Your PC and Windows horror stories here!

[F_Porsche]

Hey folks!

lately I'm seeing an increase of people with PC troubles, especially with windows xp and sp2, and the stories are either scary, funny, annoying, or all of the above. So that raises a question of curiosity:
Does anyone have a pc horror story they want to share?

[Zxian]

Service Pack 2... just about as scary as you can get with Windows....



No, seriously though... I had a MAJOR wierd glitch on my desktop about 2 months ago...

I pressed the button on my computer and the windows bootscreen flashed on... and then about 2 seconds later it turned off and I saw the typical Welcome screen... but this lasted for about 2 minutes... I thought that something had frozen, so I restarted the computer (press power button, hold). Same thing. I decided to wait it out and finally after ages, I got to the point where I could login. When I did, nothing showed up in my system tray, and all hard drive activity ended after about 5 seconds.

I thought that it was kinda wierd... so I fired up task manager... I had only 13 processes running!!! and no antivirus, no network connections, nothing except a desktop...

After a bit of digging, I found out that every single service except RPC had been disabled!!!! I tried putting them back to automatic, but next time I restarted the computer, same thing happened. To add to the confusion, all my startup items had been disabled...

Needless to say, it ended up in a format and clean install.

[Viktoria]

I'm reposting this little story on your thread F_Porsche....


ROTFLOL******* I frequently help out friends, like I think 100% of us do here......one whom I would have thought had a very high IQ started getting quite worried when I told him that to view the flash he wanted to see he had to let the Active X download.

He said to me "What for? I already have one of those from Microsoft site".



I think PC stories would make a great thread.
_____________________

As for my own stories, well most of them are self inflicted.
Don't ask why; I don't know. But I like a "clean" PC.

The other day I saw the "default user" folder and thought......why do I need this thing.....LOL** So I hit delete. All is fine, except I couldn't make a new user account. Even my own account is missing My Pics, My Music and My Videos !!!!

I have a seperate user account normally for working purposes only. I do NOT let this account on the net [call it self imposition] so I cannot stop working and do email and surf around unless I log in and out.....now I can't recreate that account, so I am stuck with having to use self control

My Windows ME HDD ate itself up. No virri, no spyware, no reason......but sector by sector it ate itself up.

All can be running smooth as silk with me.........but I just have to go and fiddle around. I never back up the registry, but I always tweak it. DUH!

Today I deleted a registry entry that prevents audio CD's from auto playing......ave maria piena di grazia.....it worked!!
Added safe Mode to boot up....added recovery console....after all, being me it's going to fail sooner or later....

OK, that's all for now until I think up more horror

~Viktoria

[F_Porsche]

Originally posted by Viktoria
ROTFLOL******* I frequently help out friends, like I think 100% of us do here......one whom I would have thought had a very high IQ started getting quite worried when I told him that to view the flash he wanted to see he had to let the Active X download.

He said to me "What for? I already have one of those from Microsoft site".

The other day I saw the "default user" folder and thought......why do I need this thing.....LOL** So I hit delete.

(lol)

My Windows ME HDD ate itself up. No virri, no spyware, no reason......but sector by sector it ate itself up.

I didn't know that could happen! :embarrasment:

All can be running smooth as silk with me.........but I just have to go and fiddle around. I never back up the registry, but I always tweak it. DUH!

I learned to backup the registry the hard way !

Today I deleted a registry entry that prevents audio CD's from auto playing......ave maria piena di grazia.....it worked!!

Cool, where is it?

[F_Porsche]

Here's one of my own...

Four years ago, I don't remember what I was exactly doing, but I was on the pc, doing normal things, playing games surfing the net, and then after a half-hour or so I shut down the pc like normal. Now keep in mind that I jsu got the pc brand new and running Windows 98 when this incident occured.
I turn on the pc the next day and windows boots up like normal. I could get past the loading screen after the POST, but so many error messages popped up so fast it was scary (literally), even a blue screen of death came up! The errors got so bad one day that I couldn't even log in! So I restart, press the f8 button in order to do a scandisk that was on the pc maker's cd.
I then scan the hdd, even scanning for disk surface errors, and I find out there are LOTS of lost clusters and renamed files! But the names looked really wierd. Not only did the names have letters, but every letter and symbol that could be typed in a computer was in the names! and when the scandisk was finished, I restart the pc, and windows was still highly unstable. The errors where still coming up! wtf?
I then scan for any viruses, and scanned the whole disk, not one thing was detected. :frown: I went through this a couple of times and finally decided to take it to a repair shop, but in order to get the pc repaired, it would cost
around $250! Luckily, my uncle helped me pay for the pc.
And when the pc was repaired, I asked the repair guy what the problem was and he told me it was a faulty ram
module! All that trouble and I could've gotten it fixed for around half the price (the price of sdram back in 2000)! I felt so embarrassed, but it was my first year as a computer user.

