Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - Hardware/Software - Scary computer experiences
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interdpth
Posts: 494/527 |
Well my first weird experience was after I had formmated this drive and put it in and installed XP on it I couldn't see my C drive after a while I finally figured E was my home drive.
Now then this one freaks out my whole family and friends.
Ok in XP I have about 50 programs in my taskbar running everyday. My computer runs fine. But when someone else gets on it it slows down or freezes. I usually come back hit Windows Key + L to go to the login screen or I hit crtl+alt+ delete and kill explorer that usually solves the problem but like if some one is using it and it slows down I come over and a few minutes later it runs fine for me then they get on and it slows down. |
HyperLamer
Posts: 5909/8210 |
Yep, Mcafee is a piece of crap.  And that's why you generally leave room for your drink or put the cap on. A lot of things have those protection circuits, though, which is good. I've had several things (computer, N64, etc) just refuse to turn on, only to start working again later, when I did something bad to them.
Ah yes, and let's not forget the time I replaced the floppy drive in my old 486. It was the first time I did any hardware work, so I didn't really know what to do. Easy enough to figure out, but I wound up plugging the hard disk in backward. This computer didn't have anything to protect it from that, so when I turned it on it just beeped like hell, garbage on the screen, all sorts of crap. It worked fine when I reconnected it, but since it was way old the HD eventually just died anyway.  (It kept asking me to insert a disk in drive C.  ) |
Xeon
Posts: 7/25 |
I've had a few computers do some scary stuff, my most scariest would have to be last month. It was a horrible thunderstorm out and I figured i'd better shut my computer off, as im waiting for XP to shutdown....It takes forever! A huge bolt of lightning struck very near to my house, it caused the monitor to buzz. Finally XP decided OHHHH i'm going to shut down now! Later as the storm went away, I go to turn on my computer and what do I see on the screen when it reboots...'Error loading OS...Press any key to reboot.'. Now I have never seen this error before, and frankly I didnt think it would ever happen to me. Luckily I had an XP recovery CD and used fixmbr and fixboot and also ran scandisk. Which seemed to fix the problem because everything booted up fine. I did notice though, all the changes I made to my desktop the day before did not save.
Another time I was scared I broke my monitor. Well I was drinking Code Red Mountain Dew next to my computer, and since I only have two hands, I needed to make use of them at the keyboard. Well my desk was cluttered and I had no where else to put it, but hold it in my mouth with my teath. After a few minutes I forgot it was in my mouth and let out of laugh and the pop fell on my lap, bounced up a few inches and sprayed soda all over the monitor, all over the keyboard, all over the inside of the monitor and then im like ! OHH CRAP!. So I shut my computer down. And when I tried to load it back up, the monitor wouldnt turn on. Nothing on the screen. I was so frustrated i just went to sleep. Next morning I turned it on and it worked fine.
And then there was this other time, I thought it would be a good time to get an anti-virus software with all the crap I had been visiting on Internet. So I figured why not get Macafee. Everything seemed to install fine. But when I rebooted, all I saw was a little blinking cursor in the top left corner of my screen after the windows logo appeared. Apparently an option to scan the ENTIRE harddrive before bootup was set by DEFAULT! Go figure! So finally after going nuts, I remembered safemode, and loaded windows with safemode, before it could execute AUTOEXEC.BAT. Uninstalled Macafee. I tell you, any anti-virus software with that option set by default is nuts! Drives are not 512 MB anymore! They are 20,40,80,100,120 GIGABYTES.
This other time with my first computer, it was only a month old, and I had got it for christmas, it was built by this place called DIT computers. Little did I know they put the wrong motherboard in it and it fried itself. Well one day the computer wouldnt bootup. You would press the button, and you could hear fans, and then sometimes. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. Anyway we took it back to DIT and they replaced the motherboard and the videocard which was a peice of shit.
