Worst PC disaster ever?

[fela]

Please post your worst PC or server disaster that you ever encountered, and how you recovered from it (or didn't).

I'll start: I had a 750GB that went bust a few months after getting it. Had alot of data on there and that was before I cared about backups.

Oh yeah, also, I once managed to bork an NTFS partition on a system that belongs to my dad (user error), however I managed to reinstall Windows before he used it next. He still doesn't know :D

[false truths]

I tried to dual-boot Ubuntu 10.10 and Vista on a laptop that really hated the Ubuntu live CD. GRUB wouldn't boot Vista, so I stupidly decided to remove Ubuntu so I could get into Vista again. Ended up killing them both.

I recovered from it by borrowing a USB flash drive and putting the installer on it, and booting into that with the live CD in the disc drive. It took both for it to be able to boot and install once again. I wiped Vista and don't miss it a bit.

[fela]

I tried to dual-boot Ubuntu 10.10 and Vista on a laptop that really hated the Ubuntu live CD. GRUB wouldn't boot Vista, so I stupidly decided to remove Ubuntu so I could get into Vista again. Ended up killing them both.

I recovered from it by borrowing a USB flash drive and putting the installer on it, and booting into that with the live CD in the disc drive. It took both for it to be able to boot and install once again. I wiped Vista and don't miss it a bit.

Oh yeah, that reminds me of the time when I borked my friend's PC by removing its Ubuntu partition to make space for Windows (he never used Ubuntu). It of course deleted GRUB, so couldn't boot, however managed to fix it by using an XP disc to fix the MBR.

[Lucradia]

Old Gateway that no longer is supported (M Series). The laptop harddrive went bust, and the HDD Disk indicator light would be continually on. So I decided to use the drive for stress relief, and took a hammer to it, since it was impossible to get the data off.

Another time is when I decided to buy a netbook. I got a Toshiba DVD-ROM (RW) Drive from a best buy; the box says it's linux compatible; but trying to boot from the CD with Ubuntu, will call kernel panic, since sudo can't change to root on the CD for some strange reason. Any linux distribution will do the same. Only windows and ReactOS will not. I've gone through three Netbooks with the same Toshiba external CD Drive. Windows can read and write disks in it. If Linux tries to write a disk onto it; it hashfails or the system will say it failed for an unknown reason. I have sense used USB Flash drives, even though it's an annoyance for me to have to start hitting F2 as I press the power button (since POST goes too fast.)

[beercz]

Here's mine:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1019203&postcount=45

Have I won?

(I've posted this several times, so apologies if you have seen this before.)

[fela]

Here's mine:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1019203&postcount=45

Have I won?

(I've posted this several times, so apologies if you have seen this before.)

I haven't seen that before, sounds like the sort of thing the BOFH would do (deliberately though) ;)

[Dustin2128]

Heh, impressive. My worst disaster would probably be dumping a can of coke into the open case of an old PC. On the down side, totally screwed up the motherboard. On the up sde, I was finally able to remove the adhesives attaching the heatsink and salvage the CPU! :lolflag:

[BrokenKingpin]

I put Windows ME on one of my computers.

[youbuntu]

Buying a used Sony "VAIO" laptop from a friend, and having a blank CD-R blow up the burner! :?

Naturally, he is a fair guy and refunded me.

[PC_load_letter]

This may not be the kind of reply that the OP expects, but my worst PC experience/disaster was having to deal with Microsoft customer service. It was a pain to put it mildly. Talk about a company too big and disorganized that you literally get lost into customer service. This was back in 2006, when I decided to give Ubuntu a try, never looked back.

[RJ12]

I put Windows ME on one of my computers.

lol!

[fela]

I put Windows ME on one of my computers.

I'd be torn between doing that (on any PC) and running
# yes > /dev/sda

On my server!

[matt_symes]

Here's mine:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1019203&postcount=45

Have I won?

(I've posted this several times, so apologies if you have seen this before.)

Excellent. :popcorn: Please keep well away from my computers though :D

[red_Marvin]

Physical hard drive crash in which my family lost a lot of digital photos
as well as a lot of scanned old ones (gigabytes and hours of work).
The lesson of learning to do a proper backup of important data was very
expensive.

