• Charely6@lemmy.world
    1·
    10 days ago

    Around 2013-2014ish when the fake FBI viruses when commen, I worked at a tech help desk at my university fixing student computers.

    We didn’t have a bootable virus scan avaliable but I discovered it you ctrl-alt-deleted you could tell the system to log out, it would close everything and log out.

    but if during a split second when the device was turning on before the virus blocked the screen and actions you opened a word doc or something,

    then when you logged out it would close everything (including the virus’s window that was blocking the screen) but the word doc and ask if you wanted to save the document first. By hitting cancel it would stop the logout completely and we could run the various virus scans to get rid of it.

  • ch00f@lemmy.world
    1·
    4 days ago

    Coworker’s story: Trying to fix a prototype in a hotel room at a European trade show. Soldering iron on hand, but it was a 120V iron and glowed white hot when plugged into a 240V outlet.

    So they had one person solder and the other person keep unplugging and replugging the iron from the wall at roughly 25% 50% duty cycle.

  • ch00f@lemmy.world
    1·
    10 days ago

    Friend’s desktop was so fried from Kazaa and Limewire, that he couldn’t even open a Windows explorer window. Ended up opening Notepad and copying all of his files to a thumbdrive using the file open dialog box before reformatting.

    • Evkob (they/them)@lemmy.caOP
      1·
      10 days ago

      This kind of hacky dumb workaround is exactly what I wanted to read when I posted this thread, haha. It’s kind of genius but also I’m horrified to imagine how things got to that point.

      • dpflug@kbin.earth
        0·
        10 days ago

        IIRC, yes but it’s called differently. I’ve used that technique to work around nannyware a time or two.

        • jqubed@lemmy.world
          0·
          4 days ago

          This is good to know; does it still work? I’m assuming with the anecdote involving KaZaA and LimeWire we’re talking Windows 2000, ME, or XP.

  • saigot@lemmy.ca
    1·
    9 days ago

    For several years my pc would only turn on while at a 45degree angle, not on its side and not upright but tilted 45degrees. After it turned on I could put it back and it’d be fine.

    Eventually I moved and the pc ended up upside down and shaken, I put it down and a screw fell out of the psu. Problem solved!

  • flubba86@lemmy.world
    1·
    9 days ago

    In my early 20s I had a part-time job as a pizza delivery driver. When there were no deliveries, I would answer phones or take orders at the counter. One day one of the touchscreen monitors at the counter stopped working. It was just black all the time. So we were told not to use it.

    A few days later I was on lunch shift and bored, I was trying random things to see if I could fix the monitor. Switched the inputs, switched to a different VGA cable, etc. At one point I discovered the touch panel was still working, I could interact with the OS, even though nothing was displaying. I was pressing around different areas of the screen and I accidentally found that pressing right in the centre of the screen caused the display to re-appear! It would disappear again after a few seconds. Press that spot again, it came back. I was fascinated by this, I showed some coworkers, they didn’t care.

    Over the course of the day it was getting harder to make the display re-appear. It gradually needed to be pressed quite forcefully to come back. I started using my knuckles to knock sharply on the spot, and that was working.

    When my manager arrived for the night shift, I was excited to show him my discovery. I said “hey man, I kinda fixed this monitor, watch this!” And I enthusiastically knocked hard on the centre of the screen with my first. The LCD lit up and showed the display, but at the same time shattered in a rainbow ring the shape of my fist.

    The look on my manager’s face was of awe and horror. I was trying to explain what I had meant to do, but I realised what it must’ve looked like to him. “Hey man, watch me fix this monitor!” Before smashing the screen with a swift punch. It wasn’t possible to explain it a way that didn’t sound crazy.

    In the end I convinced him that the monitor was faulty anyway, and we were going to replace it anyway, so my accident breaking it more is not a big deal.

  • randomcruft@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    10 days ago

    I have two… these are from the old days of computing :)

    One: guy said his monitor was showing wavy lines on the screen (old CRT monitor days). Went to his office, looked at his monitor. Sure enough wavy lines. Looked the top of his monitor. Removed the clock sitting on top of said monitor, no more wavy lines. Don’t put electric clocks on CRT monitors folks.

    Two: working in a school system. Just before classes started. Get a call “none of the computers turn on”. Go to the classroom. Check a few machines. Machines “turned on” but didn’t boot the OS. Listen to one of the machines… hmmm, no drive noise. Tap it with the back of a screwdriver. Drive spins up, computer boots. Later found out that it was a semi-known problem with Seagate drives. If they sat to long without use, the heads would get stuck.

    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
      0·
      9 days ago

      When I was a kid I had a tv develop a big rainbow circle in one corner underneath where I set a speaker on top of it. I took it off but the circle didn’t go away. A quick google search later and that’s how I learned what degaussing was.