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

title almost bad enough to be a Star Wars prequel

[pizza_milkshake]

this may be the Information Age, but we're all cavemen at heart. *sniffs keyboard*

Some things I've come across before today:

[Anonymous Coward]

The user who drilled holes in his laptop to improve cooling

The man who had a Pentium motherboard, and installed his new Pentium2 processor in the PCI port (with the help of a hacksaw)

My CD Rom drive, which started expelling smoke while installing Windows 95 (hardware with good taste)

The woman who brought in her computer wondering why it was crashing... she had had the thing for 3 years - without a CPU fan and heatsink attached

The incompetent computer shop who couldn't figure out how to fix my uncles computer (when its 9$ cooling fan had died)

Re:Some things I've come across before today:

[shaldannon]

Reminds me of a story told by a friend. One day a group of us, including markster were standing around shooting the breeze...markster mentioned that the local bike shop owner had asked him to install Linux on his (I think it was a 486) computer. He managed to get another member of the group that was present volunteered to do the job...

John apparently went over to the shop to load Linux, but nothing he did would work, he told us. Noticing that the case was slightly askew and wires were coming out of it, he took the cover off to discover a rats nest of wires soldered onto the mainboard. I suppose I should mention at this point that the shop owner liked to tinker, and apparently he'd been making some custom mods to his system that will never be documented anywhere...

John asked him what all the wires were for, and he replied that they helped the computer work the way he needed it to. He proudly showed off the row of dip switches that he'd gotten from old 9600 modems and repurposed for toggling between the printer and his extra hard drive. John, probably in stupified amazement, yanked the rats nest of wires out of the system, told him to format the drive, and that he'd get back to him on the Linux install.

I never got the epilogue, but that's one of the wierder stories I've heard told....

Linking to a site about 'breaking things' on /.

[Roosey]

Ever wonder how much damage some users can inflict on their computers?

No, not really. After seeing some people submit their own sites to a Slashdot front page story, everything else pales in comparison. :]

/.ed already

[Dynedain]

I got to see the first page before it got /.ed

All I can say is WOW....I mean I've fried components before, but nothing with this kind of visible damage.....well, except for the time I burned out my zip drive, scsi card, motherboard and floppy by accidently pluging my speaker transformer into my zip drive (they look identical and have identical connections, except as I noticed afterwards one is 12VAC and the other 2.5VDC).....left pretty burn marks all over my scsi card and motherboard. And then there was the time I was serviceing my old laptop (loose connection somewhere inside) and I forgot that when I moved workspaces I had slipped the battery back into its slot....ZZZTZTZ....smoke, and a fried out chip on the motherboard.

Luckly everything I've destroyed since then has not had such spectacular effects associated.

So....I guess I can see how this stuff happens.

Well

[quantaman]

Ever wonder how much damage some users can inflict on their computers?
No, because I know how much damage some users can inflict on websites.

Cache and so on and so forth

[delta407]

Obligatory Google cache, though it seems to be largely a picture collection, so it's not too helpful.

According to the news on this page, the URL posted originally belonged to jonnyguru.com. But, unfortunately, the Wayback machine's archive for that site goes back to just after it was displaced, so it appears we're SOL until the server comes back to life.

Oh well...

Mishap Central: My parents.

[E-Rock-23]

My parents are the typical lot when it comes to machines. When we first got one, they felt that it was "their toy" and wouldn't let me have at it. Not that I was taking computer classes in Elementary School or anything. Even at 10 years old, I was more way more qualified.

Since that time, my parents have learned to scream for me whenever something goes wrong. I'm sure alot of the rest of the /. bunch goes through that as well. And it doesn't stop when you leave home, either.

I remember that first PC. No hard drive, DOS on a 5.25", and another floppy with something called "Microsoft Desktop 2.0" Call it the prelude to windows. On to the mishaps. Dad thought he could take it apart and tinker as if it were some sort of Ford model. Genious that he is, he has it on and is looking in complete awe at some of the parts. Inside was a 1200bps modem. He had no clue what it was, even though I told him several times. Guess 10 year olds don't know much, do they. Anyway, while this thing was still running hot, Dad rips the modem out. Two chips on the card, toasted. Several other resisters, capacitors, etc. fried. The 8 bit slot it came out of, useless. From then on, my father couldn't, for the life of him, figure out why the machine would screw up every so often. Later I learned that he'd semi-fried the motherboard, and continual (ab)use wore it out.

