Ok now I don't think this is Way OT since computers are the main topic here. Well, computer screw-ups for that matter. I've been thinkin', well, it's just kinda funny what kinda mistakes newbies would do to their PCs.

I remember this one time when I was still younger than I am now (LOL!) and I had my first PC. I managed to screw up pretty much a lotta times, but once, I just screwed up too far. . .

To the point that I cried all over the house (literally!)

Man, I thought I was screwed!

Well here it goes. . .

Ya know how when a newbie always loves to tinker around with all the files in his/her computer? Well, I was like that before. I kept exploring and scrutinizing the contents of my PC's hard drive 'til I came to this one file:

SYSTEM.INI

I used Word/Wordpad to open it. When it did open, I saw tons of meaningless characters lying around the whole document. I also saw that the document was composed of hundreds of pages.

And so I thought to myself. . . "Why the hell is this worthless file in my computer?! Who in the world would save hundreds of pages of meaningless text into my computer?! Might as well delete this space-consuming file from my system."

After deleting the file, I restarted my PC. And what did I see? A BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH! I was so terrified, so scared, and so nervous up to the point that I cried over the silly problem.

I thought that I had damaged my OS, and I was thinking about how much it would cost to buy another OS. That's why I was scared to tell the problem to my dad. Luckily, I called my auntie and she assisted my in fixing my PC problem over the telephone.

Boy, what a relief!
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Now that I've shared my part of the story, how about you? What the craziest mistake that ya ever did to yer PC? }>

P o w e r e d -by- T e c h n o l o g y

Intel PIII 1Ghz Processor
ASUS CUSL2-C i815EP Mobo
256mb Kingmax PC150 SDRAM
Le

lol, yeah, I've had many of those little mishaps.. Hers one of my favorites, though:

I was working on a monitor in my little playroom at home.. I had removed the anoid cap, but not discharged the capacitor (or maybe I discharged, but plugged back in). In either case, the monitor was sitting there on my one workbench, but I wanted it on the other bench. It was a hot day, as well, so I had my shirt off. Well, I picked the monitor up, and leaned back so it rested against my stomach, when *POOOOOF*! the anoid capacitor got me dead in the middle of my belly and about zapped the s**t outta me.. Somehow, I managed to hang onto the monitor while I put it on the other bench.. That was SO stupid - I had a bruise for like two weeks from that!

Ouchies!

Man, what'll give your a bigger headache? A software problem or hardware problem? hehe! What a silly question! Say, did ya still manage to get that monitor fixed?

P o w e r e d -by- T e c h n o l o g y

Intel PIII 1Ghz Processor
ASUS CUSL2-C i815EP Mobo
256mb Kingmax PC150 SDRAM
Le

OK here's my stupidest mistake. The computer on the other desk has Slackware Linux and Windows 95 installed on it. Mostly it just sits there and runs Linux, I don't even usually log on locally. I access it remotely... it has various uses for me.

OK, I was cleaning up on the Windows partition, remotely from this computer. I had forgotten that while Linux doesn't have any problem with long filenames or spaces (it never did), my bash shell at the console treats them as separate arguments unless you escape it with a \. So I typed

rm -r Windows Update Setup Files (the equivalent of deltree /y)

To my horror, I realized I had just deleted the Windows directory when I saw "Update: no such file or directory. Setup: no such file or directory" etc. What I should have done was

rm -r Windows\ Update\ Setup\ Files

Anyway, it wasn't too bad. Since it was just the original Windows 95 it only took about half an hour in total to fix. Also, since it was only really there for reference and testing purposes, I didn't have much of any software installed in the win95 setup.

So it wasn't a painful lesson; it was actually kind of funny.

Grogan

Asking my wife, 6 years ago, "How do you turn this thing on?". I hadn't a clue.

Sometimes, when I get a "BSOD", I ask myself, "What ever possessed me to ask that first question?".

The answer is, of course, "Masochism"! Being the brunt for humiliation and mental anguish from a "thing"! LOL

And the words from the movie "Forrest Gump", where he said, "Stupid is as stupid does" haunt me yet today, everytime I fire this thing up. LOL

Slo Hands

SloHand Love the Flag, between you and Tuff you all gonna keep me saluting all the time. Old Guitar picking-Gettarpicker

Old Guitar picking-Gettarpicker

Took of my SK6 to clean it, spent an hour looking for the clip that was in front of me, then spent another half hour looking for the HSF i just cleaned, which of course was right in front of me. Then couldn't figure out why i had removed it in the first place. Put it back, and for the next week i had all kinds of problems with WPE's and BSOD's...blamed it on everything except for that one little problem...forgot to push the retaining clip (that funny little bar) all the way down...so the proc was just barely making contact...

