still use it for editing and even gaming. I just started a public domain, old school horror live reading series and I set up a nice little corner in my bedroom as kind of a set for it.
For a reason I still have not figured out, when I had gotten about half way through the backstory on the author before starting to read, the laptop just turned off. I scrambled to move everything I needed into my office, but I had to make a new stream. On top of that, I was all flustered so I forgot everything I had just said and decided to just start reading the story lol.
I've done some testing and the crash literally only happens when I'm using Streamlabs AND using Epoccam to use my iPhone as a wireless webcam. That is the only set of circumstances where it happens. Everything else like games, OBS, and editing software can run for hours with no issues.
Very odd and disappointing because now the whole reading set I made is just a cat playground. No comfy Laz-e-Boy live readings for me.
My most recent one ... my brand new PC, only about 4 months old and finally at a point where I have everything installed, set, where I want it and happy ....
.... and the primary 2 TB SSD with the OS on it just drops dead.
Booted perfectly fine the day before. Wake up, move over to my desk to power on to watch YT or something during breakfast ... OS missing. Like, what?
Go into the BIOS and the SATA drive was just gone.
And I hadn't run my file backup in a couple months. I was going to do it the upcoming weekend. :|
My laptop isn't the best, but since I use it basically to study, it does what it promises. But sometimes it feels like it's playing tricks on me, because when I need it most, when I'm in a hurry, it decides to be very slow and not open anything at all!
Sometimes I need to get into Zoom or Teams meetings, and when I'm running late, the app won't open, or the lock screen won't even appear for me to enter my password! Always at these times!
Then I have to turn it off using the button and wait a long time for it to restart. Last time I had to enter the meeting on my cell phone to avoid being so late! Watching a class on your cell phone isn't such a good experience... having to open the camera, see the slide, and the fear of accidentally opening the audio! Anyone who lived through the days of distance learning knows!
Maybe I need a new one... but it has to last a little longer!
A few months ago, disaster struck. My iPhone slipped out of my hands and plunged into a container of water. In a split second, my heart stopped as I fished it out—two seconds, max, but it felt like a lifetime. I immediately started shaking it like a maraca, hoping against hope that no water had found its way inside. But then, the unthinkable happened: Face ID just… died. Gone. No warning, no goodbye. From that moment, it never worked again.
I couldn’t believe that a quick dunk could kill the TrueDepth camera, the very heart of Face ID. I was absolutely lost without it. I mean, who even remembers passcodes anymore? Every app, every single unlock became a hassle. Anyone with an iPhone gets it—Face ID is life. Losing it? Total nightmare.
I really hope this is the last time technology decides to betray me like that.
My last and most tragic tech failure happened to me with a 1,000 US Dollars GTX 690 after 3 years of lifespan the thing simply catched fire while i was playing Grand Theft Auto V, i never experienced something like that in my entire life, the fun is that i still remember the smell of burned circuits and the electrical flashes of fire remain in my memory
Since that day supervising temperatures while gaming became an obsession, I still conserve the card as a lets' say...souvenir, will take a picture Card after work and uploaded it.
Last PC was going to be +4 Years old and everytime i run 2 EVE Clients the PC randomly shuts off. Took me a while since the second client is not always running but it made me curious. So once the double client clue was found… I proved it with toaster software. System at 100% Usage… and it's gone.
Solution
Bought a new PSU on Amazon and tested it. Problem solved. But 750w isn't enough for the future, so packed it nicely and send it back to amazon.
This time I bought “Seasonic Prime TX-1000” which now powers the current PC. Comes with a 12 year warranty and 96% efficiency.
This covers more than 50% of the consumption of the current system.
Why Seasonic? Because it looks like some of the Gaming Brands just use Seasonic entrails.
When I was building my latest PC, just as I finished assembling it, and sat down to test it with some Cyberpunk 2077, I heard a super loud bang, and the PC and everything else turned off, and a burning smell quickly appeared. That's obviously never a good sign, so I unplugged the PC immediately, and started looking for any smoke, but couldn't really see any.
After I calmed down from that shock I tried to open the PC and look for what could've caused it, however I couldn't see anything burned or off, though given what happened, my first thought was obviously the PSU. Coming in closer for a sniff, it was very much the power supply where the smell was coming from, so I quickly unplugged all the cables on it, quickly attached them to a spare PSU I had, and tried again, but it still didn't work. Then I realised something: nothing worked. The PSU exploding blew the fuses in my room, and I had to replace all of them leading up to where my PC is updated!
Recently, I saw several posts online from others also reporting the exact same models of PSU blowing up, so at least I know it wasn't just me. So I'd stay away from the Be Quiet Dark Power Pro if I were you, even if it is their most expensive and high-end units by far.