Then came the 486. This was the first one with anything that resembled Windows on it, that being 3.1. Well, mom wanted to see what she could do with Windows (and again, new machine, I wasn't allowed to play). What she did was got into the settings area, played with numbers, changed addresses, and basically sent Windows to hell. Then she discovered that F1 gave her setup options. Thinking that would solve the problem, she proceeded to lock herself out of the BIOS (by forgetting her password in a matter of moments). This was at the advent of Prodigy and AOL, so I found my way around after learning that BIOS passwords could be cracked hardway, and fixed the problem.

Since then, I'm the PC fixit guy. But with all the advances we have, I'm still trying to get them to move forward. I can't wait to see what they do to Cable lines and modems, network hubs, and next-gen stuff. No matter how inept our fellow peons in the workforce get, the people we know at home always seem ever the slightest bit worse...

Re:Notice a pattern?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's probably because AMD processors are preferred by 12 of 10 idiot overclocker kids.

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

Re:what we call these....

[NeMon'ess]

Do average adult people stick peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the slot of their VCRs? No. Denis Leary's kids do, though. Why shouldn't those who know better make fun of total idiots? I suppose you think the Darwin Awards are cruel and mean too? People who don't know what they're doing should either get help, or RTFM. People who think they know what they're doing and are dead wrong have only themselves to blame unless there's a good story to explain their actions.

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:True story:

[horatio]

Sure, but how many people are dumb enough to open the hood of their cars and rip out the distributor or pull on the spark plug wires really hard, just to see what happens? What about kitchen appliances, or the VCR? Most people claim they don't know how to set their clock (and admittedly, they're right they don't know.)

So what are these dopes doing cracking their computer case open, figuring they're smart enough to "repair" a very complicated and delicate piece of electronic equipment? More than likely, figuring that they can just blame it on lightning or play dumb. Whereas, its pretty obvious if you foobar'd your engine by putting coolant into where the oil should go.

Not knowing the difference between "it's" and "its" isn't going to cost the IT department 3000$US to replace a high-end workstation because some dope stuck a pencil into one of the fans trying to make it go faster. You're talking about apples and oranges.

When users attack... Themselves

[singularity]

I was running some normal telephone cable for a friend of mine behind a desk. Modem, answering machine, and two telephones, all from one jack. I was running the cable and trying to get all of the power cords set up, as well. I was running out of hands, so I held one or two cables with my mouth. I was under the desk, so it was hard to work with.

I was getting things set-up when I plugged in one telephone cable to another piece of equipment. Sure enough, the telephone cable that was in my mouth just became live.

I cannot describe to people that have not felt their tongue being fried what it feels like. Not a good sensation at all.

It also caused me to hit my head on the bottom of the desk.

All in all, not a great install at all.

This may or may not be related to what the site says, but it is not responding (even at 1am EST), so I thought I would add my own little story.

Barfing in the 486 dx2

[puto]

When I was on the tail end of my college years I kept up my habit for comps by buying and reselling them fairly quickly.

I had just picked up a p-90 for a very good price and had a buyer for my dx266. Check these specs.

16 megs of ram
2 meg video
windows 3.1
CD-rom
15 inch monitor
Colorado 250 Tape Backup(still hearing it whining on these late lonely nights)
and a 540 meg Connor drive(worst comp in history).

Well I had a buyer for 1600 bucks, I had paid 2400 for the thing, buyer was getting a fair deal. 2 years warranty...

I had opened the box for whatever reason and it was running on the kitchen table at my place.

I go out the night, get a little ripped with some friends. Come home, crash, and up bright and early cause I had to deliver the box.

So I do not notice that the case is back on. Probably in some hangover funk it swept by me.

I deliver the box. And a week later my customer calls and tells me there is this horrible funk coming out her new computer.

I go over and crack the box, and there is some rotten scum in the bottom of the case. Slightly boozie smelling. I clean it out, tell her I do not know what it easse, but looks like a rodent got in... she buys it.