Now there's a horror story!

[DMC]

I can assure PTO probably has the best story out of all of us. Mine isn't a horror but more of a funny one.

If you can remember I own my own business-CbtTechs. I repair and build other computers for other people.

But one day I got a call saying this guy needed a computer repaired, nothing unusual. But I asked him what was wrong he said an error popped up and woudn't let him log in correctly. I said what kind of error? He said "When can I drop it off"? So I answered him, not bringing up the question just had to see the error myself.

So later that day he drops off of the computer, I pluggined everything in, thinking just a normal guy, although he did look a bit funny .

Once I got everything in, I started up the computer got into windows and typed in the password he gave me. And I got the following error message:

"Sir, you need to stop download bestailty, and other fetish movies from **site**" I didn't put the site, don't want people to go there lol.

So I logged in as the Administraotr and I got the following message

"Will you quit downloading Illegal, "Mature" women"... Now this is getting werid lol, so I managed to fix it and the guy came back to pick it up, embarrased of course. He was red and asked what was wrong, I told him:
"You had 70 GB of porno on your computer, I had to get into it by Knoppix and get rid of your porn"

The guy didn't say anything but seemed very very angry...Wondering why?

[s7p9a2m4]

I had set up multiple operating systems on two hard drives. Windows and linux distros(about 6 I believe). Everything was set up and working well. I went in to make one final tweak with Partition Magic (resize a partition a little). I was never able to get back into anything. I had'nt been computing long and had no idea what happened. I ended up wiping the disks and starting over. I suspect now that drive letters were changed. It was during this disaster I found this forum.

[DMC]

Glad it happened otherwise we woudn't even know who you are lol.

[Play_The_0dds]

i have been thinking about this thread since i first seen it, i have seen so much that it's hard to come up with something you have not already heard, or been posted.
SP2 has caused more problems for me then any virus i can name.
since it's release home computers are pouring in at a rate i can not keep up with. i was going to stop doing the sideline repairs but got talked back into doing it again.
most of the really bad horror stories i can remember are back in the good ole days, when active x controls were open to attack and people lost hardware to viruses, bios were invaded making a mobo garbage unless you could get a replacement chip.
i have seen buisnesses lose years of files and work because they didnt backup.
worst thing i ever did,....hummmmm
stormy will say that i sold her motherboard last week to someone that needed one that day and she had to make do with mine and the kids computers for a couple of days till ups ran........i will say i told a woman how to do a quick fix regedit in a forum and it trashed her system causing her to have to pay over $100 to get a shop to fix it and they didnt save any of her stuff...........it bothers me when i think i cause problems, more so when they cost money. thats why i dont post regedits, might link to them, but i wont post them. i have done a bit of booting at yahoo(not in ages now though), but only to the buttholes(which is 96% of the people @yahoo). i usually felt bad about that, but it was the only way to hold a conversation in a open room. i have read the forums so long, horror stories are a everyday thing......just try and help pick up the pieces and get them going again. once the net was a elite few that usually knew atleast a little about computers, now everybody has one.
i hear alot of the wife ran off with some guy on the net stories, usually the exhusband wants to know how he can hook up with on-line females and do the same when they are telling me.
there is always something new on the net, may not be good, but it's new.

[s7p9a2m4]

Thanks DMC. You are too kind.

I know what you are saying PTO. You hear it all in the chat rooms and such.

[F_Porsche]

What makes chat rooms worse is that Cyber-Predators and cops are lurking everywhere in those things. I remember using the Morpheus p2p program, and with it had a chat room server bundled with it. I used it a couple of times, but I always think to myself "can't these losers go out and date somebody and/or conversate face-to-face?