Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Worst thing I ever did to my computer?

I had about 150 gigs of movies, games and such on a RAID 0 array.
I messed with the RAID BIOS. Opps. That wiped the partition.
Kiss all the games, movies and other good stuff goodbye.

I still haven't recovered from that.

Let that be a lesson to you: Once you've got a RAID array that has data on it, you can't change it without losing all your data.

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It could have been worse. I was messing around with my old Pentium box one day about 2 years ago. I was feeling a little cocky and decided to uninstall Windows 98, as I basically only used the machine for DOS games and the like. Why uninstall? IIRC, I had upgraded from Windows 95, and didn't have the means to back up over a gigabyte of emulators/projects/etc. I figured 95 would do fine. So I ran the uninstaller, and it proceeded as expected for the first portion. Then, it rebooted, and ran ScanDisk. Suddenly, if memory serves correctly, this was the point where everything died. The MBR worked, but complained of having no bootable partition or something similar. I proceeded to dig out a bootdisk and probe the drive. The root directory looked fine. "cd windows". "dir". "
847y5(*&%^(&$$%(W$TNnoc4
we6w365tyQ#XI&N
(*#QY%hiu4awyjc#W(&%(Q&*^%$W
%Q#+%X{Q#P
%X
0 files
14 directories
16,452 MB
0 bytes free"
I was just a mite concerned, considering that the file system somehow thought I had fit 16GB on a 2GB drive. I spent a couple of months trying to recover the data, and gave up - I hadn't defragmented in years, and since both copies of the FAT were broken beyond repair (I guess the uninstaller mucked up the master, which instantly replicated to the duplicate - this is why I love *nix filesystems storing backups on totally seperate blocks), I stopped after a while, Threw an old copy of Red Hat 8 I had laying around on there and the machine has (almost) never seen a Microsoft OS since. (For reference, it now runs Slackware -current).

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Ok, it wasn't me, and it wasn't my computer, but one time, the fan blade on my brother's computer's CPU heatsink broke, and the processor literally melted. Now, I can stand watching surgery on TV, but something about seeing that just made me physically ill...

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Well, when I was 6 or so, we had one computer and it was my mom's. She foolishly let me play on it and after changing the desktop 20 times, I hit every button, went to some website, and tryed to type with my toes. In the prosess, the compu froze. I got real scared and hit what I thought to be the power button, but it was just the refrest button. So after wondering why nothing was working, I hid under my covers.

That is my earlest memery of a computer

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boop boop beep boop bop

Huh. Mine is of the old Apples at school, with the attached trackball all that. Or the C64 we got in 1984.



I'm old.

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I started on the old Apple II plus.
Moved on to the IIe, then the II GS.

Then I got a IBM 386SX PS/2 (microchannel archetechure).
Used that and a 2400 bps modem to connect to local hobyist BBS systems.
(Later upgraded that to a 14.4bps modem. This was shortly before the Internet became widely known)

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Oregon Trail + Apple IIe = PWNAGE!

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Yeah, grade 7 was awesome. I planted a LOT of barley.

So toast is good with paint on it.

The worst thing I ever did to my compy was not clean it, put the case on the floor, have 3 cats, smoke, and not be a good housekeeper.
It overheated and shut off every time I tried to run iTunes and LimeWire at the same time. When I opened it up it was FULL of crap. Ew.
Now I have a new friend named Compressed Air.

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My friend is called a "Case Fan Dust Filter" There's a number of different types and brands of them, but they're basicly all the same. They sit on the outside of any of the case fans that are sucking air into the case, and they filter out all that nasty dust and smoke.
Pair that up with a case that doesn't have any passive air vents on it and you're virtualy dust free.

Anyhoo... I used to play Loderunner, Karateka, DigDug, PacMan, Bard's Tale, Ultima II, Ultima III... lots of games on those old Apple IIs.

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Wow! I had no idea such a thing existed. I'll have to check that out, funds-wise. But it'll definitely be a purchase sometime in the future.
Thanks for the tip!

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They're not expensive at all. Check out http://www.xoxide.com/12blfanfi.html
That's the kind I use.

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Wow, talk about cheap. I'ma get me one of those. Thanks!

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Let's see...
1) She's modestly hot
2) She knows her 80's computers
3) She takes suggestions well
4) She knows value when she sees it.

:wub:

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Well, by some miraculous process, we got the Internet running. But STILL can't breech the stronghold of My Computer. Hrrm...

Still, yeah, those old Apples we used to have at my school were awesome. Oregon Trail, Kid Pix, that one weird game with Mario and like, go fish and checkers and some other games I can't remember, and that water droplet who spelled stuff. Awesome, awesome fancy danish.

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You look like you need a hug.
*hug*
There, now don't you feel better?

The first of many, Mac users....

Not on my Mac!

