It's October: Time For "tech Horror Stories"

While I personally do not celebrate the macabre of October with Halloween and all, I recognize this is a time of the year for frights of fancy. Therefore, I have created this thread for your tech horror stories, as well as tech facepalms (which are horror stories themselves).

So feel free to share your favorite tech horror stories, and we'll all have a good laugh....Well....when we are not laughing at TimW. LOL


Fan-tastic

This happened where I currently work at now, but about a month before I joined on.

The Fire Chief, who is known far and wide as pretty much hating computers, ordered a new machine. After getting the computer and using it for a few weeks, apparently the computer was making too much noise. Rather than submitting a ticket to the Help Desk, he decided to "fix it".

How did he fix it you may ask? Continue to read me tale of woe!

Finally a ticket came in from the Fire Chief saying that his computer was "dead", and that it would not work. Tech arrived onsite, and sure enough there was power, but POST errors galore. Tech opened the case and immediately noticed something glaringly wrong. The fan was totally missing from the computer case. When the tech asked about it, the Fire Chief replied, "It was making too much noise, so I just got a screwdriver and removed it."

It was at this point that the tech had to tell him that essentially the entire computer overheated and now it's trashed. Oh, and it's not covered under warranty either, because you invalidated it the moment you removed the fan.....um...yeah.

So of course a new machine was ordered, with instructions that he not "fix it" anymore. Tax dollars at work.

 

Maybe not a horror story but it made me chuckle. An acquaintance told a story about their elderly uncle buying a new car and hated the size of the car key. The uncle knowing little to nothing about technology of any kind decided to fix his car key. He thought inside all that plastic with buttons, which he did not see as necessary, there had to be a regular car key. He took a saw and sawed off all the black plastic. Of course this left his car key useless. A trip to the car dealer for a new key cost him $250.
Moral of the story: If it's not broke don't fix it.

 

This happened to me quite a while ago and I posted this in 2016
https://forums.majorgeeks.com/threads/has-this-happened-to-anyone.296884/#post-1940534
Here is a repeat.....
Yep I had a good one quite a few years ago. A friend who owns a panel beating business called me up saying one of the computers was still working but a week ago it made a whirring squeaking sound and now the receptionist says it is making a really bad smell. I asked if it still was making the noise and did it smell like burning electronics or something that was running too hot and he said that the noise had stopped but wasn't sure he could describe the smell but it was making the receptionist feel really queasy. I asked if it wasn't all the paint thinners fumes making her feel sick but he said they have a paint booth with a water wall and filters so not that. After much discussion about this strange smell and although I was really busy with my real job I made some time so I could go down to the panel shop. On arrival I said that I bet will know the problem as soon as I take the side of the case off ................. and there it was.......... a mouse caught in the rear cooling fan. Ewwwww

http://i968.photobucket.com/albums/ae163/joffa666/mouse_in_pc_at%20panel_shop_zpsucun2gew.jpg

Hey mouseketeers bad news.......... poor Mickey didn't make it

Surely someone could describe a smell of something rotting but it seems not

BTW Note how filthy a 6 month old computer in a panel shop becomes.... the dust is from when they dry sand the filler and is when they leave the office door open to hear the phone because the receptionist only works two or three days a week

 

The Worst story i ever had.

Ok

When i first started to build computers in the early years of 2000 i knew all most nothing about wattage or how many volts are needed for a decent computer mind you.So after completing one of my first desktops.I was totally under powered at that time.I was running a 450 watt power supply which at that time was pretty good and all.But after about a year of running the computer at over clocked speeds which at that time running a dual core cpu running about 4.25 OC which back in them days was pretty fast.My desktop all most caught fire after about a year.

When running a computer at lower power and trying to draw more than what a power supply can handle multiple things can happen.Luckily the only thing that happened was a computer fan wires started to melt out of know where.When i came home the one day,I started things out normally and than after a few hours i started to smell burning plastic.At first i though my dad or one of my next door neighbors where burning trash.But than i started to look at the power cord and it was extremely hot,I mean so hot that it's one thing that should not be touched if it's running hot.

Than i unplugged the computer and let it cool down.And found out later that it was the one fan than ran at 52,000 rpms that the wire was starting to melt.Luckily the computer still works after that.And is currently still running with out any issues with a 650 watt power supply.And still is over clocked to 4.50 ghz.

How do you like that for a close call.