Not expensive but silly. When I got my first computer with win 3.1, I decided to pretty it up. Unknowningly I changed my font color to my background color. None of my gurus had any idea what the problem was.
I simply couldn't see a thing. I don't remember how I finally figured it out.

Ethan

Eilat, Israel

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
"Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took it all from them." - Edward Filene

Where should I begin?

I was troubleshooting some of my usual piles of used junk, and also trying to recover some files on a 1.2gb hd that had crashed windows.

I had it sitting on the edge of the computer (unmounted) and running, when it moved, and shorted something on the exposed controller card to the case. DEAD. However, I later recovered this. If an unusual fit of brain power, I bought a used hd of the same model off ebay for 15.00US. Traded the good controller card, and hey, data!!So now I have a good spare hd if I ever wear he ORIGINAL out, and if the second controller card doesn't develop any problems.

Then, there was the bout with "the virus." I kept getting hd and fd errors, all sorts of stuff. Bought about 2 i/o contollers, and at least 2 fd's, not to mention corrupting some of my floppys. I fought this for months, finally bought a "clean" machine off a friend, used, and managed to screw IT up. (Back in the 386/early 486 days.)

A couple of years ago, I found a new/old stock version of Norton desktop with a virus program in there, and ran some of my old floppies through it. Guess what?? The virus showed up. At least now I know what caused this mess.

My saying? You cannot break it if it's broken, but you can fix it so it can't be fixed.

ROTFLMAO! Gotta remember that one!

In the windows 3.11 days, when my sister got her brand new PC! It was the first computer that I ever got to use around the house (actually, I think it was the first computer period). As I played around with it, I was getting good with paintbrush (yes, 256 colors!) and solitaire and loved to go in the program manager looking for anything interesting. I was scarred to mess it up since I knew nothing at all about how software and hardware works and how the computer works at all. All I knew how is how to put it on (sometimes I would forget ho ). And I also learned a few msdos commands to get into a game but I had NO clue what I was doing. Now years go by, she takes that computer with here and then later on around 5 years I'd say we get this one, top of the line computer. I still didn’t know about computers and was scarred to do something I didn’t know what I was doing but as I got more comfortable, I started to experiment. I think what is the most funny is that I was terrified by ms-dos. To me, it was like being in a different world of using the computer and didn’t know what it could do to it. When I knew some basic commands such as a: and I think del and edit was one that freaked me out because of the blue but those came later one. The funniest thing was that I typed b: since I knew a: was the floppy, c: was the hdd and d: and e: where my cd-rom drives. So when I typed b:, it said: insert a disk for drive b:. and it stayed full screen. I was stuck with the terrifying msdos prompt on my screen. I did not know what to do. I was scarred that my parents walk in the room (it used to be in a room where my parents would always pass by and go in, there always walking around the house) so my only hope was to press the reset button to get out. I did, it ran scandisk and now I was freaking out even more since it says something about "errors on drive C". then, I got to windows, I did get caught by my dad since he walked in before it finished loading but I just told him it had freezed. Boy this is lon . It's hard to believe but because I've always been terrified by Ms-dos, I never did anything such as format c: or deltree/y c:\*.* (that could of been fun). But when I opened autoexec.bat, it din't take me long until I know how batch files work with dos and I seen people at school that knew more then me about dos type commands so I knew how to list files, delete, change directory etc. One thing that was not that long ago, I'd say about a year, is I selected all the files on my D drive which was a partition and I pressed DEL. for some reason windows had never prompted me and I lost all those files. I had about 300 megs of precious files! I find that recently, I did more destructive things then I did before I knew much about PC's.

oh, and I'll never forget the time I screwed up config.sys and it made windows freeze on the win98 logo. I went nuts over that one. I called our vendor, he thought me how to install windows and I did it. The next day, I felt so proud of myself! I had just installed Windows 98! I always laugh now and how I used to think of computers before. Just the fact of opening the case would make me freak out, until I learned that computer hardware is made so it can be fixed by anyone, it does now require special tools, then, it really didn’t take long for me to get used to it (that's whey I took back the crashed 486 that was originally my first computer). It was weird to restore that computer since I could find some files that I had done or changed long ago. Incredible for magnetic storage!


oh, and how about that time I connected the 486 motherboard wires on the wrong side, the motherboard was going ts ts ts ts ts ts ts and was acting like it was sizzling. Or that time not so long ago that I connected the 500mb hard drive to a 17v adapter to test it (since someone that has the habit of punching things, you now the rest.. ) and nothing happened. I think hooked it up the right way when I was done with the 486 and it smoked up. Thick, gray smoke came out. It was enough to get high off the fumes, of course, I only left if for about 5 seconds since it was starting to catch on fire., I really didn’t notice how long I made this post! Hope it was enjoyable if you read this far!