Dumb stuff people do on their computers

[doktaluv]

How about trying to do a bios flash with a wireless network, lol.

Haha! I could just see someone on my block leeching my wireless and accidentally routing through to my LAN, somehow managing to update an ASUS BIOS onto their comp.....heh heh heh.

{Yeah, hypothetical and REALLY unlikely, you'd have to be so stupid you'd be a genius to leech someone else's download!}

 

[doktaluv]

Had a guy that was fixing a PC for a friend who was here in the UK who managed to switch the PSU from 240 volts to 110 volts and wondered what had gone wrong!!!

"Nothing will power up properly, I can't even get it to get *to* a POST state!"
Heh heh

 

[tifc8lraz]

Here's a list of the things I have done;

1. I unplugged my hard drive power connection when the computer was on and plugged it back in...no more hard drive
2. I forgot to plug my power switch into the mobo and was going crazy trying to figure out why the computer wasn't turning on
3. I reset a password on a computer and forgot it almost immediatly
4. I have Windows

 

[MetalX]

Tried to put an old slot CPU into a PCI-X slot (NOT PCI-E), and put the AGP card in the CPU slot. I wondered why there was smoke and a bad smell issuing from the case.

 

[MrNemo]

This may not technically fit the vein of the thread, but these are all dumb things I've seen people do on their computers in one way or another.

For instance, law firms that use over 20 different (and often redundant) programs on a daily basis, including greats like W0rd Perfect 9 and C0relFl0w, many applications being 13 years old and 16-bit, just so they can "preserve the macros" or because "they are used to it." However, they are also "open to technology," so every system must be a Dell C0re 2 Duo laptop with 2 monitors, docking stations, and all wireless peripherals, including a Tre0, Blackberry, Q, or Blackjack, not to mention active synching with like 4 applications (as well as buggy shareware applications so they can get those prized public folders), all under the control of a document management system called W0rldox; of course, some MUST use T0shiba M400 tablet PCs along with Bluetooth Drag0n 9 headsets and wireless video transmitters to their 60" plasmas. Add roaming profiles with gigantic dictation files and constant misuse of terminal services to the mix so they can work off of their Verizon Wireless cards and constantly be logged in on three computers. "Hell, let's throw a Nitix server in the mix, (blank) said we should have one of those, too." "Why are my icons disappearing and reappearing? Why am I getting this error message (when I try to run a program that was developed for a system running on 48-bits less than the one I am running)?"

Or secretaries: "My email is broke. I can't see anything. I can't watch my funnies." ::download flash:: "Aw! You fixed it! Look at him- that man with the parrot got run over by a semi and walked away without a bruise. It must've been Jesus."

Or "My website is broken. How do I download Firefox? It works at my house and my son said I needed Firefox." ::download Java:: "Hey, it's working now. How'd you do it in Internet Explorer?"

"I really need your help- my Word is gone." ::looks at the redundant shortcuts pinned to the start menu, the start>programs>MS Office 2003 menu, the three desktop icons, and the several open blank Word documents:: "Hmm." ::drag from desktop to quicklaunch bar:: "Wow, how'd you do that! I thought someone messed with my CPU and erased Word. Hey, can you put email on my computer, too? Oh, and Works." (ok, ok, she was REALLY old)

"Hey, we have an emergency!!! Nobody can get in to our system since I deleted the old email addresses (aka Active Directory users). What can we do?"

Hey, I think my computer has a virus or something- it is really slow. I put like three of them anti-virus and like 6 anti-spywares on it but it must be real bad, cause now it is even slower. I got the McAfee firewall and the Windows firewall on- I don't know how it happened. Do you need me to bring in the monitor and everything, or just the modem? Oh, my friend needs you to cleanup her modem, too."

"Yeah, well a couple of weeks ago, that tape thing on the computer (accounting server) didn't come out so I stopped changing it. Didn't you say to only change it if it popped out?"

