A man who got so frustrated with his laptop that he shot it with a gun before remembering he had vital data saved on it has topped a chart of IT mishaps.

An annual league table of weird computer mishaps highlights a list of bizarre and malicious incidents, often committed through frustration or in a bodged attempt to hide evidence.

Second on the list, compiled by data recovery and IT forensics firm Kroll Ontrack, was a man who threw his computer out of a window in an attempt to destroy evidence when he found out police were coming to arrest him.

In another case, burglars disposed of expensive stolen computer equipment in a river, after police had offered a reward for its return.

Three weeks later, the equipment was recovered and the data retrieved from its water-logged hard drives.

The table also featured a man who failed to notice when his laptop fell from his bag while riding a moped and was run over by a lorry and reported on a financial director who dropped his laptop in the bath while finishing the company accounts.

"People always think: 'It will never happen to me,' when it comes to losing data. And then it comes as a shock when it does," said Adrian Palmer, managing director of Kroll Ontrack.

"There are many ways that data can disappear without trace from computer hard drives, from system malfunctions to computer viruses.

"However, despite being the easiest problem to prevent, we are seeing more cases where human error is to blame."