Great PC mistakes that you have made <Nerd Mode>
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Great PC mistakes that you have made <Nerd Mode>
Ok, geeky in the extreme, but Mr Dastards comment about grown men weeping when they can't work out why wi fi isn't working...because they didn't hit the on switch rings a few bells.
Shiny new 5.1 speakers. Only getting sound from two, so onto the internerd, new drivers. Nope. Uninstall, reinstall with old drivers. Nuh-uh. Check & re-do wiring to speakers. Nix. Undo pc, remove sound card, brush a bit of dust off, re-seat sound card. Nada. Try new drivers again. Start crying.
Call IT professional mate who comes round, hmmms a bit, then turns the balance fader round to the middle & Da da!
We can all learn from me
Shiny new 5.1 speakers. Only getting sound from two, so onto the internerd, new drivers. Nope. Uninstall, reinstall with old drivers. Nuh-uh. Check & re-do wiring to speakers. Nix. Undo pc, remove sound card, brush a bit of dust off, re-seat sound card. Nada. Try new drivers again. Start crying.
Call IT professional mate who comes round, hmmms a bit, then turns the balance fader round to the middle & Da da!
We can all learn from me
Spoon PPRuNerist & Mad Inistrator
The worst thing that ever happened to me with computers -
Years ago (1995) I was administrator of a Novell NetWare system. At that time, all the login scripts were held as a single file, with "if username=nnnn then do" statements. Not my idea - someone else's bright idea, considering there were about 450 people on this system, over multiple servers (I seem to recall that each server had a 250 user license, and there was much duplication of accounts to access shared information).
Anyhow, while working on the system in building B, with the server in building A, the network link went down - while I was editing the syslogin file (I can't actually remember the file name now, it is over 10 years since I last used NetWare!).
Imagine my horror when I got back onto the server to discover that the syslogin file was now blank...
For some reason that I have now forgotten, the backup tapes were unusable also.
That was a real "kicked in the nuts by computers" day.
SD
Years ago (1995) I was administrator of a Novell NetWare system. At that time, all the login scripts were held as a single file, with "if username=nnnn then do" statements. Not my idea - someone else's bright idea, considering there were about 450 people on this system, over multiple servers (I seem to recall that each server had a 250 user license, and there was much duplication of accounts to access shared information).
Anyhow, while working on the system in building B, with the server in building A, the network link went down - while I was editing the syslogin file (I can't actually remember the file name now, it is over 10 years since I last used NetWare!).
Imagine my horror when I got back onto the server to discover that the syslogin file was now blank...
For some reason that I have now forgotten, the backup tapes were unusable also.
That was a real "kicked in the nuts by computers" day.
SD
I can think of a few;
Installing new ram into a machine without earthing myself in the process, therefore I ended up with cooked RAM.
Formatted a Hard Drive on the assumption I had backed it up, when I actually hadn't.
Did a BIOS upgrade, when halfway through it, the power failed. Said a few swear words, then waited for the power to come back on to see if the install had been successful or not.
Installing new ram into a machine without earthing myself in the process, therefore I ended up with cooked RAM.
Formatted a Hard Drive on the assumption I had backed it up, when I actually hadn't.
Did a BIOS upgrade, when halfway through it, the power failed. Said a few swear words, then waited for the power to come back on to see if the install had been successful or not.
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Back in 197* buying a diy 256 byte (yes, 1/4K) RAM computer with just a two-digit hex display for £300+ and having to take it home in a bag and solder it all together.
That was just the start..........
That was just the start..........
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Person X was under pressure to get some personal things off the department's PDP-10 (it was that long ago). In a hurry, he logged in as administrator at the root of the file system and typed DEL *.* Cleaned the file system out really well. Some users were really upset since their work hadn't been backed up.
I met him again some years later when he was employed as a computer security expert.
I met him again some years later when he was employed as a computer security expert.
After disconnecting everything and moving it so Mrs could vacuum up all the accumulated dust ... was putting everything back together and inserted the speaker power supply into the cable modem ...
