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View Full Version : Contest idea. Crash your PC



weasel fierce
August 18th, 2005, 11:58 PM
Here's an idea for a contest.
Set up a PC with any operating system you choose, and see how quickly you can kill it, without taking deliberate action to do so (deleting system files etc)

But rather, when viruses, trojans and spyware kills it off. You may of course seek out websites and programs that are likely to endanger the machine.

Shortest time from "online for the first time" to "unusuable" wins.
Who's up for it ?
Or more realistically, what is the shortest time you have, without exaggerating, seen a PC die from software related issues ?

(its recommended not to do this with your main PC ;) )

aysiu
August 19th, 2005, 12:36 AM
Here's an idea for a contest.
Set up a PC with any operating system you choose, and see how quickly you can kill it, without taking deliberate action to do so (deleting system files etc)

But rather, when viruses, trojans and spyware kills it off. You may of course seek out websites and programs that are likely to endanger the machine.

Shortest time from "online for the first time" to "unusuable" wins.
Who's up for it ?
Or more realistically, what is the shortest time you have, without exaggerating, seen a PC die from software related issues ?

(its recommended not to do this with your main PC ;) ) If I had a spare PC, I might participate...

somuchfortheafter
August 19th, 2005, 12:55 AM
10mins.. fresh xp install it got spyware and lightning struck it before the mighty wrath of me...

qalimas
August 19th, 2005, 12:57 AM
Hmm, that ME disk may come in handy after all ;) Oh wait, I threw it away.... darn....

Brunellus
August 19th, 2005, 12:58 AM
then we can all analyze teh d34th d474 that comes from them!

thecrimsonking
August 19th, 2005, 01:01 AM
Less than 10 minutes.

I did a reinstall of XP Pro for a friend, Before I could install a firewall or antivirus (or SP2) he plugged the damn DSL cable in and got sasser. It went from a clean install to forcing a shutdown in less than 10 minutes.

krusbjorn
August 19th, 2005, 01:03 AM
I didnt have internet at my place a couple of years ago (hey, feels like stone age). Took my XP box to a friend to play some Diablo 2, plugged in the network cable and started up. Before all the horrible startup programs were finished loading Blaster hit and killed me. We ended up playing chess in a tent that weekend.

Edit: Just to clear things up, it was an MMX266mhz Compaq with 128 megs of ram. Starting up probably took 6-7 minutes :P

Brunellus
August 19th, 2005, 01:07 AM
I didnt have internet at my place a couple of years ago (hey, feels like stone age). Took my XP box to a friend to play some Diablo 2, plugged in the network cable and started up. Before all the horrible startup programs were finished loading Blaster hit and killed me. We ended up playing chess in a tent that weekend.
that seems a little extreme. you were worm refugees?

TravisNewman
August 19th, 2005, 01:34 AM
I've seen it happen in 3 minutes or so. It'd be hard to top that.

qalimas
August 19th, 2005, 01:42 AM
To make this fair, why don't we make it Linux only? I mean come on, we'll have computers with Windows crashing anywhere from 1 minute to a week, at least give us a yearly or so competition ;)

xequence
August 19th, 2005, 02:12 AM
How can you just plug it in an instantly get a virus? Dont you have to download things?

My computer with ME went along time without a virus as far as I know. I downloaded alot of the stuff people say to avoid for viruses... P2P, Bittorent, etc. I only had ad-aware but didnt often use it. Norton auto-protect was turned off... Resource hog.

benplaut
August 19th, 2005, 02:30 AM
i've seen a Win ME go down in the time it took for me to go hunting for a working keyboard... it was somewhere around 5 minutes.

heh... it was actaully quite funny ;-)

macgyver2
August 19th, 2005, 03:41 AM
Or more realistically, what is the shortest time you have, without exaggerating, seen a PC die from software related issues ?
Does it have to be software related issues? Darn! Were it a combination of stupid-human/hardware related issues I'd be in at somewhere between five and ten seconds.

Has to do with forgetting to secure one of those extra usb-port things on a cobbled together machine. I hooked it up under my table, started it up, went to sit in the chair, kicked the machine...the usb-ports fell from the opening in which they had been, well, merely resting in the back of the computer. There was a blue flash and the system died. Once I got the "aw, crap" look off my face I tried starting it back up again and it wouldn't work...though later on I hit the power switch for about the 200th time and it just booted like nothing had ever happened. The only thing that never worked after that was one pci slot--presumably the slot that had to do with whatever part of the mobo the usb-port thing shorted out.