[deconstrained]

I once bricked a router by plugging it into the wrong DC transformer. The voltage applied to it was off by a factor of five #-o

Also: this may have been busted by Adam and Jamie, but an old friend of mine asserts this happened:

His brother wanted to play Diablo on his own computer, and inserted the disk. The thing spun, and spun faster, and faster, until eventually there was a *crack* sound. They attempted to get the tray open but it wouldn't, and after some prying it was discovered the drive was full of fragments of the disk, which had shattered. The best part is that the brand of the drive was named "Magic Spin".

[themarker0]

Well i dropped my computer, (tower) down a flight of stairs. Harddrives don't like that. :/

[odiseo77]

Some years ago, when attempting to install Gentoo, not sure what went wrong, but the installer crashed while writing to the partition table, so I had my HDD seriously messed up (I couldn't boot any OS or access my data, which was the worst part). Luckily, a live cd with testdisk helped me recover my lost partitions with all the files in them.

[Khakilang]

Every time I got virus in Window XP and always need to format computer. There is where I learn how to back up my data. Another time when I pluck the CPU from its socket, it stuck at the bottom of the heat sink and it was useless and I had to get a replacement.

[giddyup306]

Sudoing while drunk.

[vehemoth]

Long time ago dropped a cpu when pulling it out of it's socket and bent the pins.

[zebobbybird]

My sister's computer.

She asked me to fix it, because apparently it had been having some minor glitches. According to her Sometimes programs would end unexpectedly, Sometimes images wouldnt open, files would sometimes seem corrupt, but then open just fine. Whenever i took a look at the machine everything seemed fine. I could not get any of the errors to reproduce, did a full virus scan, took a look at the registry just in case, used it for a while trying to get the same issues to happen. Nothing. Same stuff kept happening according to her, so i told her to write down what exactly happened and when it happened because every time i examined it, i saw nothing wrong. Eventually, she just tells me to take it and use it on a regular basis to see if i get anything going on. Anyway, i take it, the first time i try booting it up, it shuts back down once it starts loading windows. I'm thinking "Well hell, it's obviously got something to do with the operating system" Go through hell trying to get an XP disc (this was back in the XP days) Turns out the damn hard drive was not able to write and read properly anymore, which is something i could have found out if i just checked the hard drive for integrity from the beginning.

Not the worst problem ever, but certainly the most time consuming.

[Dark_Stang]

Once (at my previous job) I unplugged a drive from a Mac computer without unmounting it. Immediately I realized that I had just corrupted the entire drive, which contained hundreds of gigs of photos that my client had. I immediately informed the client what I did, and told him that my employer would cover the cost of data recovery. Client was understanding and grateful for my honesty, it cost my employer a little money (we had an in house data recovery lab, so it wasn't that bad really), and I never made that mistake again.

[Rasa1111]

Here's mine:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1019203&postcount=45

Have I won?

(I've posted this several times, so apologies if you have seen this before.)

haha! wow! :o
Dayum..
poor laptop.

I spilled a full mug of hot, sugar laced tea on my old thinkpad 600e one day. Thought it was done for sure!
It started making a very loud beeping sound i never heard come from it.

So had to *dump* it all out of the laptop into the garbage,
and i removed hard drive, battery, and everything else that was easy enough to remove, and took it outside and shook it as hard as I could, until i couldnt really see/feel any more liquid come out.. then i took it inside, and placed it keyboard down on a thick towel in a window with a lot of air.

I tried about 12 or so hours later, Just because i was antsy..
and it wouldnt turn on.
So i left it for like 2 days, just sitting in that spot...
and when I put it back together, and turned it on..
wouldnt you know.. started right up! lol :)

Couldn't believe it.
Still have the old thing, and it still runs [lubuntu].

A friend of mine tripped over the cord to his 1TB external hard drive..
days after transfering all his videos, pictures, school files, years of stuff...
(this was his "backup") lol

anyway, he finally got everything transferred over to it..
and was going to set it aside, but he had it plugged in still..
tripped over the cord... and when he tried it.. he just got a 'click click click" or tick tick tick... something like that.