"My computer seems slower." ::854 virii and 1381 spyware instances, 577 registry issues, 2.4GB temporary internet files, 1500 fonts, PIII 533MHz with XP Pro and 128MB ram, adjusted for best appearance with animated cursors and active desktop, never defrag'ed, running "Wal-Mart Internet," exclusively, with a wicked Hayes Compatible modem::

OH GOD... THE WORST EVER- "Yeah, I got that cable web you was talkin' about, but the cable wouldn't fit in my CPU, so I cut it down and it still ain't workin."

Nobody could make this stuff up.

 

[nork]

Well, i just got one good enuf to add in here.
I had a customer call me yesterday to tell me her pc was running slow. I asked her if you had run these few progs i had installed to clean out temp files and the like, asked if a\virus and malware progs were updated and such.
She said yes to all i asked her so i told her to bring her pc over and i would have a look.
She calls me back a few hours later complaining that her pc wouldnt start. Why? Instead of manually deleting all temp files in windows she decided to delete all the files in windows, period. And some files wouldnt delete, she told me, so maybe thats why her pc wont start!

I had a lady bring the family pc in a few years back as it wouldnt start up at all. I noticed the power supply fan was full of white dust and asked her if her husband had decided to finish off the basement and had drywalled it. She said, ya, how would you know that? Just a lucky guess since the fan was full of very white powder as opposed to grey dust,lol.
I took it apart, had to take the power supply apart to clean it, the cpu heatsink and fan were totally clogged full of drywall dust. When all fully cleaned it fired up just fine.

 

[Tedster]

that's easy to do. Plugging in the wrong voltage. I did it with a battery charger over here in Iraq. But with expensive items, you have to be more careful.
A lot of travelers either overlook or don't know different countries run on different voltages and hertz.

 

[tifc8lraz]

My friend lived over in Israel and none of his components with the exception of a computer (had the voltage changer) worked. He had to buy all new electronics...

 

[ravisunny2]

"

My computer seems slower." ::854 virii and 1381 spyware instances, 577 registry issues, 2.4GB temporary internet files, 1500 fonts, PIII 533MHz with XP Pro and 128MB ram, adjusted for best appearance with animated cursors and active desktop, never defrag'ed, running "Wal-Mart Internet," exclusively, with a wicked Hayes Compatible modem::

Priceless!!

 

[agi_shi]

add (today)

I use bit torrent, limewire, etc... (P2P type programs) and I can't understand why my system doesn't work.

You know, that's incorrect. P2P can be QUITE useful to transfer large files.

More like:
I use bit torrent, limewire, etc... (P2P type programs) to ****** things and I can't understand why my system doesn't work.

 

[Striker840]

I had one the other day here at work. I am a network tech and walking in from the parking lot a guy asked me why he could not get online with his router. I asked him if he had a highspeed ISP, he said he had dial-up and could not figure out why it would not work.

DOH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[kitty500cat]

I was freeing up space on my hard drive and now I don't have any sound, etc...

 

[nork]

You probably should make your own thread for this and you should also provide more info, such as what program were you using to free up hard drive space, even specifically what programs within the suite you were using. Does that program make a system restore point that you can go back to? Or can you simply just use system restore and go back to before you did the cleanup. In addition, some of these programs back up the registry and allow you to undo any registry changes that were made, so maybe you could try that, although a system restore might be the best way to go.
Its a bit hard to help you as you didnt point out what program(s) you were using.

Personally i never use any of these products. I do mine manually, takes more time and not as thorough but i have been running the same win xp pro for over 5 yrs and still going. I used to use programs to clean up hard drive space and ran into problems like you are talking about, so i stopped using them long time ago. Not telling you what to do, only giving my personal opinion and some proof. But i know others feel the same and do manual cleanups as well, and maybe this might help you out the next time. I hope my suggestions can help you out.

 

[kitty500cat]

Oops. No, I meant a dumb thing people do to their computers is to go in and delete all their files. thx though.

 

[nork]

I was freeing up space on my hard drive and now I don't have any sound, etc...

Lol, you said "now", so, of course, i was thinking you had trouble and wanted help.
The joke is on me!
On the other hand, you have some info about how others might do the job, manually that is. These programs that "clean" your system, well, you can see what i think of them.

