23 replies to this topic

[CeeCee]

What is the most worst and heartbreaking thing happened with/to your computer? I haven't got any major problems. Once i got a virus, that took couple of hours to get rid of it and some little other problems. Knockin' the wood (my head).

[rridgely]

The worst thing that ever happened to my computer? I would say hard drive failure without back ups.
That hasn't happened since I started using xp but one time is enough to make you always back up everything.

[Humpty]

Think I may have said this before about my middle daughter spilling a glass of coke on the keyboard and then cleaned it up so well that I had no idea that it happened till I went to use the keyboard.

Thought I had a super Virus until the youngest one dobbed her elder sister in.

25 bucks later and all was well.(Win98 days)

[DennisD]

Lost a video of a Mountain Bike ride through about 40 miles of fantastic scenery. It was something to look back on and remember when I can't climb on my bike anymore. (cue the violins)

Did a reinstall, and thought I had everything backed up. Wrong.

Will do it again one day, as I still do this particular route, but riding off road with one hand on the bars and the other holding a camera is a bitch. When you get older, falling off really hurts.

[Andavari]

Bought a computer with Windows on it, twice.
Actually it would have to be my Win98 days before I had a CD burner drive, the OS died so often and backing up stuff to a floppy wasn't an option however once my computing skills evolved I learned about partitioning the hard drive to not store backups and setups on C:\, and eventually got a now ancient (and still working) Sony CD-RW drive.

[rridgely]

I have an old sony cd burner too. Remember paying like 5 bucks per cd? That was fun wasn't it.

[Andavari]

rridgely, on May 15 2007, 11:42 AM, said:

Remember paying like 5 bucks per cd? That was fun wasn't it.

It was no fun actually especially without BurnProof buffer underrun protection and the crappy Win98 OS that itself didn't help matters stability wise. Out of a spindle of 50 CD's I expected to have 5 to 10 discs that would become coasters. Thank goodness I haven't had any ruined CDs due to crappy software/hardware since the Win98 days.

[rridgely]

I have a copy of the first or maybe the second version of easy cd creator around here somewhere.
I would just say a little prayer before pressing burn.

Win98 was just a piece of crap in a lot of ways. Way better then 95 because you can actually still use 98 and be productive but I would never want to go back.

[DennisD]

rridgely, on May 15 2007, 05:55 PM, said:

Way better then 95

Quite a few years ago when my daughter first started university, I picked up a cheap PC from a mate (some mate), that had Win 95 installed. As she only wanted something for word processing, thought this would be OK.

It had something like a "slow.slower mhtz" processor.

The ink would dry in the printer cartridge before the print preferences loaded.

[1200]

My was the dead blue screen thingy, it was horrible cause first i thought because of some kinda software problem but later i figured out that was because of the hardware( I am pretty sure it was the memory). i had to uninstalled my pc many time

[CTskifreak]

On my other computer, a few years ago, I downloaded Kazaa, and I allowed it to install the spyware, but I deleted it right away with Ad-Aware.
I was still on dial-up, downloaded like 3 songs, and everything was fine... turned the computer off.
Next day, booted up, all the icons were there, but everything was uninstalled. Had to reformat, and never downloaded Kazaa again.

AJ

[1200]

My was the dead blue screen thingy, it was horrible cause first i thought because of some kinda software problem( i had to formatted my hd many time) but later i figured out that was because of the hardware( I am pretty sure it was the memory).

[JDPower]

My worst so far (touch wood) would have been botching a graphics driver install and having Windows restarting every time it got to the Windows logo. Had to do a full reinstall and had no backups of anything

[Ponyboy66]

I've had many over the years, mostly self induced.

The number 1 computer disaster for me has been the most recent.

Back in March, my self built computer of 5 years started to randomly reboot.
Checked all the obvious such as cables, memory, connectors etc.
The problem would come and go. It finally would not boot at all.

I have been building computers for about 15 year so I've acquired quite a collection
of components for just such an occasion.
The only thing I was short on was power supplies.
Over the years I had fixed friends and families computer and the most common component was the dreaded PS.
Little did I realize that this would be my nightmare.

I tested the PS with a little device that my neighbor gave me that tests various aspects loaded and unloaded.
The PS tested good.

In the end, I toasted 3 motherboards, 2 processors, 6 sticks of DDR memory and a DVD burner.

I finally got out an old 98 machine and hooked her up.
Saved up the pennies and built me a nice shiny new puter with a new power supply.

When it was all done, I checked the old ps again, and it still tested good.
I threw it out anyway.

I lost no data as I back up regularly.

Very expensive and frustrating experience.

[Talldog9]

lost over 100 hollywood movies, over 300 videos, all my custom pictures, every episode of 24, every episode of X-Files, over 300Gb of music, all my installers. All was on my external 2TB WD hard drive, which was encrypted with TrueCrypt. The header was touched by the Grub boot loader and the drive became unmountable. I thought I had the header backed up, but I had it backed up to the actual hard drive that was encrypted, so a lot of good that did.

[krit86lr]

Andavari, on May 15 2007, 11:37 AM, said:

Bought a computer with Windows on it, twice.

Holy Crap Andavari! Don't do that! I almost spewed coffee all over my keyboard! ROFLMAO Hilarious.

[LuLu]

I've had a few mishaps with my PCs...

1. my 2nd computer had to be reformatted a few times due to "windows errors", but luckily I was able to back everything up on floppy.

2. my 3rd computer had to be reformatted twice, both times losing all the pictures, mp3s, and writings i had done because i wasn't even able to use my floppy drive (or my CD burner).

3. my 3rd computer subsequently ended up getting fried during Hurricane Charley (and yes I had it plugged into a surge protector...which also was fried...lol).

4. the worst so far (knock wood) with the PC i have now is that it got hacked into (thank you Norton Firewall!!! thank gosh I switched to ZoneAlarm) and some very private photos and writings had been deleted (and most likely copied) from my hard drive.

[DennisD]

LuLu, on Jun 9 2007, 09:57 PM, said:

some very private photos and writings had been deleted (and most likely copied) from my hard drive.

Wasn't all bad Lulu, I got a very good price for them on ebay.

[LuLu]

DennisD, on Jun 9 2007, 05:41 PM, said:

Wasn't all bad Lulu, I got a very good price for them on ebay.

LOL yeah you probably got paid to delete them.

[Andavari]

LuLu, on Jun 9 2007, 03:57 PM, said:

but luckily I was able to back everything up on floppy.

The bad thing about floppies though is their ability to get bad sectors very easily, even without using them. I was all for Iomega ZIP drives back in like 1998 until mine got the click of death. Now looking back I was spending way too much on ZIP disks compared to what flash-based USB backup devices costs nowadays.