He can't get into that thing to save his life.
Neither could i. lol
I have spinrite6 though, someone mentioned it earlier for the same problem.. I doubt itll work though. Not for that.

and the company (seagate) told him they *might* be able to recover his data, but they couldnt promise anything, and it would cost alot. lol :rolleyes:

I told him to hold onto it,
for in the near future we may have something that can easily recover data from things like this..
we'll see..

but for now he's got 1tb of uselessness sitting in a box, that cost him something like $350 .. just a few days before he killed it.
d'oh! :o

[Dr. C]

Oh yeah, that reminds me of the time when I borked my friend's PC by removing its Ubuntu partition to make space for Windows (he never used Ubuntu). It of course deleted GRUB, so couldn't boot, however managed to fix it by using an XP disc to fix the MBR.

The reminds me of my early Ubuntu days. I was testing Ubuntu 5.10 the Breezy Badger on a dual boot system with Windows XP back in early 2006, and managed to really mess up the Ubuntu installation with Automatix. So I decided to wipe out Ubuntu and reinstall. Booted back into XP and used disk administrator to remove all the Ubuntu partitions. The result is an un-bootable system as above.

The fix I found was to use the old 286 running MS-DOS 6.2 to format a system floppy disk, to which I added the FDISK program. I then booted from the floppy and ran
a:fdisk /mbr solving GRUB the problem. I got his idea from Microsoft (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314458) since I figured this was the logical place to look on how to completely remove GNU / Linux form a computer. After I was convinced the corrupted Ubuntu installation had been removed to Redmond's standards I then proceeded to reinstall Ubuntu and stay away from Automatix. The rest is history.

[Rasa1111]

Once (at my previous job) I unplugged a drive from a Mac computer without unmounting it. Immediately I realized that I had just corrupted the entire drive, which contained hundreds of gigs of photos that my client had. I immediately informed the client what I did, and told him that my employer would cover the cost of data recovery. Client was understanding and grateful for my honesty, it cost my employer a little money (we had an in house data recovery lab, so it wasn't that bad really), and I never made that mistake again.

wow, really?
you can't unplug a drive from a mac without corrupting it, if not safely unmounted? :o

I always unmount/safely remove..
but there were many times in windows that i did it, and a few in ubuntu, just being careless and forgetful..
but it never corrupted them.

a mac and it will corrupt the whole damned thing eh?

thats crazy. :o

[Irihapeti]

For me, it was probably the time when I did something like "sudo rm -r /*/*", and cleaned out everything in the top two directories.

Or maybe the time I went "chown -R root /usr"

Both times I had to reinstall. I didn't even have the excuse of being drunk. :)

Fortunately, I've never managed to wreck any hardware.

[wolfen69]

I was dd-ing something and wiped out 35,000 mp3's.
http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/judgment_day_terror.jpg

[Megaptera]

This happened in January '06 and taught me a heck of a lot!!

This "conversation" comes from the (mainly) Windows site I went to for help:

Me: "Specified path does not exist.
Windows 2000 Professional on IBM 600X.
I do not have any boot disks etc. as laptop is refurbished. No games etc loaded - just work. I'm a beginner with this technology - so please be gentle !

Somehow I've messed my laptop. I was trying to get rid of unused programme files using RegEdit. I'm not 100% sure where I went wrong but now when I try to launch any programme I get the following on screen message :

C:\Program Files\Name of Programme\Name of Programme.exe
The specified path does not exist.

Check the path, and then try again.

I cannot access internet so will have to work via this PC. Nothing I try to load from flash drive or CD will load on to the laptop. On each occasion I get the same message."

Reply from member:"Windows 2000 does not automatically make backups of its self. So before you changed the Registry did you copy or make a backup of it, which you could restore to correct the problem?

If no, you could try a Windows 2000 Registry Repair Utility, such as: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

It from a trusted source so it safe to download and try it. But don't download and use software from no name sites as they generally contain viruses and spyware."

Me: "Thanks for getting back to me.

Being new to this, no I did not make a back up (lesson learned). The website you suggest says it's a 6 disc download."

Me: "I have taken laptop for repair, an expensive lesson learned.
Thanks for your help."

I've kept that thread bookmarked as a reminder to myself not to mess around with things I don't understand!!