Hmmm what's that funny smell? Smells like burning electronics ... Where's that coming from?
Hmmm what's that funny smell? Smells like burning electronics ... Where's that coming from?
'nough said
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Buying a new hard-disk to install Win2k to avoid the risk of losing any data.
...
Then fdisk'ing the old drive by mistake.
Three year's worth of Mrs Word's work (teacher) zapped.
...
Then fdisk'ing the old drive by mistake.
Three year's worth of Mrs Word's work (teacher) zapped.
Psychophysiological entity
When I wuz a computer company owner, people used to pay me a lot of money to tell them things. We'd progressed to DOS 6.22 by then and as a CAD specialist, I made the famous prediction that Windows was just a load of pretty rubbish...and would never catch on.
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Not computers - but close, and world class stupid
An 'important' fax came in but the paper feed got jammed. The sheet ended up like a concertina. Not a problem, switch on the electric iron and sandwich the fax between two paper sheets. One minute later - one A4 fax sheet of smooth paper - but solid black.
An 'important' fax came in but the paper feed got jammed. The sheet ended up like a concertina. Not a problem, switch on the electric iron and sandwich the fax between two paper sheets. One minute later - one A4 fax sheet of smooth paper - but solid black.
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Just this afternoon spent around an hour and a half on the phone to btinternet call centre being talked through everything trying to get wi-fi to work on a brand new laptop that belongs to a mate.
I had to take it out of the box and get it all started up and everything as my mate is clueless and always asks me to help him with things like this.
Anyhow, setting up the wireless router from BT I spent a long time on the phone as I say trying everything, pressing the 'Internet' button along the top of the lappy a few times, no joy, pressed FN+F2 the wireless button, no joy, woman on other end really struggling now as to what to do.(she had connected to his laptop and was trying everything from her end)
Whilst I was waiting for the laptop to restart after another failed attempt I was looking again through the manual. Looked at the diagram for the front of the unit and looked right at the switch on the left underneath, Wireless On/Off.......................................
I had to take it out of the box and get it all started up and everything as my mate is clueless and always asks me to help him with things like this.
Anyhow, setting up the wireless router from BT I spent a long time on the phone as I say trying everything, pressing the 'Internet' button along the top of the lappy a few times, no joy, pressed FN+F2 the wireless button, no joy, woman on other end really struggling now as to what to do.(she had connected to his laptop and was trying everything from her end)
Whilst I was waiting for the laptop to restart after another failed attempt I was looking again through the manual. Looked at the diagram for the front of the unit and looked right at the switch on the left underneath, Wireless On/Off.......................................
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You've reminded me of something, BRL. Not computing, but SD's a very patient guy.
Notoriously short-tempered mate was installing quite expensive cordless telephone system in his warehouse. Ran an extension lead to the 'command centre' for all the phone extensions.
Mounted same at various stragegic locations throughout the building. Switched on - nothing. Tried extension in another wall socket - nothing. Plugged something else into both wall sockets - worked fine.
Totally lost control and smashed command centre to pieces.
When I checked later, the fuse in the extension lead plug was blown.
Notoriously short-tempered mate was installing quite expensive cordless telephone system in his warehouse. Ran an extension lead to the 'command centre' for all the phone extensions.
Mounted same at various stragegic locations throughout the building. Switched on - nothing. Tried extension in another wall socket - nothing. Plugged something else into both wall sockets - worked fine.
Totally lost control and smashed command centre to pieces.
When I checked later, the fuse in the extension lead plug was blown.
Back in the days when I was at Uni, I was aiming for a Computer Science Major, so knew how to program in C, Java etc etc. I was able to create a cool program for DOS based computers that would make the hard drive search for files, but display the DOS prompt saying that it was formatting C: and counting up to 100%, no matter what keys were pressed, even the reset button was disabled. 
Really nothing went wrong at all and guys had a good laugh at the end of it all.
