I'm posting a lot of computer-related threads lately <_<

Anyways, post horror stories, either having to deal w/ your own computer or someone else's or whatever. Anything.

I was reading a site that I used to read like 10 years ago ([url]www.rinkworks.com/stupid[/url]) and was happy to find that they still update it. It isn't about computer horror stories but it made me interested in entertaining computer-related anecdotes.

On my second machine, I had gotten a virus that infected any file with the extension .exe and forced it to not open. You can imagine in how short of time I was formatting.

One time I installed linux

One time I let kyle90 install linux

One time I associated every exe be run by a dummy program..

There was the time I spent two days trying to get a jumperless network card to work with no prior networking knowledge.

Or the time me and a friend lost the last coaxial terminator we had, we spent 3 hours looking for it between his house/granny-flat. Got a metal detector out to scour the driveway with, finally found it had been dropped behind a printer.

Lastly the time my 15m RJ11 phone cable broke, I spent two hours mucking around and eventually built another cable out of 10m RJ45 UTP, serial connector, 2m serial cable, serial invertor, serial connector, 2m RJ11. My dad still uses that franken-cable...

An absolutely true story in every way.

My friend had a computer that was messing up on him all the time and he couldn't figure out why, he isn't really into computers and doesn't know much about 'em. So, one day I was at his house and he asked me what the hell was going on with his computer, and I decided to give it a whirl and see. Turns out, he had no virus or spyware protection at all, so I immediately installed some programs and went to work. Here's the kicker to the story...After Norton finished scanning, it completed with a whopping 5000 viruses found. Honest to GOD. The guy was running his computer with over 5 thousand active viruses on it, and I have ZERO clue as to how it was even booting, let alone getting to the desktop.

His excuse?

He uses his computer for nothing but video gaming + porn.

not 5000 viruses, 5000 items. that means every bad registry key/tracking cookie is included.

he probably had 3 or 4 "viruses" at the most

No. 5000 VIRUSES. Not items. The items list was more like 10,000. I don't know how, but somehow they all were small viruses, nothing serious. They all just seemed to slow down his system and make applications randomly shut down, etc.

His computer would literally take about 15 minutes to boot, another 15 minutes to shut down, and moving his mouse around screen from one side to the other took about 30 seconds to a minute, and the entire virus scan took over 24 hours. Not to mention his hard drive was only something like 20GB max capacity. It was the one thing I was sure to take note of, that it actually was listed as VIRUSES, and not items because I myself couldn't believe it. I would have taken a screenshot of it, but I don't know how his computer would have handled that and at that point I just wanted to be done fixing it. I didn't feel like sitting through another 5 minutes just to take the damn screenshot and god knows how long to do the rest with it.

I will however mention that after the "cleaning" he was forced to buy a new CPU anyways. Whatever the damage they did, his computer never worked the same again and even after a complete format still ran extremely slow (albeit still, a lot faster now the viruses were gone).

the fact that you refer to the entire system as the cpu makes me not trust what you say.

dude lol lets smoke a joint

Well, I figured it was a lot easier and quicker to write CPU rather than COMPUTER. But if it really makes that much of a difference to you, well.. Believe what you want.

One time I spent literally 24 consecutive hours troubleshooting why my radeon 9800 pro wasn't working. I finally figured out that it was a BIOS option or two..

My worst computing experience so far? My samsung omnia.. bleh im about to return it and get my old phone back.

touchscreen typing = fail.

Was writing a program in VB back in the day and I set the file association to .exe accidently instead of .exr which I was trying to do. Not reading the last page, I hit next, and yeah... My programs weren't happy any more. I also didn't know how to restore it, so I basically lost my install :\

meh i'm still ****ed up from last night so i'm more likely to be an arse than usual today

Using a PC until I was 18.

<3 my Mac

[url]www.goat[/url] s e.cx

When I found out the hot chick was really a man.

Whats wrong with that?

I did dual boot and overwrote my MBR then I got a windows virus and wiped my hdd and didnt know about the fix MBR command so it took a week to fix...

the only part of a computer that's called the CPU is this part.

I would have to say my whole ordeal of having my laptop's hard drive fail last week during a time when I needed to write a research paper. New hard drive is in. Hope this one works!

[/norightclick]

I'll see your no right click and raise you no right click AND shaped like a f***ing bubble.



I hated that little a**hole.

That reminds me of how in middle school we used to **** with the iMacs by changing all of the desktop icons to nothing (blanks), renaming them all to nothing, and then tucking them off to the side of the screen so that they couldn't be seen so that whoever came across the iMac would be met with a completely empty desktop (and due to stupidity probably wouldn't figure out how to work anything).

We took a screen shot of current button configuration, set as wallpaper, and then deleted all the icons on our middle school PCs

Oh. My. God.

Every computer in our newsroom used to have that awful ****ing mouse.

So much hate.

macs have two disgusting qualities:

1.) a mouse acceleration curve that either destroys accuracy or desk space. Depending on the way YOU accelerate your mouse, the cursor may end up crawling across the screen even though your physical mouse just zipped across the room into a wall as your anger sweat-drenched fingers could no longer maintain grip on the glossy plastic.

2.) ever try to pick up an apple mouse in the middle of dragging something? You can't do it. You have to pinch the two side buttons with your thumb and ring finger while you're holding down the button with the index finger. So while gravity and your index finger are trying to fire the glossy, slick mouse out of your hand and into your desk, you have to squeeze the side buttons enough to prevent this from happening but not enough to bring up Expose.


The new trackpad is just as bad. The whole thing is one button? Now you have to use your middle finger to crawl across the stupid thing like you're pantomiming a gimp hobbling. Great.

i think one of the best times i have ever had messing with school equipment was... when i was a senior in high school i was a teachers assistant for a word processing class. i made a full screen sized graphic of the sbod(blue screen of death) and the teacher posted it on every computer in the middle of class. 20+ students all cried in dismay because the thought they had just lost 35 minutes of work! great stuff

When my $1400 gaming computer was stolen and the insurance decided to lie, trick, and screw me over.

I'm still too broke to even consider buying another.

hey at least you got the thief's shoes

Sorry but this part is bull****. Just put your thumb down like you would if the button was still there. Problem solved. Of course, actually clicking the trackpad is rather stupid in the first place, since the tapping functions are perfect.

Note: this only applies to OS X. In Windows, ALL BETS ARE OFF. JESUS WHAT A FRUSTRATING HELL THAT IS.

I used aol for 3 years

The new trackpad is the best i've used. I'd buy a usb version to use on desktops if they sold one (and windows support was better). I use tap to click, never push the actual button.

I know

Haha, yes. AOL. God, I had forgotten about AOL.

I remember using it from AOL 1-9.


Welcome! You've got mail! Goodbye!

Granted, for a while it was pretty much the easiest/cheapest/only way to get online. But man did it suck.
But the chat rooms were good for a 10 year old getting porn without cookies that parents could see.

Oh god aol chat rooms.

One time one of my hard drives were corrupted in a RAID 0 array. I hadn't mirrored it, so basically all was lost that I hadn't backed up otherwise. Yeah, it was pretty dumb, but not much was lost, as I tend to mirror anything important in at least triplicate.

ah yes... AOL... better yet... dialup in general

i could never go back to those horrors i'd sooner go amish than go back to dialup