Horror Stories?

Horror Stories.

Post shit people do that horrifies you.

>make threads like this

Use Chrome without any addons, or even worse yet; IE

When people say this to me, "user, I need to speak to you for a moment". My heart aches when they do this because I feel something scarey or bad is going to happen

...

Getting that haircut

The light bulb in the PSU is priceless

>HDD broke, throw it in the trash.

>find my old GPU from a closet
>clean it out. 4 years of service, 2 years of being stowed away
>no fuckin dust
>donate to littlebrother because he's an autistic twit with an autistic father who refuse to buy him anything modern
>literally still using a 20gb IDE harddrive
>cry everytime i have to restart his PC
>hand it over to his twit dad
>he's wearing gloves
>oh no
>ohhh noo oh god no
>he grabs it
>lovely big woolly gloves rubbing itself over the PCB
>sticks to everything with the exact efficiency of velcro
>absolutely sure he just killed it by ripping components off
>go home
>cry, because it is my fault that my trusty old hardware did not die a proper viking death

same dad

>be like 17 or something
>built a server
>want to open a few ports to host muh gaems
>tell stepdad to let me
>i actually know what I'm doing
>he spends 30 minutes just trying to figure out the router's password because he never writes anything down
>he's in charge of IT at his work, not sure how that business is even operational with his tech level
>i tell him the exact ports i want opened
>he argues that those ports are a security problem
>ports in the 20k+ range are apparently a security problem, alright
>"me and [friend] hacked microsoft once, we know what we're talking about"
>an hour of arguing later I give up and just wait for him to leave the house
>converse with mum, explain how ports and routers work in great detail
>she understands fuckall but she gets that I know what I'm doing so mission successful I guess

days later
>stepdad is afraid of mum
>mum convinces him
>he scoffs and spends another 30 minutes remembering the password to the router
>he DMZ's my server because he couldn't figure out how to open specific ports and refused to let me do it

I fucking hat epeople who don't remove pastic covers from new thiings. Like seriously, wtf?

I have this guy in my class who still has the plastic cover over his laptop keyboard, and refuses to take it off even when typing because it would "make it dirty".

>people building their own desktop pc
How do you people do it, the parts are so expensive, aren't you afraid of breaking stuff?

It's literally lego bruh
I've had an entire cup of water poured down into the top of my desktop and it just didn't care - still running that system today 2 years after the incident. Parts are also not expensive, unless you want top-of-the-line, which you almost certainly don't need.

Carefully.

Bruh, even a complete retard can build a PC, also I'd rather build my very own PC than buy a shitty overpriced prebuilt.

I didn't realize how lucky I was that both my parents are tech illiterate to the point where they can't do simple multitasking on Windows and literally don't care what kind of servers I run.

Touching their monitors. Or worse, touching my monitor

Unless its a touchscreen, fucking why would you ever need to actually touch it? Chances are you dont even need to point at the screen to explain where something is, you think I want your gross smudges all over the place?

fcking this man. My girlfriend just does it out of habit with her laptop. Whenever she comes in to point something on my screen i snatch her hand away from my monitor.

I have users that use pen to mark things on their screens. Was one thing when they were CRTs with glass, but now LCD.

How about calling IT to plug speakers into the computer for you. I get that just because you may have a degree they don't teach it, but come on. Can't you plug your headphones into a music player by yourself with that fancy degree?

there are many uncertainties in life, but regarding this there is no doubt the person doing it is a moron

Bait? If you're that afraid get a couple old XP boxes free from Craigslist / the back closet at work /wherever and tear them down, then rebuild them. You'll get the knack fast.

You need to be careful but anyways its impressive how sturdy they are. More than once I had to go full gorilla strength on a stubborn RAM or GPU.

This. A lot has changed but the core basics of "line up the fucking cpu triangle" and "plug in the cable" hasn't.

I took apart my old celeron machine from 1998 many times, and while it's a lot less flashy compared to modern systems it's still got enough similar that it would still do a good job of teaching people how to build.

Post on Sup Forums

>have to work on a document over years with a team of tech illiterates
>version control is just emailing each other word/excel files every time people change anything

Same. All you've got to do is switch it off ASAP and dry it out for a day.

