Share you IT and computer horror stories

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Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2011 4:23 pm

If you are reading this it's safe to asume that you own a computer with an internet connection. Some of you will know a bit about technology. I am going to take a wild guess and say that there are some IT guys or computer experts among us.

Even if you are just "the guy who knows about computers" (my case) or you make a living out of it I am sure that you must have encountered a lot of computer analphabets. Share those moments here.

A friend of mine: I deactivated that firewall thing you set up. I wouldn't let me run some programs.

My father: Since you installed limewire the internet has been slower (unless limewire is running at that moment, it's our ISP fault dad, not mine)

Another friend: Why did you install that avast thing? It doesn't let me get into my favorite flash games site?

Some interesting material here: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-guy-whos-fixing-your-computer-hates-you/

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/jguhj/whats_the_most_enraging_thing_a_computer/

Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2011 4:34 pm

I normally go here http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/ for an aparently endless supply of stories.

Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2011 4:51 pm

My dad recieved email with map to some birthday party.
It was snapshot from google maps, but so close it was impossible to locate it without looking at Google maps anyways

Around the map there was huge white area, somebody forgot to crop and it was about... 250 px wide and 600 px long making it bigger than necessary.

Saved as BMP in MSPaint.

Not, that I'm trying to make fun out of technically less savy people, just curiosity

Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2011 6:13 pm

Downloaded an album (in a Zip File - yes, I know) from LimeWire in 2004 and got Blaster.

Lost the f****** lot... Thumbs down

Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2011 6:21 pm

I have had a repeated problem!! It seems that every time I go to Western Union, my computer crashes before I can e-mail the scanned receipt to a "friend", and I lose the scanned receipt in the resulting chaos.

Bruin

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

Computer horror story?
I used to use Interner Explorer and I would install microsoft updates
<shakes head at my naivety >

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 05 Mar 2009 Posts: 582

Computer horror stories, oh dear, where to start...

First laptop just died one day, seem the hard drive just gave up. Lost everything.

Bought pink Eee netbook, few months later, it completely died. Lost everything. Was under warranty so was able to get replacement but in black.

Took home replacement black Eee netbook, a few months later, rolled across infected picture at People of Walmart site, got that virus that is a fake anti-virus, cost way too much to have it professionally deleted.

Bought 2nd netbook, a Dell, a few months later I left it on the cooling stand overnight. Somehow the ctr key seemed to be stuck "on", couldn't access anything. Popped the keys off, the little white bits popped up and down but when I typed, it was like the ctrl keys were still pressed. While everything wasn't lost, I couldn't access anything.

Bought 3rd netbook, Acer, a few months later it slowed and simply stopped working. Took into Best Buy Geek Squad, after keeping it for 3 months, they said it was unrepairabe and gave it back. Lost everything.

Back to Eee netbook, a few months later I went to pick it up from the floor where I had placed it for safety, it slipped out of my finger and went "thunk" on the carpet. Error message, couldn't find hard drive.

Took Acer and Eee netbooks into IT department at work as they were having a fund raiser, $20 to diagnosis, run upgrades and do the usual virus check-up stuff. Discovered the Acer's hard drive had failed. Lost everything. The Eee netbook, it seems that Best Buy Geek Squad forgot to put the screws back in, was missing 11 screws so when I was dropped it the hard drive popped loose.

The Dell, a few months later, the ctrl keys magically turned themselves off and it has been working slowly since then.

All in less than 24 months.

There have been other computer mishaps, fell asleep, rolled over and tossed the Eee machine across the room and a meter to the floor. Crumbs in the keyboard, a couple more virus near misses, upgrade problems, more issues than I can remember right now.

The end result is that a friend of mine thinks I should work for the Toshiba computer test lab. He knows that if I am off line for a few days, I have taken out another computer and will be back with a story that will make him happy that I am half way around the world from his electronics.

I have used Kaspersky, Norton, Avast, McAfee, Spybot and a whole host of anti-virus, anti-spyware protection programs and can still manage to crash a new computer within weeks of buying it without actually downloading, double clicking or even clicking on anything.

Don't even ask about all the desktop machines I used to own. My basement looks like a computer parts graveyard.

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2011 1:49 am

Dad wanted to delete cookies. Some how IO.SYS gets deleted....

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2011 7:43 pm

A true horror story is any call, where a long lost friend/relative calls, and asks if I could give just a quick look at their computer.

Which usually involves reinstalling everything because PEBKAC.

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2011 7:50 pm

Ok, here's horror story

Me and my dad were installing W7 right after it got released.
My dad wanted both Windows 7 and Windows XP.