Thankfully I didn't pay for it anyway, I got it as a review sample, and after it happened, I reached out to my media rep at the company, who sent me a replacement ASAP. However I a bit too scared to pop in the new unit, so I just have it spare if I ever needed it, though I think I'll always be just a bit too nervous to use it.
Well, since I live in another country with a different language, I rely on my phone 24/7 to communicate in English, make payments, talk to friends, and so on. When I was returning to England, my phone started having issues, shutting off constantly until it wouldn't turn on anymore. I needed to show some information on my phone at immigration, but I managed to explain to the immigration officer that my phone was malfunctioning. In the end, he didn't ask for much proof about my return to England.
However, I still needed to unlock my credit card, call my family to let them know I had arrived safely, and order an Uber to get halfway home. This was a huge problem for me because, at that time, my English was very limited, and I wasn’t very familiar with England. This happened two years ago, and I was truly desperate. But, surprisingly, I met someone who spoke both my language and English, and they helped me call my family. Thanks to that, my husband was able to pick me up in London and take me home.
My phone had broken on the plane, and I have no idea how it happened. If anyone has any suggestions or ideas about what could have caused it, please let me know so I can be more cautious next time. Luckily, my English is a bit better now, and I know the area well, but there's nothing worse than relying on technology and having it fail at the exact moment you need it most.
The last time I had tech failure, was when my Nintendo Switch had stick drift. My character would move even if I wasn't touching the controller, and my camera would pan in the opposite direction of where I needed it to be. It was even worse when I played Mario Kart, my character would often reverse in the opposite direction, especially when I was on the the final lap or near the finish line.
Well this is a small inconvenience that I encounter from time to time and still don’t know how to solve it.
The Bluetooth function of my laptop sometimes just disappears. It’s not about the Bluetooth device can’t connect correctly, it’s the whole bluetooth function just disappears from the control panel, just as if the computer doesn’t have a Bluetooth function hardware.
I googled this issue and found out that this might because of the static interference, and often occurrs in Windows 11, and the best way to solve it is to shut down your computer and remove all the cable connected to it, and then press switch to release the static. This methods sometimes solve the problem, but when I turn on my computer next time, the Bluetooth function might still disappear.
Now my temporary solution is to remove the power cable every night I sleep, this methods seems works well, but sometimes I still encounter this issue.
My 10 month old Pixel 8 phone recently started to go faulty. Every time I plugged it in for charging, the screen would get this weird green static on it for a second or two, & a green static type bar would scroll from top to bottom down the screen as well. It was a bit like a “ghost in the machine” sort of glitch that you would see in a film in some scene to hint that a phone has been bugged/tapped and is glitching.
Randomly over the next month, when I brought the phone out of sleep, & usually during some time sensitive activity like trying to use Google pay in a shop, it would be bright green with a random patch flickering off and on at max hdr brightness, this section would also be hotter than the sun when touched (to use an Alan partridge phrase!).
This got worse over the weeks until a couple of weeks before the warranty expired, the screen was just dead most of the time.
sent it off for a free warranty repair, which involved the huge carbon footprint of shipping by air mail to Poland, then flown all the way back to me & delivered to my door, just for a standard screen swap out.
This repair process took a good couple of weeks to play out & searching on Reddit showed me this is not a one off unique problem,m. There are reports of exactly the same very specific screen issue going back through multiple pixel models over the years.
Phoneless, I switched back to the apple eco system and got a 16 pro. Sold the repaired handset once it eventually got delivered back to me.
Just in case I won't mention brands haha I went for the first time to buy some headphones to play with 🎮 I was so excited that I chose ones that were recommended to me right there (additionally I had no idea which ones to choose because they were my first headphones), I return to I went home with them and connected them, everything was perfect but the next day the headphones stopped detecting my voice, I tried different devices (computers, laptops, cell phones) and they still did not detect the audio, I went back to the store to ask if it would work for me They could change and the sellers in a few words told me that I was the one making the mistake and they pretended to make a call through the headphones so I could see that they were supposed to work haha but I didn't accept that lie and after a long time they later agreed to change them just because Their boss approached, I returned home and everything was perfect! 5 days passed and they failed again, it didn't detect the sound of one earphone and the other did haha, that's when I realized that it was the brand that was really bad and I spoke better to the support of the headphone company and it was going to leave me The shipping was more expensive to have them checked, I better stay with them and I have had them stored there for 3 years, I went back to using cell phone headphones to play better 🎮 ps: sorry if the text is not understandable because I used a translator
last time I use it in 2019 and now it stuck on battery logo, last time it's going well like a another day and suddenly it on and off succession I was surprised wtf with my phone and I took it to a service center and they said it was a battery IC but the replacement cost was also expensive so I decided to leave it
"All boot options are tried. Press <F4> key to recover with factory image using Recovery or any other keys for next boot loop iteration."