STOP MAKING THIS REPLY EVERY TIME WE HAVE A NORMALFAG HATE THREAD ON EVERY FUCKING BOARD REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Why in the fuck would they do that???

Fucking this. Fucking this so much!

A classmate of mine still had the plastic cover on the laptop cover after some 4 or 5 years. Shit was already only half-glued with the other half full of dust, hair, and god knows what.

DMZ is actually handy beans because you don't even have to fucking deal with it again

>Using Chrome at all
Now that's terrifying.

hardware accelerated, OS-agnostic, arbitrary resolution screen overlay that persists across reboots and adds no latency

it has legitimate uses

this is where Jewgle Drive comes in useful
it's even easier for them than the email process they're used to

You think that's bad? I have to write documentation using SVN! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

>chad tries to charge his ifag off my laptop
>half of them don't even ask
My USB ports aren't even enabled unless I plan to use them but it's so insanely rude they think they are entitled to my power.

Do you know what DMZ means right? putting anything but a honeypot on a DMZ its just reckless, the proper and seamless way to open a port is using UPnP and/or port knocking.

Use Chrome with a lot of addons, or even worse yet; Firefox

Yeah m8
I installed that shit on every single team member's computer
They refused to use it
Putting files in the appropriate folder was "too complicated"
Everyone seamlessly editing the same gdocs file was "too complicated"

This.

>UPnP

you gotta be fucking kidding me

>port knocking

this is the best method available today.
use public key cryptography and only open port if you receive a signed packet.
drop all traffic by default and only communicate with computers who authenticated via port knocking.
it's as if server didn't even exist on the nrtwork, it only responds at all to authenticated users.
bitches can't even scan the server, can't leak information if your server doesn't respond

People on Sup Forums underrate the difficulty because all went well for them, and they haven't had to do it in awhile.

You don't think it will happen to you, but it is very possible that a part will arrive DOA. Then you have to rip everything out and breadboard it (which you should have done in the first place, but you didn't because you were excited to have your fancy new machine running). And it might not be immediately obvious what's wrong, because you're new to this! And you feel angry at yourself for being so stupid, and distressed because you've spent so much money. Not to mention it's worrisome that you have to apply so much pressure on fiddly little fragile bits of plastic that are very expensive to replace.

Anyway, you figure out what's going wrong, and you fix it, and you're a better person for it, and you now know how to troubleshoot problems in the future. So it's worthwhile, but it can be more stressful than Sup Forums lets on.

This is true. My first time, I was overwhelmingly lucky because I fucked up and screwed the motherboard against the side plate, but my computer ended up booting when I did it right. The second time, I had to deal with a DOA, customer service managed to boot it, I still couldn't... I had to build and dismantle my PC like three times.

Oh yeah and I broke a pin on two CPUs in the process.

>people who don't have a separate computer running deep freeze to do online banking and shopping
They are just putting their passwords and credit cards everywhere, oh the humanity.

I just started building my first one with really old parts just to see if I would 'fuck it up'. Sure enough, the computer doesnt start, but it doesn't have a case speaker to check for beeps. I disconnect everything, reconnect it to make sure all connections are secure and as soon as I plug in the power supply I get a pop and the lights in the house go out. Out of pure stress and agony I let the computer sit there. I'm almost certain its a goner. If I wasn't able to fix it before, it sure as fuck isnt going to work now.

Have actual botnets in their homes. It's fucked that there are little automated programs living inside of people's light bubs, home appliances, and anything else with pointless "smart" functionality. It's almost like the folklore about spirits possessing household objects has become real.
I heard that some people make worms that target other botnets, so there can be any number of malicious programs on one host competing for control in a strange ecosystem. The fact that it's happening right under people's noses is what's horrifying.

Been doing it for years and never ever had an issue.

How does it feel to live in constant fear and suspicion?

Feels good man, puts my old computers to use when they would be collecting dust

Well next time I need to do online shopping I just need to open a new browser tab and just do it.

Fag.

I'm kind of glad to see some responses like this. Again, I think working on PCs and fucking up and having to find solutions makes you a better problem-solver, but I also think it's important that new people be exposed to experiences other than the standard "durr it's like lego for grownups" that you see in PC builder generals around here.

