Computer Horror Stories

[acumenerratica]

I have a good one...
Now, being on a robotics team I have developed the ambition to custom fit things where they normally shouldnt go, like attempting to put large watercooling equipment into a shuttle box (for those who dont know, its a barebones case/psu/mobo combo the size of a shoebox).

i test fit the stuff outside the case, its peachy

attack the waterblock to my video card and WHOOSH goes the water and antifreeze...

suffice it to say, my videocard took a bath

its drying right now

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by Pat McCarthy

So, today I decided that I could use some storage space on my new computer (I've got a gig left). I put the old hard drive (80 GB, so you can understand how tempting it was). I started up the computer and everything was fine, then, *restart*

So, I tried it again and it restarted sooner. By this point I was freaked out and shaking. I shut down the computer and nearly ripped the front of the computer case into little pieces. I removed the second hard drive and started the computer back up.

It’s still working. *Knocks on wooden desk* Whew

Running Windows XP? Likely it didn't like the new hardware. I had that problem with some new ram I bought. I even went so far as to try to reinstall windows, but it would BSOD durring the install. However, the BSOD gave me enough information to figure out what went wrong.

XP is very picky about what it will run on. Snob. My Ubuntu live cd dosn't care that it is on a dual pentium 200mhz machine with 657kb of ram and 4 scsi drives in a RIAD array. (However, gentoo did care, it didn't support the RAID controller.)


Wetzel

[Katie Reynolds]

About 2 months after I got my new desktop ...

... Oops.

A good friend of mine went to Australia shortly before "the incident" and brought a cute kola back for me ...

If you didn't know what had happened, you wouldn't be able to tell!!

[JoeFryman]

Once I had a CD in my CD-RW drive and I left it there over vacation, the poor CD still spinning for about 2 or 3 weeks. When I came back, I opened a file on the CD and I heard a sound. A bad sound. I hit eject and found little bits of CD-R in the tray. It was funny. And horrific. Now I have to use a USB cd writer. For everything.

[Pat McCarthy]

Originally Posted by Pat McCarthy

I just had a bit of a scary experience with a second hard drive.

Some background: A few years ago I had a computer that died from an unknown cause. I took it to CompUSA and they said it was a result of a dead CPU fan and that the motherboard was probably fried. The symptom of the death was the computer only staying on for a few minutes then restarting.

So, today I decided that I could use some storage space on my new computer (I've got a gig left). I put the old hard drive (80 GB, so you can understand how tempting it was). I started up the computer and everything was fine, then, *restart*

So, I tried it again and it restarted sooner. By this point I was freaked out and shaking. I shut down the computer and nearly ripped the front of the computer case into little pieces. I removed the second hard drive and started the computer back up.

It’s still working. *Knocks on wooden desk* Whew.

I now believe that CompUSA’s diagnosis was right, but they should have also said that it could have also been a problem with the hard drive. Needless to say, I’m not using that hard drive again.

I have a happy ending to this story. More of a 'revisit'.
I was still living with 1 GB of storage on my computer's stock 40 GB hard drive.
Finally, my birthday rolled around and I came into some cash .
I went to CompUSA and bought a 160 GB Seagate interal hard drive and Mad Dog 3.5" external enclosure (A friend of mine who works there recommended the enclosure because it was on sale and better than the one that I was going to buy).
I brought the hard drive home and realized that I had a spot for it inside my tower. I installed it, formated it, and got it working perfectly.
I realized that I had an external hard drive enclosure and no drive for it.

Remember?

Originally Posted by Pat McCarthy

Needless to say, I’m not using that hard drive again.

Well, I forgot about saying that and put that old 80 GB drive into the external enclosure, plugged it in and decided that the best plan of action was to scan it with Norton Anti-Virus.
2 1/2 hours and 113 Adware 'Threats' later, I breathed a sigh of relief and went to deleting all of the stuff that I really didn't need on the drive.
The first thing?
The 'WINDOWS' folder! Windows ME to be specific.
After that, I deleted every program that I didn't know what it was or that I didn't want.
Looking at the files on the drive was like opening a time capsule from 3 years ago. It was amazing how unorganized my folder system was.

The drive has been running great since I hooked it up this past Friday.

[Michelle Celio]

Thats pretty awesome....

And Windows ME should of never been invented.

Ever.