 

[beef_jerky4104]

I use windows ME

Gosh I hate the os. My first PC came with it installed. My dad had to call up dell ever other day to fix it (before I took an interest in PCs).

It was probably from all those "korn" site he used to visit.

Sorry dad I still love you.

 

[nork]

"korn" sites!

good one, lol.

 

[beef_jerky4104]

This one time my friends cousins were over and they steped on his driver CD. So he taped it back togethor and stuck it in his computer and it broken in half and shot across the room. He had to open his DVD drive to pull the other half out the back of it.

Once I forgot to put the heat sink on a CPU so it poped.

Another time my friend bought an ECS! )

 

[Striker840]

Had a guy that was fixing a PC for a friend who was here in the UK who managed to switch the PSU from 240 volts to 110 volts and wondered what had gone wrong!!!

It happened here on TechSpot but the guy deleted most of his post after he realised just how stupid he had been.

I had the exact opposite here in the states. I had a guy come in and ask me to work on his son's pc. The symptoms were is will not boot and when it DID boot it kept looking for a RAID array. Well I took it home and first thing I checked was the PS. It was somehow switched to the 240, I reset it to 110 and tried to boot. All I got was a wisp of smoke and a burnt wire smell. PS fried, replaced that and was able to get into the BIOS and reset the RAID to off. Reloaded the HD because it was infested.

Result: Happy customer and money in my pocket. A win win situation LOL

 

[kitty500cat]

I had a customer call me yesterday to tell me her pc was running slow. I asked her if you had run these few progs i had installed to clean out temp files and the like, asked if a\virus and malware progs were updated and such.
She said yes to all i asked her so i told her to bring her pc over and i would have a look.
She calls me back a few hours later complaining that her pc wouldnt start. Why? Instead of manually deleting all temp files in windows she decided to delete all the files in windows, period. And some files wouldnt delete, she told me, so maybe thats why her pc wont start!

This one time my friends cousins were over and they steped on his driver CD. So he taped it back togethor and stuck it in his computer and it broken in half and shot across the room. He had to open his DVD drive to pull the other half out the back of it.

How bright can you get...why on earth would he think the drive would read the disc? I always wondered what would happen if you tried to delete the WINDOWS folder; I guess I better not try it now

 

[beef_jerky4104]

For my first computer 3 years ago I tried to put an AGP card in a PCI slot. I tried to force that thing in there. It died because of me.

 

[zephead]

i'll never forget when my friend, with his machine running, attempted to move the table it was on. it was a top heavy case, and consequently went down hard on the concrete basement floor. luckily, only the hard drive died.

 

[Ididmyc600]

I remember many years ago, when PC's were still a bit of mystery to me, I had Win98 and decided to use a DOS disk to run defrag, when I finished Windows wouldnt start,

I did a DIR and found all the folders now tidied into nice little folders called Folder1 Folder2...etc. or something like that, apparently it was caused by the DOS defrag working in a different manner to DOS used by 98.

Bu**er I had to reinstall 98 and lost a load of stuff.

Second, I went round to a friends house once to find him busy with 14 floppy disks, apparently someone had copied all the CAB files from the 98 CD to the floppies, of course setup was asking him to "insert disk X" as it wanted the next file, problem was that the disks werent in the correct order so each time it wanted a file he had to go through every one of the 14 disks until the file was found.....How many files are there in the setup for 98, it took him a long time but it worked in the end.

Regards

 

[tweaks_sav]

This thread needs more pics (ie PROOF! )
Yea, how about this.
Customer comes in, "My heatsink was clogged with dust so I took it out, cleaned it, then tried to put it back in. I think I bent some pins, can you fix this?"

http://tweaksbygeeksonline.com/other/*****1.jpeghttp://tweaksbygeeksonline.com/other/*****2.jpeg

 

[beef_jerky4104]

My friend set his PC on his desk because he beileved it made the PC "cleaner".

Later that day he walked past is, he arm or something hit and knocked it off the desk. Killing his LPT and DVI sockets because they were screwed on. He never forgave himself.