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Hmm. About 10 years ago, I used to download a million demos for games. I found a really fun hovercraft race game that included a level editor and decided to make my own level. After designing the sweetest race track ever, I hit the compile button and my computer shut down. Apparently, hitting the compile button triggered a bundled boot virus. The computer wouldn't do anything after the RAM check. My dad was furious and it took him almost a week of evenings trying to get it working again. Needless to say, I wasn't allowed to download game demos any more.

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I have had a few viruses on my computer. I had 9 at one point. I have since gotten AVG and every virus that has tried to get in to my computer has been given a size 15 boot to thier posteriors.

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ctrl alt down

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I've not done anything very horrible to my own compy, I seem to have a knack of banjaxing anyone else's compy, especially those of my workmates.

Maybe it's my subconscious hatred for them and my secret wish to destroy their lives coming to the surface.

So you are an office terrorist.

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*shifty eyes* Mu-HaAAhaa-HAAAA.....

WHF is on an office Jihad.

Toastpaint

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I removed IE from a computer, and had to reinstall Windows.

There are three kinds of users:
1. Beginer - Afraid to touch anything, lest they break it.
2. Intermediate - Just touched something, and broke it.
3. Advanced - Break other people's computers

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ert+
y76p;'0lu8jykee;u4p;e'/Rh
Strong ba15456'-------++++++gf
+++++-//=========/*8901ikg

4. Elite - Constantly being asked "will you fix my computer?"
5. COMP TIA A+ Certified Technician - Gets paid to fix and/or build other people's computers.
6. Network Administrator - Get's paid to see to it that the network doesn't break.
7. Consulting Systems Analyst - Gets paid to tell you why your computer keeps breaking when nobody in the office can figure that out.
8. Profesional Computer Electronics Development Engineers - Designed the hardware that keeps breaking.
9. Profesional Computer Software Development Engineers - Designed the software that keeps breaking the hardware.
10 Steve Balmer - Evil henchman of Bill Gates. Responsible for running Microsoft.
11. Bill Gates - Pure Evil.

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Stop posting these, or else I'm going to laugh even harder and get kicked out of the library!

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You look like you need a hug.
*hug*
There, now don't you feel better?

Out of respect for the sancity of the Library, I shall cease my inane prattle.

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I gather from your posts that you use Windows of some form or another. If that's the case, then how does one virus even hold a candle to the number of viruses in Windows? You're trying to convince people to avoid Macintosh because there is one virus that you know of for the os.

Let's compare, shall we?

Number of viruses that you can tell us about in Macintosh: 1
Number of viruses that you can tell us about in Windows: [System error. Number is too large to compute.]

Please understand, I am neither vouching for Mac nor against Windows. I'm a Windows user myself, now that my hardware has surpassed Linux compatibility. But your arguement is very weak. Mac and Windows are both good OS's... well, Mac is a good OS. But I like Windows becuase I'm familiar with it. I taught my 6th grade computer class teacher things she didn't know about Windows. I know more about Windows than any of my friends, and I know very little about Mac, so, rather than learn a new OS from scratch, I'm sticking with the one that I know. That's the only reason.

Hands down, Windows machines are The. Most. Vulnerable. machines on earth. You could list all of the known Mac and Linux viruses combined in a single forum post, but the Windows virus list is so long that it takes whole web spaces just to list them. If you want to vouch for Windows over Mac, security and viruses are the last issues you want to talk about.

Now, we need more toastpaint! We've run out already.

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When it comes to Windows and viruses, it's a bit more complicated than that.

Yes, windows has many flaws and shortcomings. No argument from me on that. However...
Windows is the dominant OS. It's installed (in one version or another) on somewhere between 90 and 95 per cent of all the computers on the planet. (More or less, depending on who you get your numbers from. Let's not quibble over nunbers here, please). Now, is it becasue it's so dominant that hackers target it and that's why there's so many viruses for it, or is it becasue it's inherently flawed and is easier to attack? Who's to say?
People claim that Mac OS X is some sort of super-OS, but Macs make up... what? Perhaps 2 percent of all the computers on the planet? (I don't know what their current market share is, someone else can go look up those numbers.) If you're a virus writer, why would you write for such a small percentage of the total users? It's the same reason hardly any games get released for the Mac: It's just not worth the effort.

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The difference in Linux is that you have to manually make the binaries executable, or else they can't run.

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I know this. I don't think Mac is any kind of super-OS. As I said in a post earlier, all the OS's have flaws, and all have good things; I think Linux would be the hardest to successfully design a virus for, but that doesn't make it impossible. Still, the reason I've always considered Linux to be secure is not that it's better written, but that it's less used. Regardless of the reason for the number of viruses, though, it's still a weak argument.

Like I said, there are arguments that you can make to support Windows. A virus on Macs just isn't one of them.

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