Now happily dual-booting Ubuntu & Vista having learned a lot in the intervening 4 years!!

[Sean Moran]

I was an on-site field tech and spent most of the time fixing laser printers and plotters, and quite a few of the old-fashioned line printers, back in 1992.

So there I was in the Perth CBD one morning to sort out a problem with a line printer at the Red Cross office; one of our maintenance contract customers back then.

I'd unplugged the power and had the printer all opened up with four big juicy capacitors there to be wary of inside the case at the rhs. I didn't get wary, and holding the printer in both hands as I moved it from the ledge to a table for further examination, UI apear to have touched one of the live capacitor leads, and in my literal shock, threw the printer around 15 m across the office, to have it land on the chest of one of the telephone receptionists, and she was okay. Thank God it didn't land on her head.

I was soon after dismissed from that position.

---o0o---

I did also once upon a time, while employed by the same company, accidentally lose the data I'd pakked onto floppies before a hard disk upgrade, of the entire set of client records of an insurance company with whom we had a maintenance contract at the time, so that might have played a part in my dismissal, although there was no threat of physical injury in that particular stuff up. Well ... no threat of physical injury to the client, that is.

[Spice Weasel]

Laptop + Coffee.

You can guess what happened.

[FlameReaper]

Killed my old home PC by attempting to "transplant" the other PC's old Pentium 4 into it, and putting the Celeron proc away.

Just to inform you, I did my research on the motherboard, I can fit the P4 in nicely. It just escapes me why the PC won't start, as it just gives me a never-turning-off CPU light.

[Sean Moran]

Killed my old home PC by attempting to "transplant" the other PC's old Pentium 4 into it, and putting the Celeron proc away.

Just to inform you, I did my research on the motherboard, I can fit the P4 in nicely. It just escapes me why the PC won't start, as it just gives me a never-turning-off CPU light.
Take heart Flame'. We learn the best from out greatest mistakes.

[FlameReaper]

Take heart Flame'. We learn the best from out greatest mistakes.

If only there's one thing I learned from that incident, is that I need to read more on doing so. Apparently it's not as easy as exchanging newer CPUs in newer motherboards.

Now if only I can... oh damn, I forgot about my best friend working in a PC store. He should be able to help. #-o

[fela]

Some years ago, when attempting to install Gentoo, not sure what went wrong, but the installer crashed while writing to the partition table, so I had my HDD seriously messed up (I couldn't boot any OS or access my data, which was the worst part). Luckily, a live cd with testdisk helped me recover my lost partitions with all the files in them.

I once did something along those lines, and since make sure to always dd the partition table somewhere safe before doing a new installation :)


Long time ago dropped a cpu when pulling it out of it's socket and bent the pins.

I once managed to pull a phenom quad core CPU out of its socket stuck to the cooler. Still working though, it's a miracle nothing got damaged. Actually, not only that but I managed to unstick it from the cooler, set it down, and used my butter fingers to (unknowingly) oh-so-slightly bend one or two of the pins on it, only just enough so that it wouldn't go in the socket. I did manage to bend them back, by using needle nose pliers :guitar:


I'd unplugged the power and had the printer all opened up with four big juicy capacitors there to be wary of inside the case at the rhs. I didn't get wary, and holding the printer in both hands as I moved it from the ledge to a table for further examination, UI apear to have touched one of the live capacitor leads, and in my literal shock, threw the printer around 15 m across the office, ...

I actually have a dead PSU lying on my desk behind my monitor, another dead PSU downstairs in the kitchen/dining room, and two dead CRT monitors outside my bedroom! I don't really know what to do with all this to be honest...

[Sean Moran]

I actually have a dead PSU lying on my desk behind my monitor, another dead PSU downstairs in the kitchen/dining room, and two dead CRT monitors outside my bedroom! I don't really know what to do with all this to be honest...
Just be very careful mate. Even after you pull out the power plug, capacitors still hold a bloody strong charge, which discharges over time. Mainly things like line-printers and such which have capacitors the size of beer cans that might pose the greatest surprises, as I found out. Don't think that something you've unplugged won't still have the power to shock you, if not kill you.

[Wood Prof]

Two words: Packard Bell

[andras artois]

Someone I know put 48 Volts through the headphone socket on a macbook. Got it fixed on the same day as well.

