Whats the craziest thing you done to your PC

[Chester Taje]

Well gang we can't let this stop us.Lets have some fun.What stupid thing have you done to your computor?

Well,when I got my first Computor I deleted a bunch things which was required to make the PC work.I only had the thing for 3 days and it was back in for repairs.I did'nt know a thing about PC and I still don't BUT I sure double check be for deleting now



Whos next?Don't be shy

[jdtrotter]

There is not enough room to post all of the stupid things I have done with my computers.

However, when I was trying to solve a problem with my last computer, I spent 6 hours one night talking with the company's techs all over the country. I ended up talking with 5 different people in different places. I kept losing the phone connections.

It wasn't until I was speaking with representative number 4, and was asking him to please repeat what he was saying, talk a little slower and in simpler language as I was very computer illiterate, that I realized the same tension I heard in the other's voices was building in his voice.

Very quickly I was no longer connected to Number 4. The light blub came on---they were hanging up! They thought I was hopeless.

I started my conversation with Number 5 by begging that he not hang-up.

Diane

[Ellen B.]

Let my kids use the computer. They know a lot more than I do about this darn thing. Then again they think they know how to do more than they really do. Almost everyone of my computer problems could be traced back to one or the other daughter.

Diane- The light bulb just went on for me also. My server (I guess that is what you call it) is SBC which is also a telephone company. Over and over I have said for a telephone company they have the worst connections in the world. Now I know it was most likely not a bad connection as much as a bad attitude on my part.

It amazes me how little I really know about this computer. I don't even have a clue what it means that the site has been hikjacked. Why would anyone want to do this to a fiberglass trailer website anyway?

[Gina D.]

The dumbest thing I have done with my computer? Discovered I could put a credit card # in it.. and then stuff shows up at my house a few days later!

This keeps happening. Think it's a virus?

[Lynn Musgrave]

ok guys being the "top most" computer illiterate person I know I have never done any of the before mentioned things...ok, at least not more than 100 times.....LOL!

My girls just keep telling me to keep trying because I cann't hurt the thing and one of them or thier amtes can always fix it. Beleave me it is a good thing they all 3 found guys that are programers or tech people.

[Mike-B]

Can I blame the computer for finding my fiberglass trailer in Spokane WA and my tow vehicle in Queens NY while I live in Banson MO. Or should I blame E-Bay. Joan says I'm to blame, but I disagree. Mike B

[Maggie O.]

I like this thread. It makes me feel better. I was curious why this sight would be hijacked, but I don't know really what hijacked is.

[Donna D.]

Originally posted by Maggie O.@Nov 12 2005, 02:07 PM
I like this thread. It makes me feel better. I was curious why this sight would be hijacked, but I don't know really what hijacked is.

Hijacked (the short version): Forcably taking you someplace you don't intent (or want) to go.

Who knows why someone would hijack this site. But hackers and crackers don't usually use common reasoning. They do things, just because they can.

There is all kinds of terrorism in the world....hijacking a site is a small example. Big Business spends $$$$$$$$$ every day securing their sites. Michael is a regular guy with extraordinary talent in bringing like-minded people together. It's a CRIME to think someone is taking money out of his pocket just to get their jollies. Software is expensive and I'm certain Michael has other ways he'd rather spend his money than trying to keep the bad guys OUT!

[Roger H]

I visited a website. I don't know which one. I was looking for song lyrics or something stupid. The website downloaded spyware onto my machine. Not regular spyware, but really crafty, wylie, nasty, SMART spyware. My machine slowed to a crawl. I had extra browser bars on IE. IE was hijacked. It went to a home page I didn't want. I couldn't change it. It was NOT pretty.

Now, I consider myself to be a fairly computer literate kind of guy. I administer the network at work. I have a wireless network at home. My education (what little I have) is in information systems. My ego tells me that I'm supposed to be able to fix most of the garden variety problems...

Well, I worked for nine days, every waking moment that I wasn't working trying to figure out what happened and how to rid myself of it. It was particularly trying because this is the machine that has all of our family worldly knowledge on it... contacts, financial programs, photos...

I searched forum after forum, downloaded spyware killer program after program... found I'd actually had a number of problems, but this one program continued to resurrect itself time after time after I'd killed it. On the seventh day (while God was resting, I might add) I finally figured out that it generated a random filename and re-wrote itself as it closed each time, and then saved the new file name into the registry before Windows rebooted. After the umpteeth iteration of rebooting and looking for files, I finally figured out where it was writing itself, and the file size, and the general pattern it used for writing file names. I was FINALLY, after NINE days, able to kill it and restore my system...