I go home and my roomate says that he had come home drunk and was about to finish doom and he got motion sickness from the game but instead of running to the bathroom, he yacked in the case. He freaked, mopped mostof it out, and put the cover back on.

Heheheh.

Puto

Re:Google cache links to the first few pages

[deander2]

google caches the html, not the images...
just FYI

"And it doesn't stop when you leave home, either."

[Pac]

Let me tear down any hope you might have left: it doesn't stop even when you marry and give them grandchildren. It only stops 10 or so years after that when, if you raised your children correctly, you can pass the gramma/grampa computer support contract to your son/daughter. Believe me, I speak from experience.

Re:Slashdot Cache

[Monkelectric]

It may not be free, but would make a nice cookie for subscribers!

Slashdot offering other peoples content and then selling access to it? Thats a lawsuit if I ever heard one.

Some pictures here

[cperciva]

Google has a few of the pictures here.

The middle of the information age? Says who?

[guttentag]

Pretty amazing what people can do to computers in the middle of the information age.

Saying we're in the "middle" implies you know when the end is coming.

Is there something you want to tell us about the interesting angles of Mars and Jupiter? Are the lights on your DSL modem blinking messages to you in Morse code again?

Personally, I think we're still very close to the beginning in the scheme of things.

Re:Slashdot Cache

[quintessent]

Dear Taco,

Here's an easy solution to your conundrum:

Dear site owner,

We will be posting a link to your site in about 30 minutes, after which it will receive hundreds of thousands of hits. If you're not equipped to handle that, please reply with the words "cache please" and we will do what we can to cache what is on your site.

Sincerely,

C. Taco

Remember: Only you can prevent the Slashdot effect.

American servicemembers in Germany

[Quila]

220v -- 'nuff said

Kids first overclocking experience

[nhavar]

I'm at a local computer store and the kid before me is there with his mom seeing if he can get his processor "fixed". The owner of the store opens the case to see the 486dx266 chip laying mangled on top of the socket. All of the pins are bent, the chip is cracked and blackened, and there's still a nice little burnt smell even from a couple of feet away.
The shop owner asks the kid what happened. The boy confesses that he and a friend were monkeying about on the computer and the friend decided they should overclock the processor. Surely overclocking must be achieved by putting the processor on in a different direction. The friend puts the processor on backwards. Doesn't work. They try and try to "overclock" the machine and eventually *POP* the processor dies. The kid states that he got mad took the processor out of the machine threw it on the floor and gave it a gentle coaxing by jumping up and down on it. After that they attempted to fix the pins and put it back it the right way. No luck though just more ZZZZT ZZZZT ZZZZT from the processor.
This kid must have been 13 or 14 years old standing there with his mom. His mom just had this little smile like "You poor stupid kid, you'll be living with me until your 36" kinda smile both frustrated and amused.
It took everything I had to keep from falling down on the floor with laughter.

Re:When Slashdot attacks

[Melmac]

I sure appreciate the link....but apparently my provider didn't. The canceled my account this morning: Hello, Please be advised that your hosting account thetechboard.com is in violation of our Internet Service Agreement at http://www.webmasters.com/agreement.htm due to consistent 73% CPU usage by your website. Your CPU usage must not exceed 33%. Your website has crashed our server two times today, and this cannot continue. Due to the severity of this problem, we have decided to permanently close your account. To receive a refund of any pre-paid hosting fees, please go to https://secure.webmasters.com/cancel.php3. Sorry, our decision to terminate your account is final and cannot be appealed. If you need to arrange a time to download your files, please contact us at support@webmasters.com within 24 hours. Thank you for your understanding. Best regards, WEBMASTERS.COM Security Department That was the first e-mail. Here is the second: Hello, If it helps any, the cause of your traffic flood was a link on the front page of http://www.slashdot.org a very high traffic site probably run with multiple dedicated servers. In situations like this, it is great to get all that trafic, but you must have a dedicated server to handle the load. The amount of traffic sent to your site is equivalent to 100,000+ unique visitors per day. We are sorry to have to close your account, but we cannot take a chance of having 299 other users be down because of your domain. Thank you for your understanding. Best regards, ----Name Removed---- WEBMASTERS.COM Support Supervisor Man-oh-man. My day really sux now. :( -Melmac TheTechBoard.com Administrator/Owner