[linuxnewb2]

Windows ... well it's actually one word I guess, lol. Reason why Im spending time with all you fine folks on this linux forum.


Was using a disk util to extend a jam packed XP partition on my gf's comp. Cause XP of course doesn't come with a disk utility worth the slightest crap. Somehow managed to loose a bunch of her stuff from My documents, My pictures blahblahblah. Even though hadn't thought I'd executed any of the instructions I'd been setting yet ( guess I was wrong.) Ended up having to copy the entire contents of the partition onto another one I'd set up in the unallocated space.

Thanks winblows, for making an OS, someone has to download 12 million 3rd party apps to make useful ! And the rocket scientist oem who shipped this box with a 110GB HDD and only 14GB's of it set for the primary OS partition !

I'll never understand why they do that. For the avg home user, why not just use the entire HDD for the operating system ? For any advanced user who wants to cut up the drive for different stuff. They'll already know how and have the disk util's to do it easily.

Have had very few tech problems I couldn't easily solve either on the fly or with a lil bit of research. This comp has been the bane of my tech life. There was the 14GB partition on a 110GB drive so badly fragmented ordeal. Which of course windows disk defrag tool has to have 10% of the partition free to work. So as with so many things micro$oft problem related. The answer was getting something not made my micro$oft to fix their crappy software. 3rd party defrag tool ...
S
And the recent malware ( rootkit ) fiasco. Clean install of MS OS ... and the final straw in turning this thing into a dual boot with a respectable OS ... aka: linux. Chose linux mint 10. It's running like a dream along side MStinks stuff and soon the gf will also learn to use it as the OS of choice.

update: After reading some other folks tech nightmares, I feel a lil bit better about the hiccups I've experienced to date. :D

[fela]

Just be very careful mate. Even after you pull out the power plug, capacitors still hold a bloody strong charge, which discharges over time. Mainly things like line-printers and such which have capacitors the size of beer cans that might pose the greatest surprises, as I found out. Don't think that something you've unplugged won't still have the power to shock you, if not kill you.

Hmm, yeah I heard it's easier to kill yourself with a large capacitor than with the mains, as capacitors release all their charge very quickly or something.

[Sean Moran]

Hmm, yeah I heard it's easier to kill yourself with a large capacitor than with the mains, as capacitors release all their charge very quickly or something.
If it's been there in the kitchen for a few days, you're probably safe, but take care, wear rubber-soled shoes, and keep one hand behind yoiur back. Electric shocks are much more painful when you cop it with two hands than just one.

[fela]

If it's been there in the kitchen for a few days, you're probably safe, but take care, wear rubber-soled shoes, and keep one hand behind yoiur back. Electric shocks are much more painful when you cop it with two hands than just one.

Oh, it's been there months, as well as the other PSU and also CRTs. However I've often heard that capacitors which have been left charged up for years can still retain alot of charge :P

I'm not worried about it, I just don't touch them :lolflag:

[Sean Moran]

Oh, it's been there months, as well as the other PSU and also CRTs. However I've often heard that capacitors which have been left charged up for years can still retain alot of charge :P

I'm not worried about it, I just don't touch them :lolflag:
Yeah, come to think of it. I've got now four old machines locked away in storage, 2x Ipex P-I 133 and a Compaq P-II deskpro and an MSI-PIV all sitting there in the basement gathering dust. Those are all representative of my personal PC disasters, both then AND now.

---o0o---

I've sold a few used cars before, but I've never sold a second-hand computer. I just use them or store them, because I respect what they have done for me.

[linuxnewb2]

Somebody lost 35,000 mp3's !?!? Ouch ... the expression on that image's face had to be about what you really looked like.

Just throwing .02cents in on the capacitor thing. They do loose charge over time, but still definitely a good idea, imo. To error on the side of caution and don't screw with them. Unless you know and have a tool to safely discharge them or summin. Plenty of innocuous looking electronics have high caps in them that can kill somebody.

It's supposed to be like 3amps can kill. But as little as 1amp across the heart ... arm 2 arm could stop it. Whoever said, don't touch them, gets my vote for best advice on high charge capacitors.