In my defense, all the lights were off and the flash from the short looked really cool...in hindsight.

nrayever
August 19th, 2005, 08:07 AM
beat me!!

i was installing xp on a computer and then after like a minute or less, i got a nice blue screen telling me that there r some hardware shity problems. and it's not the first time, this happends frecuently to me, with a "just-bought computer parts for an update" to "brand name pc's" and "stone-age computers".

mmmmm, with win2k some times happend the same. so it makes it double!! hahahahahaha :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin:

WildTangent
August 19th, 2005, 09:27 AM
my record is about 5 minutes. windows 2k, setup in my routers DMZ. i wanted to make a "honey-pot" :P after 5 minutes i got sasser. a constantly shutting down computer counts as unusable right?

-Wild

23meg
August 19th, 2005, 09:33 AM
where i live, with a dsl connection it takes 2 to 4 minutes to get your fresh xp install to get infected with the win32 rpc worm that reboots your machine.

oddabe19
August 19th, 2005, 04:28 PM
Shameless windows bash...

Instantly for me.

I popped in the Windows CD, and that was it....


hardee har har.

jeremy
August 19th, 2005, 05:54 PM
I did it in 0.0009 seconds once, windows xp install, on the final reboot it came up and died in a jiffy!

somuchfortheafter
August 19th, 2005, 06:17 PM
1day... bad gentoo config lol

KingBahamut
August 19th, 2005, 07:06 PM
Here's an idea for a contest.
Set up a PC with any operating system you choose, and see how quickly you can kill it, without taking deliberate action to do so (deleting system files etc)

But rather, when viruses, trojans and spyware kills it off. You may of course seek out websites and programs that are likely to endanger the machine.

Shortest time from "online for the first time" to "unusuable" wins.
Who's up for it ?
Or more realistically, what is the shortest time you have, without exaggerating, seen a PC die from software related issues ?

(its recommended not to do this with your main PC ;) )


Hmmmm......Win95 , that has got to be the quickest kill possible. Now, we are talking unpatched and unfixed right?

Minutes I suspect it would take.

Dr_Deadmeat
June 16th, 2006, 09:44 AM
My record for linux is 3 weeks... With Ubuntu 5.10(!), and I killed my X server when I'd tried to install nVidia drivers for my GeForce 420 go, and it would not event work to make a automatic reconfiguration of my xorg.conf file... It was down, but I had some live cd's here so I managed to take a backup before a reinstall =P

On windows: 2hours and 10 secs (2 hours to install, and reboot after install. 10 secs when trying to find a keygen for my antivirus =P)

Miguel
June 16th, 2006, 10:22 AM
In dapper, I could lock it up predictably pretty fast. I just needed a fglrx or a x.org update. I would then dist-upgrade. If, for any reason, I logged out to gdm instead of killing the x-server (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace) the system would freeze. Yes, it is reproducible. Yes, it is a bug. And yes, it is a closed source issue.

Do we love ATi or what?

Kimm
June 16th, 2006, 11:34 AM
Back when I was using Warty I could kill it after a few days.
That was a user issue though... [-X

Engnome
June 16th, 2006, 11:36 AM
On windows: 2hours and 10 secs (2 hours to install, and reboot after install. 10 secs when trying to find a keygen for my antivirus =P)

Lol that is what you get for visiting one of those places.

btw I have a copy of ME here anyone want a go with it? I dont think you can find this beauty on the P2P networks anymore...

fuscia
June 16th, 2006, 12:03 PM
i used ME for six years (using kazaa, surfing tranny porn, etc.). no viruses, no trojans, no worms, just the usual spyware. at one point, i went so long without rebooting, my fan died and i had to replace the power supply. i guess i'm out.

BoyOfDestiny
June 16th, 2006, 12:13 PM
i used ME for six years (using kazaa, surfing tranny porn, etc.). no viruses, no trojans, no worms, just the usual spyware. at one point, i went so long without rebooting, my fan died and i had to replace the power supply. i guess i'm out.

How long was that (or was it just your PC had aged...?) I've been rebooting an average of once in 30 days for my machine for the past 3 years or so...

Ubuntu, I've left it without a reboot for 37 days I think... Currently on 23 days (but dapper had a kernel update... I will reboot it soon I guess.. :) )

Engnome
June 16th, 2006, 12:18 PM
i used ME for six years (using kazaa, surfing tranny porn, etc.). no viruses, no trojans, no worms, just the usual spyware. at one point, i went so long without rebooting, my fan died and i had to replace the power supply. i guess i'm out.