Thats about it for my scary computer stories. Peace. |
MetalMan88
Posts: 181/232 |
Well, I must take the cake for some of them.
First experience: I'm fixing a friend's computer for pay. I've been trying to make a new power supply work so that it'll be able to use a super-fast nex-gen video card. The computer has an AT power supply, though, so I had to get a power switch to actually activate the computer. After a whole lot of cable fun, I plug it in, and turn it on. It works! I go down stairs to tell everyone, leaving it on. Then I come back... AHHHHH!!!! FIRE!!! The floppy drive cable was melting. I unplugged the computer, and the flames stopped... but it wound up needing a lot more than a new power supply ;p
Then there was the time the power supply exploded. One morning, I'm waking up... BAM BAM BAM BAM! Sounds like gunshots. I go downstairs... and hear that the power supply on the computer has exploded. It SHOT LIGHTNING into the wall, burning some nice big spots. We thought the computer was dead, but it was just a case of needing a new power supply. We were astonished when it booted up like normal. |
fabio
Posts: 127/1479 |
I had a scary computer experience too. It happened right after my so called friend deleted almost everything on my computer except roms and some music. Yeah, my computer has been very slow lately and my "friend" thinks deleting all the useless files would solve it. Boy was he wrong. After just about deleting almost everything on my computer, I went A LOT slower than usual. After that, my computer caught a virus from using thanks to all the ads in Kazaa. It made my computer even slower, so slow that it freezes my computer almost everytime it loaded up. Thankfully, my dad knows a computer expert that can fix just about anything on the computer. After the computer was fixed, my dad told my sister about what happened to the files because the computer I have used to belong to and she change the password so that I can't get on and blame the entire incident on me. Luckily, the computer had poor security so I can get in anytime I want. Hopefully, this experience will never happen to me ever again. |
Ailure
Posts: 10554/11162 |
Originally posted by HyperHacker
What warning? If it's just something like temperature you can probably ignore it. I would think if there were a real problem, it would say that every time you start up.
Making backups often is never a bad idea, though. 
It's saying it every time I startup now. 
Anyway, getting a new HD. And it dosen't have to do anything with the tempratures. Apparently the HD have some problems to... write stuff.  Might be broken sectors, but broken sectors could be a sign of a dying harddrive... |
Nebetsu
Posts: 1388/1574 |
When fans stop and you realise what happened... >> |
Snika
Posts: 162/916 |
"Wake up, Neo!" flashed on my screen in green letters. It woke me up, and I wondered who Neo was...
Seriously, one of the most scary, or annoying, experiences was when I had my dot painting half finished in ArtRage, then the program froze and I had to restart it from scratch!
=P Snika |
Sukasa
Posts: 1191/1981 |
Eh, probably when I was building this computer at a university summer course. My mobo had been in use by someone else the day before, and had been miswired (No idea why he put the power connecter in wrong, or how for that matter). Plugged it in and BANG! Sparks everywhere, dead mobo.
Next day, I had another bad mobo that didn't boot. What did I do? went to a guy with 3 mobos and asked for one. he gave me *surprise*, the mobo that had sparked. I took it back, hooked it up and it booted perfectly. Guy came over and bugged out. He told me what happened and I bugged out too. Kinda funny and surreal, but that's what happened. BTW, I'm typing this post on that same mobo. |
Ran-chan
Posts: 10512/12781 |
Originally posted by HyperHacker
Well it's not exactly computer related, but I dropped my DS yesterday and it froze. No apparent damage, though, but I never quite understood why a sudden impact like that can screw up electronics with no moving parts.
I dropped my new cellphone on the floor in a bus a while ago and it turned itself off. It worked fine afterwards. When you change battery or such things there |
drjayphd
Posts: 1152/1477 |
Install Sygate Personal Firewall, reboot.
BSOD.
Oh. Fuck me.
Reboot? BSOD.
Reboot again? Bee ess oh dee.
Now, I haven't backed anything up yet, soooo...
