For a college assisgment we have to come up with ways of crashing a computer?

Question

I know I can do this in command prompt, by deleting processes, by filling up the hard drive and by running loads of programs at the same time. Any other ways?

Answer 1

Celine Dion's latest CD:
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/04/03/226233.shtml

Windows is easy to crash, it's actually an undocumented feature.

http://humorix.org/articles/2000/03/windows-con/

A real challenge is to crash a machine running another OS.

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2001-June/087566.html

http://evuraan.blogspot.com/2005/06/how-to-force-paniccrash-in-linux.html

There was also a Linux kernel version that had an exploitable crash bug in it.

Answer 2

OK let's think outside the box, and assume that you care nothing about recoverability ...

There are any number of viruses that can be loaded from a floppy drive with a command prompt boot.. you could even boot Ubuntu LINUX from CD.. and have some real FUN.. ;)

You could find or write a program which :

... writes directly to or rewrites/erases various BIOS chips, even writing the wrong BIOS upgrade file will totally crash a PC...

... write directly to the hard drive on board EPROM

... or send a command which forces the heads to slam repeatedly out to or beyond their parameters and crash..

If you are not limited to software crashes... then look out...

Get yourself some wool and a glass rod and generate a serious static charge ... and start throwing some sparks... especially at the printed circuits on PCI cards or the back of hard drives.. or anywhere on a memory chip... or a device connection..

Now that you are inside the computer... lodge a loose cable in the cooling fan on the CPU... that always works...

Or maybe just lay a loose power plug on the motherboard so that a jumper pin touches the 12v line... guaranteed disaster ...

Try to connect the floppy drive cable to the hard drive..

If you can't get inside the unit... you can still...

Try unplugging and replugging the keyboard with the system running ... twist the connector slightly as you plug it in and it will arc and blow the Keyboard chip out... and maybe take the power supply with it...

Try overpowering a USB 2.x hub and plug it into a older 1.x USB port... you'll fry the motherboard...

Oh yea, .. now here's one I bet you hadn't thought of....

Change the switch on the back of the power supply so that it is expecting 220 instead of 110... or vice versa... either way the computer won't work.. and no ever looks at that switch... GO FIGURE...

Also try swapping the mouse and keyboard plugs... but don't tell anyone you did it ... :)

A power surge on the phone line to the modem would work... build a little Tesla coil powered by a 9volt battery and run a jolt up the phone line to the modem... or the keyboard/mouse/USB plug.. BE CAREFUL THIS COULD START A FIRE !

THANKS FOR THIS QUESTION:

This has been great fun...

I have been re-living situations which I have been asked to repair over the last 30 years... oh .. the memories.. :) ;)

GOOD LUCK

Answer 3

#1 Installing AOL.exe to a Microsoft (R) Windows (R) operating system can cause hard drive failure. or at least that is what happens to me everytime i install aol to a computer.
#2 Unplugging the mouse from the port while using the operating system.
#3 Install bad device drivers.
#4 run mutiple anti-virus programs at the same time.
#5 install known spyware applications.
#6 never clan the system temp folders
#7 never defrag the hard drive.
#8 Manually remove registry values.
#9 Change file extentions to random meaning-less one's

Answer 4

Make sure there is absolutely NO thermal compound on the CPU or the HEATSINK...that will take care of it.

But if you are refering to crash it by software and not hardware i would recommend this.

Technically teh BIOS is software. You could overclock the memory, CPU or BUS speed settings hahaha. The PC may not even boot doing all of these....but if you simply overclock the CPU in the BIOS or frequency of the memory it will boot, act fast, have a heat-attack an die.

Answer 5

Deleting kernel32 will turn your computer into a very expensive lightbulb.
Deleting registry keys (found in regedit.exe) will give you a headache the likes of witch you have never seen.(i know i did it)
Just Don't do this as a prank because you could go to jail for a couple years.

Answer 6

Welll you can also crash a computer by not restarting properly and with del*.* in cmd prompt.

Answer 7

i can't believe a college would set such a desructive and potentially damaging assignment that could also affect their computer systems with people trying out their theories.