I am now MUCH more careful about where I go. I also run TeaTimer resident, which won't let the machine write to the registry unless I tell it it's ok. It's a pain, but I haven't had any serious spyware issues since then.

THAT's the dumbest thing I've done with MY machine!

Roger

[Nancy in Oregon]

...dumped a whole tall latte (with sugar) into the back of my laptop computer at a meeting. The computer kept crashing and telling me there were hardware problems. I opened it up, set it on end on a bunch of towels in the hot car and let it sit there for about 6 hours. Thank goodness it has worked fine ever since.

Nancy

[Nick]

Went to a website and started reading posts by people named Carol, Mary, Michael, Bob, Charles, Don, Morgan, and a few others. Ended up having to buy a new truck and a fiberglass egg and driving all over the country to see if they were really having as good of a time as they let on. They were and now we are too. Plus we have made many good friends. Thanks.

[Frederick L. Simson]

I opened an unsolicited, anonomous email at work on a company computer that contained some sort of virus. It was a very similar situation to a Southwest Airlines commercial I saw some time ago... They were advertizing their "Get Away" fares and showing examples of situations where someone would need to "Get Away" from something very quickly.

The problem was isolated to the shipping computer, which never ran properly afterwards, until the boss totally upgraded the whole network with new hardware.

[Morgan]

Originally posted by Gina D.@Nov 11 2005, 10:41 PM
The dumbest thing I have done with my computer? Discovered I could put a credit card # in it.. and then stuff shows up at my house a few days later!

This keeps happening. Think it's a virus?

Sounds more like a fungus, Gina.

[Morgan]

I, of course, have never done anything dumb with my computer.

However, when I was in South Africa, Lee called in tears. She had been trying t send me a FAX on the computer and it started endlessly scrolling:

Fatal error
Fatal error
...

She thought she had killed it.

This was a CP/M machine back a hundred years ago (in the last century, at least).

[Gina D.]

We have a guy at work that is from Vietnam. His english is fine for conversation, and he is the sweetest thing you would ever want to meet. Very timid, but as easy going as it gets.

One day he came to me because he knows I am pretty good with computers. He said he couldn't get his computer to work. He was almost embarrassed and very serious when he told me. "I think I was dumb and got a Bacteria".

[jdtrotter]

I visited a website. I don't know which one. I was looking for song lyrics or something stupid. The website downloaded spyware onto my machine. Not regular spyware, but really crafty, wylie, nasty, SMART spyware. My machine slowed to a crawl. I had extra browser bars on IE. IE was hijacked. It went to a home page I didn't want. I couldn't change it. It was NOT pretty.

In my very slow computer education, I thought it strange, but quaint when my computer opened to different home pages, and gosh, that little gator and friends who showed up on my browser bar were cute! I had no idea what was happening until I could cook an entire meal before the computer would boot up.

It was a looooooooooong clean-up job.

Diane

[Roger H]

Originally posted by Morgan@Nov 12 2005, 01:39 PM
This was a CP/M machine back a hundred years ago (in the last century, at least).

Ahhh... Morgan... CP/M... music to my ears... how I long for those days of 160k single-sided 5 1/4" floppies and 32k of RAM...

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Roger

[Donna D.]

Well, I don't want to go back that far in history...just maybe to 5:09pm PT yesterday...mere moments before we were hacked

[Brian B-P]

Originally posted by Roger H@Nov 12 2005, 03:30 PM
... how I long for those days of 160k single-sided 5 1/4" floppies and 32k of RAM...

So Roger isn't really that old. I remember 8-inch floppies, in a PDP-11 computer. We thought they were very cool (that was a current term at the time...) because they could store data that could be taken to another computer, and they worked a lot better for program storage than punched cards. I don't think I'll explain punched cards, since I am already feeling old enough.

Like others, I have done enough dumb things that no one event stands out.


In this case, to me "hijacked" means taken over by someone other than the legitimate owner. In other cases the URL (address) of a web site is made to point to another server, which is sometimes called hijacking, but in this case we are on the right server, but a hacker has damaged the content. The method used in this case is particularly annoying, because the hacker's actions appear to be by the legitimate owner, making recovery more difficult - it's like someone using your credit card or chequebook with a signature that looks just like yours.

[Mary F]

I like Nick's answer best.