[fela]

It's supposed to be like 3amps can kill. But as little as 1amp across the heart ... arm 2 arm could stop it. Whoever said, don't touch them, gets my vote for best advice on high charge capacitors.

I thought that depended on voltage? Like, if it was 240V then 1 amp could kill you, but if it was 3V you could take 80 amps? (using that as an example anyway)

[Sean Moran]

Somebody lost 35,000 mp3's !?!? Ouch ... the expression on that image's face had to be about what you really looked like.

Just throwing .02cents in on the capacitor thing. They do loose charge over time, but still definitely a good idea, imo. To error on the side of caution and don't screw with them. Unless you know and have a tool to safely discharge them or summin. Plenty of innocuous looking electronics have high caps in them that can kill somebody.

It's supposed to be like 3amps can kill. But as little as 1amp across the heart ... arm 2 arm could stop it. Whoever said, don't touch them, gets my vote for best advice on high charge capacitors.
Always rubber shoes and keep one hand behind your back.

[linuxnewb2]

Just going off the electronics research I'd done. Volts aren't a big deal ... why people have stun guns around that are 80,000/500,000 volts of stunning goodness ( those devices are super low amp ). It's the amperage that gives someone a really bad day. Not exactly an electronics expert. But those were the findings based on quite a bit of research.

Regardless think we can all agree high capacity capacitors should be avoided by anyone who isn't sure they know what they're doing. Although I've got the feeling you're right fela. In that the overall charge stored would have a drastic effect on the potential damage done.

[Sean Moran]

Just going off the electronics research I'd done. Volts aren't a big deal ... why people have stun guns around that are 80,000/500,000 volts of stunning goodness ( those devices are super low amp ). It's the amperage that gives someone a really bad day. Not exactly an electronics expert. But those were the findings based on quite a bit of research. Which I was specifically studying the subject for poss uses in nefarious applications, lol.

Regardless think we can all agree high capacity capacitors should be avoided by anyone who isn't sure they know what they're doing.
Voltage is just a buzz, but voltage comes into its own when multiplied by amperes. It's the amps that kill us, but 5 Ohms at 5 volts is only there to give you a buzz on your tongue. 5 volts at 50,000 ohms will send you to another life.

---o0o---

To put it plainlly, think of a river flowing. The voltage is just the speed of the water flowing down that river when the tide is low. The amperes represent the current; the amount of water that flows out to sea. The human heart can handle high speed, but we don't apppreciate strong currents. We don't mind high-voltages, but we don't like heavy amperes. That is why you should be very careful if you ever need to fix your PSU, because it might still have some strong currents, even if the voltage is only 12/5v. Rubber shoes and one hand behind your back is a good rule to follow.

[linuxnewb2]

Sean get's my vote as guy to listen to on this. Studied the subject enough to figure it out for the things I had in mind. Didn't bother becoming an electronics guru. One thing that was made plain by my findings though. High amps = OUCHIE.

High charge capacitors also = OUCHIE, lol.

:D

[rewyllys]

Voltage is just a buzz, but voltage comes into its own when multiplied by amperes. It's the amps that kill us, but 5 Ohms at 5 volts is only there to give you a buzz on your tongue. 5 volts at 50,000 ohms will send you to another life.
Surely you meant to say, "5 ohms at 50,000 volts . . . ."?

[fela]

Voltage is just a buzz, but voltage comes into its own when multiplied by amperes. It's the amps that kill us, but 5 Ohms at 5 volts is only there to give you a buzz on your tongue. 5 volts at 50,000 ohms will send you to another life.

Well here are some equations:

power [watts] = voltage [volts] * current [amps]

This is why a small voltage but high current, as well as a high voltage but small current, can both kill you. Or why 500,000 volts at a 0.000004 amps will not kill you, or why 100 amps at 0.03V will not kill you.

It's also why the ultra high voltage AC transmission lines use relatively low currents.

Also, I haven't done any electronics for a while, but doesn't:

voltage = current * resistance

[that IIRC is ohm's law, correct?]

In which case, at a constant voltage, 5 ohms will be a hell of alot MORE amps than 50000 ohms. Tell me if I'm wrong though :)

[Sean Moran]

voltage = current * resistance


Just to help out mate, but current and resistance are both measured in ohms. That's not quite much a working equation as far as I gather.