 

Nasty How can people not smell a rotting dead flesh is beyond me.Some one must have put cheese or peanut butter in the computer as a prank lol.

 

Sure it wasn't a small marsupial which people sometimes mistake as a mouse or a rat? Heard that happening around Bronte Beach (Sydney Eastern Suburb Beach area).

Feel sorry for the little creature, horrible way to go.

 

Not sure if this fits in with this Thread either:

Years back, with my Toyota, I clicked the car remote key to lock the car as I walked away. Then I heard it unlock. Turning around I again clicked the remote key. It locked, so I again walked away only to hear it unlock.

Puzzled, I turned around and commenced walking back to car when I noticed someone else opposite loaded with parcels, swearing audibly while pressing his car remote key. It appears both our remote car keys could lock/unlock our cars. I kept locking his car and he was unlocking mine!

Toyota promptly fixed the problem, free, still being under Warranty.

 

People assume falsely that a locked auto is secure unless broken into. Remember years ago when you got two keys for your auto one for the door and one for the ignition? I had two friends one had a Ford and the other a Dodge and their door keys opened each others cars. Which made me wonder just how many car keys or house keys were the same. False security and a bit scary!

 

Definitely a field mouse as the panel shop is on the edge of a huge grassy wetland park reserve for native water birds. After the mice have been breeding over Spring and Summer huge numbers look for somewhere warm to live over late Autumn and Winter before the rain turns the wetlands into a cold flood plain. The Tirhatuan wetland reserve is about 1km wide in places and about 6kms long and Dandenong Creek flows through the middle of the reserve. There are several large flood retarding lakes and the surrounding land is covered with native grasses, shrubs and trees and it eventually leads into Churchill National Park which has parkland as far as Cardinia Reservoir.

Link to Tirhatuan Wetlands which the Panel Shop is within 100m of the fenceline
https://bushwalkjournal.blogspot.com.au/2017/04/tirhatuan-wetlands-rowville.html?m=1

Link to Churchill National Park and adjoining Lysterfield Park
https://parkweb.vic.gov.au/__data/a...rk-note-Lysterfield-Park-and-Churchill-NP.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill_National_Park

Link to Cardinia Reservoir which is about 3km further out but is connected by horse riding trails and hiking tracks.
http://parkweb.vic.gov.au/explore/parks/cardinia-reservoir-parks

I live fairly close to Churchill Park and Lysterfield Park just off the main road in an estate where most of the house blocks are quarter of an acre and up to 5 acres and all of the houses are made of brick and have a minimum of 4 bedrooms so it is spacious country living but only 30 minutes by freeway to the Melbourne CBD.
You may have seen some of the mountains in Churchill Park if you watched the 2006 Commonwealth Games as this was where all the mountain bike events were held.
http://parkweb.vic.gov.au/explore/parks/lysterfield-park/things-to-do/mountain-biking

Sorry for hijacking the thread

 

Beautiful countryside - lovely place to live, but I'm a city girl, need buildings around me.

Speaking of critters in the works...though not a creepy story:

I had a fluttering sound coming from the car's dashboard which drove me crazy for weeks...couldn't find it, even had the Toyota Service manager listen to it when I turned on the ignition, then he had a mechanic sit in the car while we drove around and I would jump and say "Listen, there it is again!" each occasion it occurred. Left it overnight as it needed service anyway, and they would investigate the noise.

When I picked it up, they shrugged in defeat, couldn't find the problem and didn't charge me for their extra investigative work.

When I got home, crazy with the sound, I sat in the car with the engine on, scratching my head trying to locate the noise - which I thought came from one of the air vents. Turning on the air con to HIGH, the noise increased.

Ah, Hah! Gotta be there. Torch out, peering inside...lo and behold, found it. With tweezers I pulled out a large, dead moth. I had a bug in the system. Literally. Problem solved.

 

I'll add one here.

Doing some work for a web hosting company a client through it would be a good idea to setup a FTP account for / on a Linux server.

You can tell how this can lead to some SERIOUS issues.

One of their developers thought it was a good idea to delete /usr and you can tell what happened a result. Of course no backups.

 

I got a good chuckle out of this! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

My one and only tech horror story comes courtesy of helping a MajorGeeks member.
It took more than 4 hours only to be told...
My computer's fine.

 

this made my day. hahaha your chief is like my dad. lol