I only used it for about 2 years, didn't have any problems. Used kazaa and tried lots of new stuff. I was a beginner with computers. Didn't know what Linux or rootkits were. But ME stayed in one piece for me. I cant say I understand all this ME bashing.

bruce89
June 16th, 2006, 03:08 PM
I reinstalled Windows XP (SP1) once, and within 5 minutes, it was dead (no firewall, as it isn't on by default in SP1). I have had Ubuntu here for about a year without a firewall (recently a hardware one), and it's been fine.

fuscia
June 16th, 2006, 03:17 PM
How long was that (or was it just your PC had aged...?)

i went for about 6 months without a reboot in ME. by that time, the computer was about four years old. when i took the old power supply out, the fan was completely covered with dust. it was so thick, it looked caked on.

evolvedlight
June 16th, 2006, 04:42 PM
Quickest out of any OS was Ubuntu. Windows Xp, 2000, they will generally stay up for as long as you treat them well.

Ubuntu - Install
Synaptic - Install Nvidia drivers
Reboot - X failed.

I had to learn Vim to correct it, the autoconfig had set my video card as PCI:1:0:0 or sommat when it was actually supposed to be PCI:2:0:0.

(actually, this could have been while following the XGL tutorial. too long ago)

paul cooke
June 16th, 2006, 04:44 PM
Here's an idea for a contest.
Set up a PC with any operating system you choose, and see how quickly you can kill it, without taking deliberate action to do so (deleting system files etc)

But rather, when viruses, trojans and spyware kills it off. You may of course seek out websites and programs that are likely to endanger the machine.

Shortest time from "online for the first time" to "unusuable" wins.
Who's up for it ?
Or more realistically, what is the shortest time you have, without exaggerating, seen a PC die from software related issues ?

(its recommended not to do this with your main PC ;) )

no contest... my father had his XP borked while he was trying to download SP2...

Remember that the default setup for an OEM XP is for all users to be admin and the firewall is turned off... he didn't know anything about the dangers of those stupid defaults... and the little warning in the skimpy booklet wasn't very good at explaining the dangers either...

(not sure what the defaults are for an OEM XP SP2 though, but then again, I don't care anymore...)

paul cooke
June 16th, 2006, 05:11 PM
How can you just plug it in an instantly get a virus? Dont you have to download things?no, XP had so many holes the worms just downloaded themselves...



http://www.eeye.com/html/Research/Advisories/AL20030811.html


Once a starting address is determined, the worm attempts to probe blocks of 20 sequential IP addresses at a time for hosts with TCP port 135 (Windows RPC service) open, by sending a connection attempt to each one simultaneously. After about two seconds, the worm will try to exploit each host with which a connection was established, one at a time. First, it transmits a payload over the wire to the designated RPC service listening on that port. 80% of the time the Blaster worm will assume the target environment is Windows XP, while 20% of the time it assumes Windows 2000, and the exploit is configured accordingly. The choice of which OS to target is decided when the worm executable begins running, and remains the same throughout all exploitation attempts. If the target host is running the correct version of Windows, and if its RPC service is vulnerable to the DCOM buffer overflow (Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-026), the payload causes a command shell to be bound to port 4444 on the infected target. The shell only stays open for one connection, and will therefore be closed once the worm has finished issuing commands.

After sending the payload and waiting for a short interval, the worm assumes that a command shell is listening on the remote port 4444 and attempts to connect. If successful, it starts a TFTP server thread on the local (attacking) machine and sends a command that instructs the remote machine to download a copy of the "msblast.exe" worm executable via TFTP. Once the executable has been transferred, or after 20 seconds have elapsed, the TFTP server is shut down and the worm then issues further commands to the victim to execute msblast.exe. Assuming the executable was downloaded successfully, the propagation cycle then begins again from the newly infected host, while the infecting instance of the worm continues iterating through IP addresses.

bonzodog
June 16th, 2006, 05:46 PM
I once GPF'd win98se (yes, TOTALLY unbootable) by installing Litestep. One hour from clean install to unrecoverable system. A GPF, for those of you that don't know is the worst error that Windows is capable of.
It's the Black Screen Of Death. ALL you get is merely the words 'General Protection Fault' across the top of the screen, which is totally black.
It took me just one hour to get one of those with NO net connection.
I realised that day that windows for me was Too Difficult to use, (I had no control over a complicated install) and went back to Linux, which has always been easier for me.