So we installed Windows 7 first.
Then we installed Windows XP.
Windows XP was loading fine, he couldnt access Windows 7. After few "fixes" we got Windows 7 loading and Windows XP unaccesable. boot.ini seemed to be the problem.
So we edited the boot.ini. Somehow it all duped? And my dad now has 3 choices when his computer loads.

This is what the menu says
boot.ini
boot.ini
Windows XP

boot.ini #1 loads Windows 7
boot.ini #2 loads another menu - Windows 7 or Windows XP
Windows XP loads Windows XP.

It works, we're not going to edit it further to change the names, we're not touching it anymore and we're just glad he can access both systems. Very Happy

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2011 7:51 pm

^^^

Haven't seen that one in a while... "PEBKAC"
Is it really still used?? Very Happy

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2011 8:38 pm

Back about 1998, I succumbed to temptation and bought a desktop from Gateway.

After I spent some days on the phone to the really good natured guy (Brendan) in the Gateway Help Centre in Sydney, I was in New Zealand, we came to the conclusion that it was a manufacturers problem not a programme issue.

So I sent it back to Gateway, who kept it for 3 weeks, then returned it, supposedly all bright shining new with a reinstallation.

After a few more days on the phone to Brendan at the Gateway Help Centre, who by now was sharing family photos, discussing AFL teams and good places to visit in our respective countries, we again came to the conclusion that once more it was a manufacturers fault.

It went back to Gateway, with a rather tersely written letter, and a month later I received a brand new, all sparkling desktop, as the previous one apparently had a cracked motherboard that had eluded their tech staff the first time.

6 weeks later, while I was talking once more to Brendan, after having the brand new, sparkling desktop decide by itself that it was only going to show half the screen then stop, it gave a final gasp which involved a bit of smoke, some rather interesting electrical discharges and promptly died.

I went into the Computer shop in town and bought a custom built that has actually lasted since then with no problems, and I finally received a refund from Gateway 11 months later.

I guess if it looks like a cow it is a cow.

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2011 9:25 pm

Fowan Nyne wrote:

^^^

Haven't seen that one in a while... "PEBKAC"
Is it really still used?? Very Happy

Daily. It's actually so common, I can put it in the "problem cause" field of our ticket tracking system and the boss is fine with it.

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2011 9:41 pm

Although my job description is not IT, I do a lot of it at work (Macintosh operating system). And even though Macs are very user-friendly, there are some co-workers who simply should not have a computer (they would have a more difficult with Windows!!!).

1) We have this guy at work who is completely computer-illiterate. It took me months to show him how to access the server (which has an icon on the desktop). And he always insists on double-clicking on things--which drives me nuts. Anyway--we had some older Macs at work that we were getting rid of (G4 and pre-Intel processor). Another co-worker and I set it up for him, and because he was confused about passwords, we left his blank. You simply hit the "return" key. Well, one night, he tried to install something or other, and he called me at home. He asked what his password was, and I said nothing. I heard some typing, and then he said that's not it. I said, "no, no, it's blank." I heard more typing, and he said, "No, blank is not the password either." I compose myself and say "just hit return," and....you got it...I hear typing and he says that "just hit return" doesn't work and it still wants a password. I finally told him to bring it to work the next morning. And then we showed him--you just hit the damn return key.

He also had a problem with Flash. Since it's a pre-Intel, the latest Flash updates won't work on his machine. He can't upgrade it. Doesn't he keep clicking on update when a site says he needs one??? And of course the update kills his latest pre-Intel version and I then have to uninstall the Intel one and re-install the pre-Intel one. Grrrrrrr

Don't get me going on folks at work who don't know how to force quit a program, or can't change their wallpaper or screensaver by themselves.

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2011 9:55 pm

^^^ What's wallpaper?...

"PEBKAC" - Laughing

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2011 10:22 pm

In work I get to look after 17 pc's, now I am not the expert, but I can generally figure out what is going on.

A couple of months ago suddenly the printer decides to randomly start printing a page of Iranian text, I knew it was one of the pc's, but finding the offending machine was a pain in the arse, which had me pulling what hair I have left out.... Laughing

In the end I just decided to reinstall the OS on every machine !, I was a wee bit lucky and got rid of it, after only having to reinstall on 3 of the computers.

Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2011 12:09 am

My horror story is very recent.

When I went out of town for the holiday, I powered everything down correctly.

When I got home I push the start button. NOTHING!!

I tried several troubleshooting things. NOTHING.

(Fortunately I have a laptop).

Now dwatina is going to tell me it is because I have a PC and not a MAC!

Looking around my yard, I got to thinking we had a bad storm whilst I was gone.

