I did the dumbest tech thing I have ever done yesterday... - Page 2 - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

Sample00 · 05-19-2009, 03:24 PM

welcome to the afterlife, Photon!!

photon · 05-19-2009, 03:30 PM

I gotta deal for you! I had a dream that you bought a car from me!

Hack&Lube · 05-19-2009, 03:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Canuck-Hater

Well I havnt quite done anything like that, but I had quite an experience 5 months back. I tried overclocking my CPU changed the Bus speed by about 20. After that my computer wouldnt start, so I was pretty much screwed. Had to call a tech guy to come over and fix my PC. Yep biggest waste of 60 bux.

And your computer still worked. No biggie. I've physically melted an Athlon XP via overclocking. All these wierd silvery things came out of the core.

llama64 · 05-19-2009, 03:38 PM

Way back in Jr High I was helping a friend "speed" up his families new computer. The idea was that the less crap in the main directory "C:\", the faster it would go (and the more room for important things like games.

So we deleted boot.sys and a few other key system files. Everything was fine until later that night when I got a threatening phone call from his Dad telling me that I had to pay for the phone call to Compaq to get his computer booting again.

Thankfully it was the last week of Grade 9 and his family moved back East for highschool. Cuz his dad was in the Military, owned a crap ton of guns and had a short fuse. The kid was also kinda nuts too.

Pretty much convinced me that I never, ever, want to work at an IT help desk.

(for the record, do not let some moron kid touch your boot sector ever. In all sense of that phrase...)

Azure · 05-19-2009, 05:19 PM

There is a reason I always create a separate C partition to install the operating system.

Old Yeller · 05-19-2009, 05:44 PM

I used to work tech support at a downtown office that was doing renovations. The guys left a bunch of leftover carpet so some guy decided to to carpet his entire computer because "the tower sat on the floor and I thought it'd look cool".

He cut out holes for the power button, disk drive and necessary cabling but NOT FOR VENTILATION. Needless to say after a certain period of time, the insides of the computer were somewhere between a liquid and a solid state.

So take heart Photon, you're nowhere near as stupid as the average person.

BlackArcher101 · 05-19-2009, 06:05 PM

Ya, it's not so bad. I once touched the underside of a hard drive while it was running... can you say spark/flame/smoke show?

Working tech support was also a pleasure, especially when I found out a field tech had been installing cable modems INSIDE the computer case.

I-Hate-Hulse · 05-19-2009, 06:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Azure

There is a reason I always create a separate C partition to install the operating system.

I used to do that for people. Said people would also try and install ginormous apps to C:\Program Files. Or gigs of photos to My Documents. Repartitioning was always such a pain....

Peanut · 05-19-2009, 08:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by photon

So I'm putting together a computer for my kid from spare parts around my office...

Yeah, you lost me at this part of the story. So don't fret too much - if driving a school bus is in your future then I'm terrified for what mine holds.

Dumbest tech thing ever - my husband tried to lock a folder on our desktop computer that had some confidential business files (and/or his pr0n. But whatever, we'll go with business files). Ended up applying the password to the entire system and then promptly forgot the password so we were locked out of our own computer for over a month before his step-dad finally stepped in to save us.

Burninator · 05-19-2009, 08:14 PM

That's pretty dumb photon, I'm glad I've never done anything like that.

McG · 05-19-2009, 08:50 PM

i got the help call from a buddy just after windows 95 came out. both he and i knew computers quite well at the time but he decided that, after reading an article about files that were installed but not needed...he would just start to delete files after booting to dos. back in the day...space on the hdd was a huge deal...and anything that could be done to speed things up was worth it...

you know where this is going.

every time he saw a file or command that he didn't know...he deleted it. things were going well...new space was being created...

until he deleted one file too many...and the computer froze. as in...turning it off and then back on did nothing. it was a brick. a prehistoric brick as we now know...but a brick none the less.

so i got the call to bring my win 95 discs over and he would try to copy the right file back to his hard drive...or do a full on reinstall from scratch if that didn't work.

Let's just say that i had pure win 95 discs...and his were from whatever company he got the computer from. yup. bundleware and bloatware were out even back then. needless to say, his software had so many unique drivers and presettings that my o/s didn't work at all. it cost him a chunk of money to get the disks from the company and get his computer back up and running.

kinda funny to look back on it.

jammies · 05-19-2009, 08:59 PM

I had a customer in Vancouver who put shrink wrap all over his new server, then called to say it kept beeping loudly then shutting off after a few minutes. When a tech visited him and saw it, he said it was the hardest thing he ever did not to laugh and laugh and laugh.

When asked why, he said "I thought it would keep the dust off".