Went into safe mode, uninstalled ZoneAlarm. Reboot?
BS...oh, wait, it works fine.  Let this be a lesson to ye: only one third-party software firewall installed at a time, kids. |
HyperLamer
Posts: 5632/8210 |
What warning? If it's just something like temperature you can probably ignore it. I would think if there were a real problem, it would say that every time you start up.
Making backups often is never a bad idea, though. |
Ailure
Posts: 10459/11162 |
SMART warning. Imminent failure. Backup immediatly!
That's what I saw when I restarted earliertoday. But my SMART utilities said that the HD was fine.
What to trust, my BIOS or my utilities? It have randomly shown that warning when the HD had alot of work. |
HyperLamer
Posts: 5623/8210 |
Well it's not exactly computer related, but I dropped my DS yesterday and it froze. No apparent damage, though, but I never quite understood why a sudden impact like that can screw up electronics with no moving parts. |
Karadur
Posts: 960/1192 |
For myself, pretty much anytime a program stops working, when nothing was wrong with it before. Especially when whatever program has been closed for only a couple minutes before I try to open it again. That could also be applied to booting the computer up, and having it fail to do so, when it worked fine the most recent time I used it.
The most recent example of that would be when my computer froze up while Winamp was running, so I restarted, and tried to open it again, and it popped up an error message about not being able to find some files, in a directory that didn't even exist I had to completely reinstall it for it to work again 
Next would be thunderstorms when I'm doing something on the computer that have a potential to be damaging if they're interrupted. Thankfully, that hasn't happened too often (the only instance I remember was when I was burning a CD and the power went out for a minute or so).
I've never run into problems defragmenting either of our computers, even though I left the old one defragmenting one day, and came back from school and such about 8 hours later, to find it only at 84% or somewhere near there.
The scariest thing that I can think of right now would have to be during the most recent time we had the internet. I was talking to some people in IRC (well, more like idling with), when a window popped up that I hadn't seen since Windows 98. It said something about how certain files couldn't be found. Clicking "Skip" and the other buttons didn't do anything visible, and upon restarting the computer, I wasn't able to log in
I had to use System Restore to get it working again. I doubt it was anything wrong with what I was doing in mIRC, as I was able to use it fine after I could log on again.
In general, though, pretty much any time anything on the computer functions differently than what's normal is enough to make me worried. |
Ran-chan
Posts: 10448/12781 |
Me and my brother played Rollercoaster Tycoon on this computer once and we didn |
mrmenz
Posts: 291/347 |
I once was moving my old gateway machine into a newer case....I wanted to install the thermal sensor under the processor, so I took the clip off the heatsink....and pulled a bit too hard, ripping the heat sink out and the processor with it. The pins were fucked, it was a celeron though so 20 bucks got me a new one xD. |
HyperLamer
Posts: 5556/8210 |
I had a power supply go ZAP once, but it wasn't in a computer. (I used it for electronic projects.) And I had one that did die in a computer, but it didn't blow up or anything, it just gave out less and less power until I replaced it (and finally knew why that damn computer wasn't working). |
DarkSlaya
Posts: 3778/4249 |
Power supply going "BOOM" is pretty scary.
Seriously, it is.
I'm dead serious.
...
And I've heard of someone's CD exploding in the computer. |
neotransotaku
Posts: 3455/4016 |
Originally posted by HyperHacker
Although, on very rare occurances the whole machine will lock up for no reason. Afterwards, it's a total bitch to get it to turn on again. It hasn't failed in not powering on again, but it just seems to take forever. The 'on' button isn't the off button. I'm usually flipping the power switch on the back of the power supply. Then I wait......and wait.....and wait. (Although, if I hold the 'on' button long enough, that does kill the power. But it has always added to the problem.) *sigh*
You might want to look at a new power supply. If it won't turn on again right away, it's usually that.
And use the warranty of your CPU as well |
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