K.Mandla
June 16th, 2006, 07:21 PM
The last time I used WinME it had crashed three times before it had finished installing. Do I get a negative score for that?

guine
June 16th, 2006, 07:46 PM
This didnt completely destroy my computer but it did mess it up pretty good. A couple of years i did a fresh install of xp and in the time it took me to download 2 updates from windowsupdate.com(i had to use this cause the updater didnt seem to be working) my computer crashed. Upon rebooting i discovered that my computer had already picked up 10 viruses and other fun windows 'features' from only visiting windowsupdate.com to download 2 updates.

Mr LG
February 27th, 2007, 06:15 PM
In Ubuntu, I just got done setting and customizing my system and then. Out of sheer curiosity when I was reading "The No BS guide to Linux" I tried rm -rf / just for the fun. I deleted most of everything on there back to default... The whole screen showed millions of files being deleted, then it went blank and went back to the login screen.

tjtansey
February 27th, 2007, 07:06 PM
Fresh XP install last week. Never made it through the SP2 update. The only thing that saved me was being able to nuke the offensive files after booting up in Ubuntu.

bailout
February 27th, 2007, 07:13 PM
Ubuntu wins by far for me. Under dapper I could produce a hard lock simply by enabling/dissabling my wireless (ralink based usb dongle with open drivers). Under edgy it hard locks at random so I can no longer link Opera to my email files because they can become corrupted when linux crashes. So much for the myth that the linux kernel is designed so that drivers and programs can't take the system down when they crash. Then of course there was the infamous xorg update that killed my system until I went on the net with windows and found out how to fix it.

In comparison never had a hard lock with XP and very rarely with 98. Never had a virus or malware take over my pc in about 7 years of windows use so I am always puzzled of these stories of xp being infected in 5 mins.

Zuuswa
February 27th, 2007, 07:27 PM
Yesterday after I re-installed Win98 on my girlfriends dinasour-computer, it gives me a blue screen of death within seconds of booting up . . . I have no clue why, I presume its hardware, but win98 worked fine (but terribly slow and generally unuseable) on it before I re-installed, so Im downloading xubuntu.iso now. I still count it as a software problem, because there is nothing wrong with the hardware, only the way the software interacts with it.


In Ubuntu, I just got done setting and customizing my system and then. Out of sheer curiosity when I was reading "The No BS guide to Linux" I tried rm -rf / just for the fun. I deleted most of everything on there back to default... The whole screen showed millions of files being deleted, then it went blank and went back to the login screen.

I dont think that counts . . . the software worked perfectly fine and did exactly what it was supposed to do!

izanbardprince
February 27th, 2007, 08:48 PM
Easy, install the Linux Nvidia driver (not the GLX one) and then wait until Software Update downloads new kernel modules. :-P

MkfIbK7a
February 27th, 2007, 08:59 PM
has everyone see the goggle.com movie clip? :)

tehhaxorr
February 28th, 2007, 01:06 AM
Just install Windows 95 and leave it running for a few minuets with a web connection.

Dot Communist
February 28th, 2007, 01:09 AM
I do belive i win at this game,

Installing Win98 for a friend because he could not stand ME anymore and for some reason Dapper would not work on his comp. What happend was the Win98 installer delleted all the MEOS files and then turnd around and said "You need an Update disk silly, not an install disk" and rebooted back to ME, Or tried to, Win98 deleted all the ME Files, so an unusable comp made in about 10-15 mins

niko7865
February 28th, 2007, 01:42 AM
Two minutes, Ubuntu 6.10. Installed my open source wireless drivers and got a soft lockup as soon as they were run. Unfortunatly they also ran during boot...Had to boot into the live CD and remove the drivers from there.

muguwmp67
February 28th, 2007, 01:45 AM
Install Windows ME -> Install Norton Systemworks 2000 -> Install all of your other software -> Update everything -> Run Registry Cleaner.

Enjoy your new black screen of death next time you boot.

Total time: 5-6 hours.
Maybe not as fast as others, but exponentially more frustrating.

RandomJoe
February 28th, 2007, 01:28 PM
Ah, memories... Reinstalling a coworker's laptop because he'd managed to hose things up. It had Win2K. Of course, the corporate image disks didn't have the latest patches. But hey, we had SUS that would push them out as soon as he logged in. Except that other compromised machines on the network would infect it before SUS could get them installed!

