I'm such an idiot sometimes

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Jory

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A few hours ago I decided to start cloning a drive on a laptop so it would be ready to nuke and pave tomorrow. This laptop only has USB 1.0 so it was going to take around 5-6 hours to complete. No biggie I figured, I'll just leave it run and check on it before bed. I just went to check on it and found the laptop completely dead, but the external drive is still spinning. I start freaking out because I remember plugging the laptop in earlier. It can't possibly be the adapter because it worked fine for hours yesterday.

Then I decided to unplug the external so I could start troubleshooting the laptop. The moment my hand hit the external's power cord I realized what had happened. I freaking unplugged the laptop to free up a slot for the external drive instead of one of the power cords going to an unused bench spot. I forgot I unplugged them the other day, and apparently put them back in a different order than I originally had.

The cords going up to my bench are getting labels right above the plug tomorrow. :cool:
 
At least you didn't mess anything up. :D

I had a good one a couple weeks ago. I couldn't figure out why a clients laptop's volume wasn't working. I installed and re-installed the driver several times. I saw it was in device manager and not having any conflicts. I was like WTF? :confused: The volume was turned all the way up. Still no sound!! :mad: Turns out that the external sound control (volume knob) had to be turned up too. I had the same kind of laptop (just a little newer), but mine controlled the volume on the desktop. That's what kept me from checking it to begin with. I felt like a dumbass afterwords. :D
 
I think I have a better one, plugged my external hdd to make a backup, and started the recovery mode from an HP. Apparently the system detected my external hdd as the first hdd and formatted and installed the recovery on it. I ended lossing all my programs and old back ups. Luckfully the data in that computer was old and wasn't important.
 
Dont feel too bad. Ive had some really dumb moments but luckily not in frot of clients.

Dumb moment #1. My parents ring and say their internet doesnt work. I go into LogMeIn.com where I have access to their computers so I can take a look from their perspective and for some reason their machines arent showing as online. I ask my parents (via phone) whether the computer is switched on and it was. Then I realise their computers arent showing up because their internet isnt working. Duh. *slaps forehead*

Dumb moment #2: I have a UPS protecting all my gear on my office. About 9 months ago we had a nasty nasty storm here in Melbourne that knocked out power for much of the city for days. I had really patchy power where I was and the UPS would beep with its warning alarms often when the power would go out. I was going to goto bed and I didnt want it beeping all night so you know what I did to stop it?

I unplugged it and it started to beep more. I was thinking "wtf, why didnt it go off?" then remembered its designed to beep when there is no power and run on batteries. Its a UPS, its what it does. Duh *slaps forehead*
 
I was very interested in computers when I was a kid...I recall one of the first attempts at working on a computer I ever made, which was 14 years ago. I am sure you will get a laugh from this.

We got a brand new computer that came with a Windows 95. My grandmother liked it so much she asked if it was possible to put the Windows 95 on her computer as she had Windows 3.1. Of course being 9yr old who knew it all, I offered to do it.

I load the disc up and receive an error that there was not enough free space on the drive. So I randomly start deleting files in Windows to make some. From random programs to actual Windows files. After doing this for about 30 minutes and completely crashing the OS I start to get nervous. So I start reading the requirements on the Windows 95 box.

Min. HardDrive Space Required : 50mb
Total size of my grandmothers hard drive: 20mb

Man did I feel like an idiot...after a very pricey call to a computer repair place and a 3 month punishment I decided to read into things much more before trying anything :p . Guess everybody starts somewhere!
 
I had a good thaught before I could tell you about my best (worst) experience.
It was actually in front of the user and my boss found out about it also.

I was sent to check up a PC which was running slow just 2 floors down from where I was working.
At that time there was Windows NT4 (SP6) wow, service pack 6...
I tell the user to take a brake because I need to look into his PC to find out whay is slow.
As I said, at that time, the HDD's were not that big in size.
I did some file cleaning/ Temp folder, etc.
When I look, I see a 2GB PST file. So I say to myself. Wow, this guy didn't delete his old emails in yesrs. So I go SHIFT + DEL. so I would not have to empty the Recycle Bin.
Restrted the PC, it was a lot faster (the page file and memory management of windows NT 4).
Very happy with my work, I go to lunch break.
When I got back, the hell broke loose.
I deleted all the emails, and there was no back-up (the company was only making bak-up's of the network drives and the exchange server. His pst file was part of an account not on the exchange server.
I never did that again, and it's been 10 years since.