So whats your total storage that you can get out of that?

[Ian Curtis]

What an interesting topic to see back from the dead!

A month or too ago I was on AIM when this window popped up from a friends instant messanger telling me to go to a file that ended in .com (a windows executable). Being the smart person that I am I didn't click on it and exited out of the window. I left for play practice leaving my computer and AIM on. Bad Choice. When I get home later my computer has become infected with a virus that likes to download spyware and constantly runs pokapoka75.exe. Well it won't go away. So I do the usual (adaware, AVG) figuring it'll go away. WRONG! It doesn't like to leave. I google it and find other solutions. I try some of them and it still won't go away. YARGH! Luckily I find a program specifically designed to destroy my virus "friend". It's called Aimfix and the guy that built it is my hero. It got rid of the virus perfectly. This thread does remind me that I should probably run a spyware check though...

[Pat McCarthy]

Originally Posted by Fruity Pebbles

Thats pretty awesome....

And Windows ME should of never been invented.

Ever.

So whats your total storage that you can get out of that?

I agree fully.
I've got 280 GB now.

[scitobor 617]

Ok here is my horror story, it's a little long and since it was on linux it gets a bit technical.

I maintain a website which is hosted from my desktop computer. At the time(about two monthes ago) I was running Slackware, a linux distro. I was only running slackware because I had not found the time to install Gentoo Linux(a very popular linux distro) yet. For those not familir with Linux, it is suggested that you never use the admin(root) user except for when installing software. This is a rule that I have always obeyed and maybe took to an extreem. I created several user accounts for different task; a day-to-day user, a test account for trying new software, a user for my sister, and shell accounts for the people that I hosted(note pass tense). When I created my test user I did not use a very good password, actually I just used the username.

One night I was working on my website and listening to music when I noticed that my computer was being very sluggish, like when I compile a really big program. So my command line reflexes took over and I instictually opened a command line window typed "ps -aux" and prepared to kill off some uneeded processes. But to my dismay there were over 200(normally I only have 70-100) processes running and must of them were being run by my test user, which I had not used in days. Even more odd was the fact that one of the listed processes was run by this user was apache(this should not be possible because of my security configurations). When I checked to see what binary file was being run I relized that the programs name and the location of the executable file were both spooffed(forged), signalling to me that this was much more than me forgeting to logout of an ssh session. At this point I realized that there was a hacker logged into my computer and he was in the process of compiling some programs and had already starting running several others.

So I decided I had a unique chance to catch this hacker and the act. First I used "netstat" to find his IP address. I then sent him a message, using "wall", which was to the effect of "How dumb do u think i am boozoe!" but a bit more profane as the situation called for it. Finally I unplugged my ethernet cable and began picking apart everything that had just happend. I located the files and programs he was in the process of installing and found the config files for a progam that he had installed. The config files had several passwords and usernames in it. The logins where for an IRC chat server. The next day I used one of the logins to connect to the IRC server and surprised the hacker by starting to chat with him about why he was trying to use my server.

Luckily this guy was not very bright and did not seem to realize that his every move was being logged. I used the logs to backtrack his activity and to find out how he had downloaded the files to my computer. He had used several ftp servers and used the IP address instead of domain names. I gathered up all of the IPs and did a little poking around and found that most of the computers were Windows PCs and were likely infected with a virus. So I reported the incedent to the involved ISP's abuse email addresses.

In the end I did not lose any data because the person that hacked me was trying to go undetected plus the fact that the account he was using did not have enough privaligeses to do much damage. Also, the fact that this hacker was sloppy helped

This experience showed me some things I love about linux, a more personal touch when your computer is hacked rather than in-human automation(viruses, spyware, trojans)

[Laura 1547]

My teacher accidently kicked my power cord a couple weeks ago and my laptop sort of...exploded...haha it was horrible!

My laptop got shipped off and ended up at HP headquarters...when it came back the report said they replaced my system board, my memory, and my adapter.

Last week I was working on my laptop and it randomly shut off and wouldn't start back up. I took it to the IT at school and she said that it was probably a faulty system board that they put back in. *Sigh* This happens to be the week that the most important project of my English class is due and I've had to start over

I'm not very good with computers. I always seem to have the worst luck with them. My old laptop's hard drive was replaced 4 times in 1.5 years...its crazy!!