But what was worse, was that one night after a few drinks, and a few bets from mates, I tried to reprogram the program to go into the CompSci network, spread itself through the network, and all at once, start running through the procedures mentioned above. Except in my slight inebriated state, I forgot a few lines of code, and at the appointed moment, I was able to format the Hard Drives of over 200 terminals, servers and the backups and standby units.
My university career ended at that moment.
Really nothing went wrong at all and guys had a good laugh at the end of it all.But what was worse, was that one night after a few drinks, and a few bets from mates, I tried to reprogram the program to go into the CompSci network, spread itself through the network, and all at once, start running through the procedures mentioned above. Except in my slight inebriated state, I forgot a few lines of code, and at the appointed moment, I was able to format the Hard Drives of over 200 terminals, servers and the backups and standby units.
My university career ended at that moment.
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Long one this and about as frustrating as anything I've ever done!
One of mates dropped off and old stack that he no longer used, he thought the memory was dodgy and knew it would take longer to fix than the cost of just buying a new one.
Being a bit of a geek he only had Fedora 6 loaded on, though it wouldn't boot, he reckoned because of the memory problems..
Ok so I've got copies of 98 and XP on an external HD and bought a linux mag with the latest issue of fedora on...
Computer won't boot, just sits there looking at me. Rebuild it carefully, it only recognises half the memory but eventually success. Upgrade the Fedora installation, no probs.
Couldn't boot from USB so I need to burn a disk... Pooter boots very occasionally and crashes 5 times during burning of xp disk. Odd. Took it apart reseating memory very carefully and it boots fine everytime.. Until I plug the rewriter and CD back in... Starts playing silly buggers again...
Rebuild system again sans DVDs and look in the boot logfile... Hundreds of processor interupts which shouldn't be there... Wtf is going on thinks I? The CPU fan is ancient and naff so I replace it, no difference... Buy a new secondhand CPU, no difference.... Memory now checks fine every time....
Rip out the graphcs and audio cards and system seems to work fine, burn windows CDs for XP and 98(just in case) and try to boot from CD. XP falls over, out of memory.... Good job I've got the 98 CD burned so try to run installation. 98 does exactly the same.... 512 meg system and 98 setup is OOM?????
Has to be a virtual memory problem so I figure I need a dos partition on there. No floppy in stack and I don't have a dos floppy anyway....
Back to Fedora and after only 2 hours of looking through man pages I find a utility which allows me to change the filesystem to dos. I do that, XP setup still moans so try 98. Marvellous idea, seems to be working..... except that it insists on formatting the HD. Not a problem except that 98 is more used to being run on 40meg hds, not 160 gig ones... 2 hours in and 7% complete... Bugger.
So need to create a small dos partition... Means loading Fedora on again, oh well it only takes about an hour. Create partition and load 98 on the system. Right, time to load XP on from my external HD, no problem just need to load USB drivers on. Small cd with drivers on won't work, too scratched after years of disuse > library > burn CD with drivers on.
External HD up and running so load XP in.... just need the code which I have stored in my online........ email account. Ouch, only got a wireless network, and no drivers for a wifi card are likely to work on 98 anyway. Fedora wouldn't detect the wifi card at all.... Get code from library computer access and replace Fedora partition with NTFS. All seems fine but..... Xp doesn't recognise my wifi card. Check wifi card for manufacturer. Solid stainless box covers the pcb so no clue as to what it is... Ouch. Can't even try a generic driver as can't get on t'internet without said driver for wifi card.
Phone mate, neither of us thinks we can ID the card under windows. Oh thinks I, Unix has pciconfig which will tell me what it is..... Would be great if I still had Unix on the system.... Reload Fedora onto the machine, which happily decides that it will wipe the drive of any other filesystems...
Go out and get exceptionally drunk very early in the day. Attempt not to kick said machine as I stumble in later.
Find type of wifi card under Fedora > library > burn Cd with drivers > create small partition > 98 setup > USB drivers > Win XP > load Wifi drivers > internet access! Success!
So I blissfully re-install audio and graphics cards, along with the extra CD drive that I'd left out and even go as far as putting the case back on. I should have known better. . Pooter refuses to boot, doesn't even get as far as the memory test. It sits there, looking at me and refusing to do a sodding thing.