---o0o---

I know you were only jokiing.

[nothingspecial]

Don't type this


find . -type f -exec mv '{}' ./ \;

from / with root privileges logged in to another machine instead of a directory in my home folder I wanted to tidy up.

Which is why I now use different colours in different ssh sessions.

[fela]

Just to help out mate, but current and resistance are both measured in ohms. That's not quite much a working equation as far as I gather.

---o0o---

I know you were only jokiing.

Sorry, I wasn't joking :P

Current is measured in amps, resistance is measured in ohms...

But yeah, I heard that ohm's law isn't strictly a law but an approximation depending on different variables (or something like that anyway).


Don't type this


find . -type f -exec mv '{}' ./ \;

from / with root privileges logged in to another machine instead of a directory in my home folder I wanted to tidy up.

Which is why I now use different colours in different ssh sessions.

Recursive operations on directories are things you should always check thrice about :)

[Sean Moran]

Sorry, I wasn't joking :P

Current is measured in amps, resistance is measured in ohms...

But yeah, I heard that ohm's law isn't strictly a law but an approximation depending on different variables (or something like that anyway).



Recursive operations on directories are things you should always check thrice about :)
True, and sorry for being such a drunk. I got my amperes and my ohms mixed up. I think I might stop giving advice for a while.

[Shining Arcanine]

Some years ago, when attempting to install Gentoo, not sure what went wrong, but the installer crashed while writing to the partition table, so I had my HDD seriously messed up (I couldn't boot any OS or access my data, which was the worst part). Luckily, a live cd with testdisk helped me recover my lost partitions with all the files in them.

With Gentoo Linux, you are supposed to install it yourself. Never use an automated installer.

[Sijmen]

It was a sunday morning. My system had four HDD's. Not long after, it had only three :???: I was rearranging the cables, and I accidentally short circuited one of the drives.... Do'h! The computer was still on........ :oops:

[blueturtl]

This was back when I was still in my pre-teens. Windows 95 was hot out of the oven and of course my mother had a computer running it that we were never ever allowed to touch for the love of all her precious work files.

Getting time on that computer was harder than getting time share on university servers before PCs became commonplace. But, I wanted to, needed to, because this was a shiny new Pentium. Nothing I had ever seen could have been so awesome. My own computer, a lowly 386SX with 16 MHz and 16-bit external memory bus just wasn't doing it.

So anyway, I had managed to get time on this powerhouse and a game disk borrowed from a friend who had a magazine subscription. Alas, this computer was bought from the United States, so the keyboard layout was not familiar to me. I did not know which key would produce '\' so when installing a game I had to pick directory for it to install into from a group already available. Naturally, rather than finding out how the keyboard worked. :)

For this particular game (can't even remember what it was), I thought C:\Windows was going to have to do. It was as good a directory as any other. No hiccups in the setup procedure either. That is, until I decided to uninstall the game and the setup program - instead of erasing the game files - decided to remove the entire C:\Windows directory. I got a few eerie error messages, to which I responded with the standard solution: reboot. But Windows didn't come home that night. :D

My mother didn't luckily lose any of her data, but due to the kludge that is Windows long file name support, all her files were in form of FILENA~1.doc FILENA~2.doc etc. once restored from the backups, which caused her a lot of gray hairs.

[odiseo77]

With Gentoo Linux, you are supposed to install it yourself. Never use an automated installer.

Well, last time I used it, it had its own installer, if I remember well (I might be wrong, since it was like 3 or 4 years ago).

[fela]

So anyway, I had managed to get time on this powerhouse and a game disk borrowed from a friend who had a magazine subscription. Alas, this computer was bought from the United States, so the keyboard layout was not familiar to me. I did not know which key would produce '\' so when installing a game I had to pick directory for it to install into from a group already available. Naturally, rather than finding out how the keyboard worked. :)

For this particular game (can't even remember what it was), I thought C:\Windows was going to have to do. It was as good a directory as any other. No hiccups in the setup procedure either. That is, until I decided to uninstall the game and the setup program - instead of erasing the game files - decided to remove the entire C:\Windows directory. I got a few eerie error messages, to which I responded with the standard solution: reboot. But Windows didn't come home that night. :D

My mother didn't luckily lose any of her data, but due to the kludge that is Windows long file name support, all her files were in form of FILENA~1.doc FILENA~2.doc etc. once restored from the backups, which caused her a lot of gray hairs.