All machines were supposed to be patched, otherwise disabled. But when the corporate LAN is implemented as a flat LAN nationwide, you are bound to get more than a few idiots who figured out ways around it... I finally had to use our office DSL line and get updates direct from MS ("against policy" of course). I had a proper firewall there so it wasn't like putting the laptop right on the Inet.

The fastest kill on a Linux system would have to be hardware-related. Many years ago, I had a 386 w/ 40MB HDD. For reasons I can't fathom now, while setting the system up (Slack - but not that it matters!) I had the HDD sitting on the desk beside the computer (tower case). At some point, I managed to knock the tower over. It landed on the HDD, of course. That drive never worked again... And that was back in the starving-student days - hard drives were something I couldn't readily afford!

tigerpants
February 28th, 2007, 02:11 PM
Here's an idea for a contest.
Set up a PC with any operating system you choose, and see how quickly you can kill it, without taking deliberate action to do so (deleting system files etc)

But rather, when viruses, trojans and spyware kills it off. You may of course seek out websites and programs that are likely to endanger the machine.

Shortest time from "online for the first time" to "unusuable" wins.
Who's up for it ?
Or more realistically, what is the shortest time you have, without exaggerating, seen a PC die from software related issues ?

(its recommended not to do this with your main PC ;) )

Connect an XP machine directly to the internet with no firewall and it'll be toast in 30 seconds.

Mr.Auer
February 28th, 2007, 03:31 PM
My record is 10 seconds after installing XP it was infected with MSBlast worm. Forgot to unplug the network cable when booting up, before installing firewall and antivirus :D
Boy was that fun. Unplugged the cable as soon as I realized it was attached (about 10 secs after Windows had booted up) but it was too late...

Managed to remove it thou with some work.

Luckily I dont have to worry about Windows anymore...except on one friends computer who counts on me as tech support. Tried to get him interested in Linux, so far no go...
Luckily my other tech support needing friends have accepted my offer of a supported Ubuntu installation, gives me far less headaches even thou I have to teach them a little more in the beginning ;)

Mr.Auer
February 28th, 2007, 03:36 PM
Oh hehe...Just remembered another one from 3 years back, when I was switching to Ubuntu for the first time...Being a total, utter noob with *nix systems..

I saw there was a kernel update available, and I reasoned I must probably remove the old kernel before installing a new one. So I proceed to remove the kernel..And coming from Windows, also reasoned that I must reboot. BIG stupid mistake. Proceed to reboot and VOILA! An unbootable system with NO kernel present. Nice job!

This was about 2 hours after getting Ubuntu installed for the first time... :D
But hey, you learn best from your mistakes!

ygarl
February 28th, 2007, 04:17 PM
Instantaneously:
Installed Arch Linux, but the install failed for no obvious reason. Fortunately, I was multi-booting Mint and Ubuntu at the same time.

That partition still won't boot up. Suppose I outta reformat it and just use it for my mp3 collection...

macogw
February 28th, 2007, 05:06 PM
How can you just plug it in an instantly get a virus? Dont you have to download things?

My computer with ME went along time without a virus as far as I know. I downloaded alot of the stuff people say to avoid for viruses... P2P, Bittorent, etc. I only had ad-aware but didnt often use it. Norton auto-protect was turned off... Resource hog.

hahaha no. just connect to the internet. all the little script kiddies and their bots will start poking it as soon as it has an IP address and they'll get through all the open ports before set up the firewall, anti-virus, or spybot s&d. you don't really have to do anything to get infected--just hit "connect"

OrangeCrate
February 28th, 2007, 08:42 PM
One of our kids bought a new XP (before the service packs, or maybe SP1) machine several years ago, and left it on with no protection after the cable installer hooked it up. When I got there a week later to set it up, I took one look, dumped the hard drive, and reinstalled Windows. What a mess.

There are many tutorials available on the web as to what to do prior to going on the net. It's too bad people don't read them. But, such is the life of the "average" Windows user I guess.

allforcarrie
April 19th, 2007, 07:18 AM
i managed to get an NTLDR error a couple times.

haricharan
April 19th, 2007, 07:31 AM
very simple...just install Vista Home Premium on a 512 MB RAM machine..on first boot..the system wud crash... :D

use a name
April 19th, 2007, 08:12 AM
Of course Windows crashed every now and then. Self-destruct: a few times. But not as unstable or dangerous as some of you guys have seen.

Linux: oh well, I killed it quite a few times. :popcorn: Other than that, sometimes KDE crashes. When that happens, I can still save my files and then restart the X-server. :KS