I thought it would be lego for grownups too. That probably didn't help prevent me from fucking up so much.

We should probably have a guide that outlines what you need to know to build a PC, when you already know roughly how it works, but you don't know the intricacies.

I agree. I'm good at software but completely suck when it comes to hardware. I need an algorithm or instruction manual I can follow and have a correctly built PC. I simply don't have the money to replace parts that will cost me hundreds of dollars each if I screw it up and bent pins or break the PCBs or forget to ground myself and fry a component.

It's a matter of risk. Should a layman buy $2000 in parts and build himself a PC without any training whatsoever? If it was cheap I wouldn't care even one bit, but when we're talking $2000 I want a guarantee that it'll work.

People don't let random people do brain surgery on them, only highly trained doctors, because then it's their life that's on the table and the risk is too great.

It's not that hard and a good PC costs $450-500 tops

When I think about it... That's exactly how biology works. A literal shit ton of microorganisms are inside people's homes, everywhere, in their skin, in their noses, eyes, gut... Fighting each other for dominance, colonizing fucking everything. Is it any different than many living programs exploiting hidden computers and then patching their own exploits so othere can't get in? We'll have literal evolutionary arms races between these programs and their developers.

Even software development now is like medicine. Back in the glorious days, programmers were literal gods, creating entire universes out of nothing, low level programming and knowledge was mandatory. Programmers was physics back then. Then came the structured programming paradigms, OOP, code reuse... Programming became chemistry, it came to be about making new shit out of existing compounds with no regards to its atomic physics, only it's electronic interface. Today, shit's so complicated you need full teams just to keep it alive with maintenance. It's like medicine now: you don't fuck too much with programs or make new ones, instead you just maintain existing software so they live as long as possible.

>not that hard

Until shit goes wrong

>tops

Not in my country. Taxes and the dollar exchange significantly increase price to ridiculous figures.

$500 is still a lot of money either way.

Kek

>Until shit goes wrong
It won't, and you should stick to your phone.

plebbitor

Falling for the memepad meme but actually doing it wrong and buying a new model with cancer touchpad
Spending like 1k€ on it and hating it
Its just laying around, biggest regret ever
Half year later they bring out the next memepad and it has normal touchpad again

F u c k m y l i f e f a m

It's not just fucking lego my shit just died after a month and now i've got to figure out what the fuck went wrong and probably RMA something for 30 days all in the middle of moving my house.

don't think feel. What people fuck up most of the time is not using

-motherboard standoffs

-incorrectly wiring front panel connectors. This really can't do any harm, but if you dont connect them right you won't be able to push the power button or reset your computer

-Using third party heatsinks without rubber on the feet and ruining the traces that connect to the ram. Not sure if that is a problem anymore.

Most stuff is straight forward. CPUs only go in one way, just line up the notches. Same thing with RAM and power connectors.

But yeah when things go smoothy its ez-pz. Always a bitch troubleshooting though if you're a newb if something does go wrong.

>Always a bitch troubleshooting though if you're a newb if something does go wrong.

It's the worst thing in the world. I think my GPU died, display died during regular use, and I don't have another GPU to check. I just thought I was lucky enough to put it together and get it working without breaking anything.

Try disconnecting it and reconnecting. Do that with the power cables too. This phenomenon is called chip creek, it happens mostly to RAM but can happen to GPU as well.

Might as well reinsert ram too, possibly test one at a time.

Will do. I've just been afraid to touch it right now.

Stupid question, but can I re-do the RAM without taking the board out of the case? I remember I had to use a lot of force to get the RAM in and I i'm worried about breaking the motherboard since it's kind of gapped with the standoffs.

Open the computer up, just make sure to touch something metal beforehand that is plugged in and earthed to prevent static shock.

But yeah you can remove ram without removing the motherboard. Just make sure you press the two tabs that hold each ram on each side to left/right. Those help keep the ram in and with them clicked in it would be impossible to remove one.

Thanks friend, feeling a bit more confident now. I'll give it a crack tomorrow, fingers crossed. Cheers!

Also this might seem stupid, but unplug your computer power cord before opening. Best of luck.

>neo Sup Forums
>people have no fucking clue how to take out a ram stick