Wow, I can't imagine how she must have reacted, were you allowed on it ever again? :D

Oh and yeah, windows long filename support IS definitely a kludge.

[blueturtl]

Wow, I can't imagine how she must have reacted, were you allowed on it ever again? :D

Oh and yeah, windows long filename support IS definitely a kludge.

She took it surprisingly well. I guess she saw how shocked I was at the mess I made and knew I'd learnt my lesson.

The guy who came to clean up could have used a non-MS utility to copy the files to floppies, which would have preserved the file names.

Stupidity was involved in this case on so, so many levels... :D

[fela]

The guy who came to clean up could have used a non-MS utility to copy the files to floppies, which would have preserved the file names.

Stupidity was involved in this case on so, so many levels... :D

Should have used dd (straight byte-for-byte copy) ;)

[beercz]

Excellent. :popcorn: Please keep well away from my computers though :D
Will do, provided you don't spill water, coffee, beer, coke etc. on them. Computers tend not to like liquids :-)

[Rasa1111]

Will do, provided you don't spill water, coffee, beer, coke etc. on them. Computers tend not to like liquids :-)

Except for Thinkpads!
You can spill a full mug of hot tea and sugar into them and they still kick! (see previous post). lol

[beercz]

Except for Thinkpads!
You can spill a full mug of hot tea and sugar into them and they still kick! (see previous post). lol
OK, OK!!!

Most computers (at the moment at least) tend not to like liquids.

Move on!!!

[Rasa1111]

was more of a joke than anything, really.
but OK, "moving on!!!" lol

[Paqman]

Well here are some equations:

power [watts] = voltage [volts] * current [amps]

This is why a small voltage but high current, as well as a high voltage but small current, can both kill you. Or why 500,000 volts at a 0.000004 amps will not kill you, or why 100 amps at 0.03V will not kill you.


I think there's a bit of confusion going down here guys.

In your example above, for 100A to flow at only 0.03V you'd have to have a resistance of 0.3mΩ. The human body's resistance would be measured in kΩ, so about a million times more than your example. A shock big enough to push 100A through you would have to be exceedingly high voltage.

Bottom line: it's the current that determines how dangerous a shock is. 100 amps will BBQ you every time. That's serious current, and you will not survive. The current is a function of the voltage and your resistance. If you consider your resistance to be (roughly) a constant then it basically comes down to:

more voltage = more current = more death

Of course, there's a lot more to it than that. The path the current takes matters, AC is more lethal than DC, and the resistance of a human isn't a constant, but you get the idea.

[fela]

Paqman, cheers, that post cleared things up a bit :D

[nerdy_kid]

I once formatted my 2TB backup drive as I was trying to use the usb disk creator to install Ubuntu on one of it's three partitions. I almost lost 500GBs of data (some of it on an encrypted drive at that) but testdisk and a little manual partition table tweaking saved my life :lol:

[Kraus]

I've had a few disasters over the years.

My dad had bought a brand new Toshiba laptop with a Pentium 4 CPU and 1GB of RAM, he lets my little brother and me play Runescape on it with my little brother having a nice large bottle of soda right next to the laptop. I left the room to get a drink or something and what I find when I return is my little brother with a "OMG" face on and the laptop keyboard covered in soda, I flipped out and called for my dad whom was "wtf did you just do!?!?". Needless to say my little brother was punished and my dad never let him near that laptop for sometime...

Another disaster would be when my dad took me to work with him (this was two years ago), he owns and operates a computer tech company here in Da Burgh and I was in "training" to start a job soon. He let me into a large but cramped room with large server carts and towers lining the walls, all of which were on wheels. We proceed to the terminal and start getting to work on the servers, when my dad got up to get something he knocked over a server rack which made everyone go "OMG. WHAT IS HAPPENING!?" in the office. Turned out that was a important server which maintained the entire network, we spent another three days setting all that back up...thats what I call "training".