My computer usually goes to the Computer Doc but he is not open on Sunday. So I took it to the local Staples store. They ran a diagnostic and found my PSU (power supply unit) was fried.

Thusly I will not trust my power surge strip when I go out of town, I will power down everything and pull the plug from the electrical plug.

Lesson learned.

@irishemigrant The IT guys at the engineering firm where I worked for a while told me to NEVER EVER buy a Gateway. They told me so many horror stories so I took their advice.

Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2011 1:29 am

Did Homer Simspson ever find the 'Any Key'?

Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2011 5:49 am

Quote:

The IT guys at the engineering firm where I worked for a while told me to NEVER EVER buy a Gateway. They told me so many horror stories so I took their advice.

Just to balance it I have a Gateway Desktop, one I bought 3 years ago 2nd hand and I have never had any trouble with it !

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

I almost forgot about the time the cat sat on the keyboard and managed to switch off the wireless connection. Took me ages to figure that
And the time the cat managed to get the language changed. Luckily it was into Polish and I know someone who understands Polish

In my case the C in PEBKAC stands for cat

My sweet old aunt got herself a pc, took me ages getting her used to using it
Thought we had everything sorted, I left her a written step by step guide how to get online
Got home
the phone rings
"Its not working"
"ok whats the problem?"
" well I put in the password but it's not coming up"
"oh dear, what happens "
"well I press the keys but it only comes up ****** "

<sigh>

Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2011 2:58 pm

@Vampiremerchant You are absolutely right.

I know people who absolutely hate Dell computers; (however, other than an IBM PS-2 and a Tandy TL 1000) all my desktops and laptops have all been Dell and love them.

I will have to give that old Tandy TL-1000 a gold star though as we used it sans hard drive for years and it got one of my daughter's through university without any problem. We got about 8 years service out of it.

Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2011 7:37 pm

despite hard use I got six years out of my last Dell notebook.

My saddest failure was losing a ton of photos on an external drive that died for no reason.

The most inconvenient was a computer that died in very cold weather. It was a very old PC used to drive a 4Kw CNC mill, the replacement was easy but reconfiguring all the ports and pins in and out was a pest; cockups with mills tend to result in genuine violence when they occur.

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jun 2011 Posts: 1066

My worst horror story happened just a couple of months ago. I was trying to open Adobe Photoshop but the program wasn't working. When Windows ran its diagnosis of the problem, it discovered that there was an Adobe update that needed to be installed. So, I allowed it to install. For some reason, the update didn't configure properly and it competely corrupted the hard-drive to the point where the computer was entirely unusable and I couldn't even run a system recovery. I was told that the only way to fix the problem would be to install a new hard-drive. At that point, my husband and I just decided to cut our losses and buy a new computer (it gave us a chance to upgrade to Windows 7). And I am never downloading Adobe again.

My dad wasn't in IT but he was somewhat of a computer expert so you'd better believe he got a lot of annoying calls from friends, family, and barely tolerated associates whenever something went wrong with their computer. He told me that the worst offender was my uncle who would put in a call at least once a month. Apparently, my uncle never bothered to install any anti-virus software or firewall on his computer, despite my dad repeatedly telling him that it was necessarry. And then he would always wonder why his computer would slow down and stop working every few weeks.

I am by no means a computer expert but my husband is nearly illiterate so, anytime he needs to do something that goes beyone just sending an e-mail, I have to giude him through it, step-by-step. A perfect example would be the time I showed him how to add attachments to an e-mail. I even wrote down step by step instructions. It just so happened that the attachment I demonstrated was a photo. A few weeks later, he needed to send a Word document. He asked me to show him how to do it. I said, "I wrote it down for you." And he said, "But that was for photos. This is for Word." *sigh* He has a lot of great qualities. I just shudder when I see him turning on the laptop.

Quote:

He asked what his password was, and I said nothing. I heard some typing, and then he said that's not it. I said, "no, no, it's blank." I heard more typing, and he said, "No, blank is not the password either." I compose myself and say "just hit return," and....you got it...I hear typing and he says that "just hit return" doesn't work and it still wants a password.

Who's on first?

Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 5:21 am

My Brother in Law has qualifications coming out of his ears, but put him in front of a computer and he reverts to an inept buffoon ... Laughing

No matter how many times I tell him not to install software without virus checking it Twisted Evil

Then he wonders why his PC screws up !!!

Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 10:43 am

Don't give your laptop a slap in frustration.

It made me fell better at the time, but when I finally got it to boot up and run checkdisk, there were over 1000 errors. I think the bit that reads the hard drive touched the disk, tearing a groove in it.

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