Soooo.... There was another problem.. I sorted it but can you guess what it is yet?
One of mates dropped off and old stack that he no longer used, he thought the memory was dodgy and knew it would take longer to fix than the cost of just buying a new one.
Being a bit of a geek he only had Fedora 6 loaded on, though it wouldn't boot, he reckoned because of the memory problems..
Ok so I've got copies of 98 and XP on an external HD and bought a linux mag with the latest issue of fedora on...
Computer won't boot, just sits there looking at me. Rebuild it carefully, it only recognises half the memory but eventually success. Upgrade the Fedora installation, no probs.
Couldn't boot from USB so I need to burn a disk... Pooter boots very occasionally and crashes 5 times during burning of xp disk. Odd. Took it apart reseating memory very carefully and it boots fine everytime.. Until I plug the rewriter and CD back in... Starts playing silly buggers again...
Rebuild system again sans DVDs and look in the boot logfile... Hundreds of processor interupts which shouldn't be there... Wtf is going on thinks I? The CPU fan is ancient and naff so I replace it, no difference... Buy a new secondhand CPU, no difference.... Memory now checks fine every time....
Rip out the graphcs and audio cards and system seems to work fine, burn windows CDs for XP and 98(just in case) and try to boot from CD. XP falls over, out of memory.... Good job I've got the 98 CD burned so try to run installation. 98 does exactly the same.... 512 meg system and 98 setup is OOM?????
Has to be a virtual memory problem so I figure I need a dos partition on there. No floppy in stack and I don't have a dos floppy anyway....
Back to Fedora and after only 2 hours of looking through man pages I find a utility which allows me to change the filesystem to dos. I do that, XP setup still moans so try 98. Marvellous idea, seems to be working..... except that it insists on formatting the HD. Not a problem except that 98 is more used to being run on 40meg hds, not 160 gig ones... 2 hours in and 7% complete... Bugger.
So need to create a small dos partition... Means loading Fedora on again, oh well it only takes about an hour. Create partition and load 98 on the system. Right, time to load XP on from my external HD, no problem just need to load USB drivers on. Small cd with drivers on won't work, too scratched after years of disuse > library > burn CD with drivers on.
External HD up and running so load XP in.... just need the code which I have stored in my online........ email account. Ouch, only got a wireless network, and no drivers for a wifi card are likely to work on 98 anyway. Fedora wouldn't detect the wifi card at all.... Get code from library computer access and replace Fedora partition with NTFS. All seems fine but..... Xp doesn't recognise my wifi card. Check wifi card for manufacturer. Solid stainless box covers the pcb so no clue as to what it is... Ouch. Can't even try a generic driver as can't get on t'internet without said driver for wifi card.
Phone mate, neither of us thinks we can ID the card under windows. Oh thinks I, Unix has pciconfig which will tell me what it is..... Would be great if I still had Unix on the system.... Reload Fedora onto the machine, which happily decides that it will wipe the drive of any other filesystems...
Go out and get exceptionally drunk very early in the day. Attempt not to kick said machine as I stumble in later.
Find type of wifi card under Fedora > library > burn Cd with drivers > create small partition > 98 setup > USB drivers > Win XP > load Wifi drivers > internet access! Success!
So I blissfully re-install audio and graphics cards, along with the extra CD drive that I'd left out and even go as far as putting the case back on. I should have known better. . Pooter refuses to boot, doesn't even get as far as the memory test. It sits there, looking at me and refusing to do a sodding thing.
Soooo.... There was another problem.. I sorted it but can you guess what it is yet?
Spent two years studying "computer science," back in the early eighties. Spent a lot of time writing programs in "BASIC," which were run at a local University, and outputted to a "teletype."
I never thought it'd all catch on, so pursued a different career.
Now my kids have to show me how to get my MP3 player loaded
I never thought it'd all catch on, so pursued a different career.
Now my kids have to show me how to get my MP3 player loaded