Computer Horror Stories

Technician said:

I think my hard drive may be failing.

I know my hard drive is failing and I'm too lazy to do anything about it. My laptop just crashes for no reason sometimes, especially when I'm watching vids or playing games and everything is super slow. Again too lazy.

I have anything significant on my external, so if it does, it does.

Technician said:

I have anything significant on my external, so if it does, it does.

My external enclosure had once failed (story only to be resurrected years later), and connecting the 300 GB IDE HD to my b0x's internal controller caused it to be "recognized" as 120 GB....which ofc zapped all of its contents beyond any chance of recovery.

Lesson learned? What was backed up in CDs and DVDs was saved and totally unaffected (and still is). Remember: a chunk of metal that needs electronics, power and/or rotating parts to allow you to access your data can die. An inert piece of plastic is a WHOLE LOT FUCKING TOUGHER!!!! And no, a SSD and Flash drive still needs power and electronics to actually keep the data stored ;-)

Maes said:

An inert piece of plastic is a WHOLE LOT FUCKING TOUGHER!!!!

Preferably archive quality plastic - burnt at half-speed and stored in a dark, dry place.

Apart from last year's wireless router debacle and accidentally nuking the wrong drive after a system rebuild, my home network's been humming along. Having said that, something's bound to die and/or go up in flames between now and Easter.

Three words: Yankee Doodle Virus. That thing always made me jump in my seat when it would randomly play itself - and since it was memory resident, you could never quite tell if you had it or not.

heh

I was told that if my computer had Xp installed in it, I wouldn't be able to upgrade to windows 7, so I stuck with Vista. Then I forgot I needed 100+ dollars for the new OS. I'm still stuck with this nightmare Vista.

Ichor said:

heh

I wish those guys would update more than ten stories a year (updates have been about twice yearly since 2007). I could almost double it with the number of computer idiot stories I have, mostly from working at Dell, but also from school, friends, etc.

For some reason, computers seem to bring functional analphabetism issues afloat more than any other endeavor and circumstance -from operating household appliances, to filling out a form, signing a contract, doing taxes etc.

I sometimes wonder how those same people "starring" in those "stupid user horror stories" cope with their daily routines, and how any of them could be actually capable of doing anything more than flipping burgers and scrubbing toilets for a living.

The easy answer is that many of them would also prove unable to e.g. read and understand the fine print in a contract (and so would be easily confused/conned/scammed in other endeavors too IRL) or follow any instructions more complex than those a lance-corporal (no, not even drill sergeant) would shout to a bunch of boot camp recruits.

And what's worse most of them give out a pretty bad attitude when confronted with their stupidity.

What bother me are the ones who don't seem otherwise stupid but can't find America on a map. For some reason the map Dell uses for DellConnect doesn't include region labels. At least once a week I had somebody who couldn't find the USA. WTF? One lady couldn't even do left/right. I suggested she look for the islands in the middle of the ocean on the left because that's Hawaii. She got Asia Pacific!