Edit:
The trouble was not the old emails being deleted. But the recent ones. The guy was sort of a broker on the exchange market, and there were important emails in the recent days... lol. I will never forget how I was nostalgically watching the blue Bloomberg feed on a side monitor as I was deleting his emails....
 
Last edited:
ProTech Support said:
I was very interested in computers when I was a kid...I recall one of the first attempts at working on a computer I ever made, which was 14 years ago. I am sure you will get a laugh from this.

We got a brand new computer that came with a Windows 95. My grandmother liked it so much she asked if it was possible to put the Windows 95 on her computer as she had Windows 3.1. Of course being 9yr old who knew it all, I offered to do it.

I load the disc up and receive an error that there was not enough free space on the drive. So I randomly start deleting files in Windows to make some. From random programs to actual Windows files. After doing this for about 30 minutes and completely crashing the OS I start to get nervous. So I start reading the requirements on the Windows 95 box.

Min. HardDrive Space Required : 50mb
Total size of my grandmothers hard drive: 20mb

Man did I feel like an idiot...after a very pricey call to a computer repair place and a 3 month punishment I decided to read into things much more before trying anything :p . Guess everybody starts somewhere!
Click to expand...

I did the same exact thing with Windows 95 back in the day when I did know as much about computers. I started deleted files in the system 32 folder because I was thinking they didn't look familiar, so they must not be used. :eek:
 
just the other day i was on ubuntu getting everythng set up the way i like it and i went to install msn from the installer file ive got on my programs hard drive and sat there for a good 10 minutes scratching my head tryna figure out why the .exe file wouldnt run... linux duhh... i felt so bloody stupid after that
 
I just did my first Repair job for a client!
She was a seriously dumb blond!

I go there she has 2 issues.
1) Her machine is really really slow.
2) Her printer is pulling in paper sideways.

So I fix no.1 and look at no.2...

She has a drawing pin that SHE stuck into the side of the paper tray inlet to stop the paper going all the way down!
I was like, errr why is this stuck in the printer?
So undid her handy work, which was REALLY complex i mean it takes a rocket scientist to take out the drawing pin she pushed in lol... ah easy money, not bad for my first job :D
 
SavellM said:
I just did my first Repair job for a client!
She was a seriously dumb blond!

I go there she has 2 issues.
1) Her machine is really really slow.
2) Her printer is pulling in paper sideways.

So I fix no.1 and look at no.2...

She has a drawing pin that SHE stuck into the side of the paper tray inlet to stop the paper going all the way down!
I was like, errr why is this stuck in the printer?
So undid her handy work, which was REALLY complex i mean it takes a rocket scientist to take out the drawing pin she pushed in lol... ah easy money, not bad for my first job :D
Click to expand...

an intresting first job LOL
 
ithinkyou5.0 said:
im duel booting now i dont really like wine the time it takes to get anything working right threw it is longer than it takes to re-boot into windows :P
Click to expand...

Yeah, WINE is a bit of a pain.

I generally use linux through VirtualBox in seamless mode. So I get an extra task bar and such but it works great and I don't have to reboot. I just have to deal with the slight VM slowdown.
 
Stupidity comes in lots of forms. Take this for instance; I just found a Toshiba Restore CD, sealed, under my workbench. I've just rung the 4 customers that dropped in Tosh laptops over the last couple of weeks to see if their's was missing. When I got 4 negatives it finally dawned on me that it's from my brand new tosh laptop that's currently open on the bench in front of me.

DOH!!!! :o
 
One of the first times that I reinstalled windows on my first laptop, I backed up all the data on an external HD. After it finished, I turned off the computer, popped in the disk and started deleteing all the partitions I didn't want.

Including the drive, which was still connected to the laptop.



I managed to get most of it back with data recovery, but I still felt like an idiot
 
I just had another "doh" moment. I tried to open KeePass and it kept saying I had the wrong master password. After failing 6 times I tried using my old password and it worked, but everything I had saved since I changed my password was gone. Obviously I'm freaking out because I'm missing 3-4 important passwords, and then I look down and see my flash drive sticking out of the computer.

I was running the copy off of my flash drive which I haven't synced with my "Thumb Drive" folder in over a month!
 
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