---

Speaking of which, don't be one of those people that leaves labels and stickers all over your computer, printer, monitor, etc. Do you leave the tags on all your clothes, too?

Buff · 05-19-2009, 10:08 PM

I was once the 2nd technician to take a look at a computer for which we couldn't figure out what the problem was. I needed to try out a new CPU and the web developer was taking a long lunch so we decided to quickly take the CPU from his machine and try it on the MB of the inexplicably broken computer.

Well, I was trying to remove the heat sync but it was jammed in there pretty good. Suddenly it popped out... along with the CPU still glued to it. Just as I was holding it up thinking "Oh Crap!" my boss walked in, saw it and automatically realized what I did and shrieked... I thought there was a hawk in the building or something. Somehow the CPU came out but the pins didn't bend. Not a single pin. Fluke!

Fast forward a couple of years, and a couple of guys were trying to remove the CPU from a PC for which they were going to be replacing the MB. Well, the one guy couldn't figure out how to remove the heat sync so I told him to startup the computer for about 30 seconds to heat up the CPU and immediately after turning it off, remove the heat sync, and told him my story of what I did and then went for lunch. He decided to wait until I got back from lunch. The other guy was impatient and just yanked the heat sync out... CPU and all. Same thing happened to him as did to me, and fortunately he didn't bend the pins on the CPU either.

Buff · 05-19-2009, 10:14 PM

Another time I was working on a script to delete everything in My Documents on a public use PC when the user logs off. For reasons unbeknownst to even myself, I was using the C:\ directory to test it out. I can't remember the specifics but I managed to leave all the folders and their contents, but any files sitting on the root of C:\ were deleted. Even the script that I used. Of course my co-worker was there when I first tested it, and I couldn't figure out where the script went. Then when he looked at the open copy I still had in notepad he burst out laughing at me.

Nuje · 05-19-2009, 11:46 PM

Haha...looking at that format c: makes me feel old. What are all these other important files in C:\ anyways? I thought it was just command.com, autoexec.bat, and config.sys (and a 3.5" boot disk could bail you out every time). That's about the last time I used a computer beyond what the average user does. I was always the kid on the block who would fix problems....I quit when I first experienced windows 95.

Daradon · 05-20-2009, 12:11 AM

Nah, you're just having a dumb day.

You'll be back to your geeky self in no time.

Nufy · 05-20-2009, 04:27 PM

I once put a running PLC on a compressor station into program mode.

Vented enough nat gas to heat a small town for 3 years.

I still get reminded of that one after 7 years.......

onetwo_threefour · 05-20-2009, 04:56 PM

I once flashed a BIOS with the wrong BIOS update....

I had had my Sony Vaio Desktop for a couple of years and though it was about time to go looking around for updated drivers etc. I decided there was probably a BIOS update out there somewhere, and Sony's support website being garbage couldn't find anything there. So I opened up the computer and wrote down the Chipset and model info from the motherboard and went googling for BIOS updates. So far so good, but here's where I got hit with the stupid stick. I found a BIOS update for a motherboard model that was ALMOST the same as the one I had, the last digit was different on it I think. I decided it was close enough, even though I know better and flashed the BIOS. It seemed to go well until the reboot when I noticed that the splash screen now came up as an Intel BIOS splash screen instead of the Sony Vaio screen. The computer seemed to work okay but wasn't really any better than before.

All went fine until I wanted to fix a problem where I had a corrupted Windows file. I loaded the recivery program only to be told that the program was only for use on authentic Sony systems and it shut down. Then I found out that you can't get Sony BIOS images anywhere, so I couldn't flash it back to anything else. Basically over time my system deteriorated because I didn't want to fork out for a new OS. I ended up buying a new system just before Christmas.

sclitheroe · 05-20-2009, 06:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by onetwo_threefour

Basically over time my system deteriorated because I didn't want to fork out for a new OS. I ended up buying a new system just before Christmas.

BIOS updates are so tempting, and yet 99% of the time they don't fix anything that is broken for most users. And the results of a bad flash are always...sad.

And yet, we do them anyways, because on some level, I think we hope it will bring back that new computer smell...which it does when you inevitably make a mistake and need a new mobo or card.

NuclearFart · 05-20-2009, 09:05 PM

I once was trying to remove the stock cooling fan on my northbridge chip, and it had these one-way plastic pins holding it in that I didnt want to rip out for fear of damaging the brand new motherboard. So I took a long serrated kitchen knife to cut them off, and after cutting through the first pin, my knife blade carried forward through the new motherboard. 500$ gone before I'd even tried the board out

See y'all on the handi bus!