Im from Brazil. My friend's fiancée's notebook wasn’t booting. It’s a Samsung NP550XDA-KH2BR model. This message would appear: "All boot options are tried. Press <F4> key to recover with factory image using Recovery or any other keys for next boot loop iteration." He sent me this image (June 7):
At first, I suspected a BIOS issue (which is REALLY bad/limited), as the photo he sent me when i first tried to help him remotely by changing some options, like some forums suggested:
It didn't work. So i went to his house on June 10, and when I checked, the SSD was sometimes recognized, sometimes not ("All boot options are tried. Press <F4> key to recover with factory image using Recovery or any other keys for next boot loop iteration.").
When it was recognized, it seemed corrupted, even though booting from a USB stick and Windows allowed me to format the drive, but the formatting would fail: rebooting again without the USB stick, I would see "Press <F4> key to recover with factory image using Recovery or any other keys for next boot loop iteration." (June 25)
I ran several tests, and even checked the voltages of components near the SSD (I’m not a technician, just an enthusiast), and they seemed fine. Of course, I looked it up on Google. I checked many forums, videos, and other websites. Meanwhile, the message "All boot options are tried. Press <F4> key to recover with factory image using Recovery or any other keys for next boot loop iteration" kept HAUNTING me. No one seemed to have an answer, even in my dreams nightmares.
It was obviously corrupted. He then bought a new one (which arrived on June 16):
The solution was to replace the SSD, so I went to his house on June 18. But we noticed the screw holding the SSD was stripped. We didn’t have any product to help with that, and others techniques weren't working because the screw was TINY, even though we had the right screwdriver... so the solution was to solder another screw on top of the damaged one to be able to turn it.It worked perfectly!!! I'm sorry I don't have pics of this moment.
We swapped it out, I installed Windows, drivers, apps, tested it for over 2 hours, rebooted at least 10 times, and everything was fine.
TWO MONTHS later, (August 30), after perfect usage of the notebook (notice on the pic that my friend's fiancée's even got her camera back, which was not working and she was scared of virus or something else and put a sticker on it, aside to another one already there, which is now removed bc its working), he sent me this picture:
"All boot options are tried. Press <F4> key to recover with factory image using Recovery or any other keys for next boot loop iteration."
I had just gotten a power source for a PC upgrade. I had put a new graphics card in and the old power wasnt cutting it. I was so excited to get playing again and when i took it apart and put it back together with the new power source in i was giddy. I hit the poower button amd the pc started to boot up..... nothing. S i turned it off and checked the cord. "All plugged in amd snug" so i wait a minute and try again.. over and over nothing popped up. I was getting so frustrated and irritated i was done. So a week goes by of me trying everything under the sun to get it working and my friend who is pretty tech savy offers to help. So i bring it to him, we talk for a few hours and mess with it a little. Nothing is working. Changing the cords making sure its plugged in right. Taking out ram sticks we think are the problem ect. Nothing. Then he grabs a flashdrive. Its a windows startup system. He looks at me and says wemight just have to do a full reset. I say ok. He plugs it in and it unstantly started working and to this daay ive yet to have a problem. He didnt even reset it. Just plugged it in. We both have zero clue on what happened.
One morning at the work we going to enter the normal day work but the system was crashed but not in my work
THE CAUSE
A software update from a single cybersecurity company, US-based CrowdStrike that work together with the latest version of Microsoft Windows was the root cause of the chaos a company valued in 88.000.000 $ Dollars lose almost all his value because this problem
THE CONSEQUENCES
Tech disruptions across the world have hit airlines, banks, businesses, schools and government, along with some health and emergency services.
One expert said it could be the:
“largest IT outage in history.”
to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the “Blue Screen of Death”.
MY OWN EXPERIENCE WITH THIS TECH FAILURE ….AND MAYBE YOURS
The Responsibility of the internet crash
I’m Sure that you remember this Friday 17 of July the day that the world 🌎 taste a real WORLD INTERNET TECH FAILURE
in the WHOLE PLANET 🌎 and in my work (a German Laboratory 🥼) was a total Chaos because many functions was automatically conected to windows/internet and between problems 1 or 2
we was a entire day without TO CLICK enter in our work time
the work plan for the day was totally inaccessible or any extra info in our pc laptop or Company cellphones
No info about emergency (anyway Telephone and WhatsApp was working)
And many more and more and more
Thanks to God the problem get fixed and the world continues turning
What you remember about the global windows tech crash ..?
