When Users Attack

AdmiralKit writes "Ever wonder how much damage some users can inflict on their computers? This site documents the cream of the crop of parts that have been returned because they are "defective" or "broken." Pretty amazing what people can do to computers in the middle of the information age."

Comments

what we call these....

[Lord_Slepnir]

I interned with the IT department of a company over the summer, and whenever a user came to us with a problem that they obviously inflicted, we'd tell them to send it to the hardware guy with an error of either ID-ten-T or PEB-ChAK (Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard.

My personal favourite was a new member of the staff complaining that she was tring to access some old 5.25" disks, but the disk drive was making a horrible sound when she would put them in. It took me 5 minutes to figure out that she was putting it in a CD-ROM drive, not a 5.25" disk drive

True story:

[SlashChick]

I used to be the Windows system administrator at a small (300-person) company. Before we got mail filters installed on our server, we would just get nailed with viruses. We were on about our third round of Melissa at that point, and each time, I would send out a company-wide email telling people not to click on attachments.

Well, I knew most of the people in the company quite well, including the sales guys. One of the sales guys happened to be a pretty close friend of mine, and the thought he really knew a lot of computers. In fact, he was so cocky about the belief that he would never get a virus that he didn't usually read my emails.

In this particular case, I happened to be sitting a few feet away from him when he was going through his email. He came upon my email and asked me if he could delete it. I said, "Sure, as long as you don't click on attachments." Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him delete the email and click on the next email in his box. Then I watched him double-click on the attachment and immediately get nailed by the virus.

I sprung into action. "What are you doing? That's the virus!" I yelled. I disconnected his Ethernet cord so he wouldn't spread it, and spent the next 20 minutes cleaning the damn thing off his computer.

This company was full of people who really thought they knew their stuff when it came to computers. I watched one of the Linux gurus there sheepishly admit that he didn't know that removing an NT box from a domain removed his ability to log in with his domain account. (Since the IT staff was the only group with the local administrator password, he actually had to log a helpdesk ticket saying that he couldn't log in to his NT box.) I watched our VP of sales call our network admin away from an off-site meeting because "ALL OF MY EMAIL HAS DISAPPEARED! OH MY GOD! YOU DELETED IT!" (In actuality, he had scrolled all the way to the right in the pane that showed his mailboxes, so he couldn't see any of his mailboxes. One very pissed network administrator had to explain to him that there was a scrollbar at the bottom of the screen that he needed to scroll back to the left.)

It happens all the time, but before you spout off that those users are stupid, I must remind you that we all have those things we know nothing about. Do you know the correct usage for its vs. it's? (Hint: Only use it's in place of it is -- no other time.) Can you fix your car every time something goes wrong, or do you take it into a mechanic? Do you know how to ballroom dance?

The moral of the story: We're all stupid sometimes. Learn to laugh about it. Heck, that's the only way you're ever going to get through a single day as a sysadmin. ;)

Re:Slashdot Cache

[quintessent]

Dear Taco,

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Sincerely,

C. Taco

Remember: Only you can prevent the Slashdot effect.

EPROM programmer

[Eric Smith]

I worked at Apparat from 1980-1982. They were best known for their NewDOS-80 operating system for the TRS-80 Models 1 and 3, and other TRS-80 related products, but they also had a few products for the Apple II, including an EPROM programmer. I wrote the 2nd generation software for that EPROM programmer.

One month, the plan for their full page color advertisement in Byte magazine fell through. I'm not sure what they'd originally planned to advertise, but they ended up advertising the EPROM programmer instead. It wasn't unusual for EPROM programmers to be advertised in Byte. But it was somewhat unusual for there to be a full page color ad for one.

The ad was very successful. We started getting a lot of orders. And as far as I know, most customers were happy with them. But we did get a few customers who called us saying things like "I installed it, now what do I do with it?" You'd think that people wouldn't buy a $250 accessory for their computer without some idea of what they planned to do with it.

Anyhow, one of these customers was really irate and demanded that we refund his money. Company policy at the time was to only allow exchanges of defective products. So he said it was defective and sent it back. When it arrived, we discovered bullet holes through the box. Looked to be the result of a 9mm, though I could be wrong.

My experiences with a VAR

[Croaker]

I worked in the early 90's for a VAR in western MA... man, that was an experience, even aside from the customers. But there were a few memorable repair calls we had.

We came in one night from a repair call and dinner to find the following message on the answering machine:

"Um.... hi... this is Jane Doe. My Commodore 64 started smoking earlier, and I shot it with a fire estinguisher. Um... do you think it's safe to turn it back on?"

Another call we got was:

"Hi... I was wondering if I could buy a Q, L, and C key from you... my parrot ate those keys off the keyboard."

While sort of not a supid mistake by users, I did see one specatular mess made by a power supply that flamed out. As we did the autopsy, we realized that the thing had gone up because the airflow was blocked because of some buildup. We realized, when we visited their site, what this was. THey were in a small auto-insurance office packed with five or six chain smokers. I couldn't stand it in the office more than a minute or so. I suspect that the PSU had gotten a fair amount of ash from a nearby ashtray in addition to just general gunk from the smoke.

My own (humble) story

[Scrameustache]

Ok, its not much, but it still amazed me.

At my old job, we had a lot of interns (wich the boss saw as free labour), one particular intern once had his computer screen go blank on him. So he called me up to help. I go there and knowing the computer, and the guy, I figure he had kicked off the power cable again. But I could still hear its fan humming... I turn the case around slowly, all the cables are still pluged in, so I proceed to push 'em back in (the case was at the cable's limit...big stupid table, not my idea, anyways...).
The guy (same intern who admitedly didn't know much about computers) reaches across me and YANKS THE POWER CABLE OUT.

Long story short it turns out the monitor was defective and would shut itself down when it got hot, but I came very close to punching that intern in the face .
ARGH!

Or Better Yet

[0x0d0a]

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Sincerely,

C. Taco