Urban Legends Personified?

[Rkolter]

I knew a guy whose computer was overheating. He put a tiny pail on top of the processor, and put an ice cube in the pail.

It worked fine until he bumped the table after a long session, and dumped water onto his (active) motherboard.

Blue smoke abounded.

[Dr Legostar]

After taking a girl to make out point and hearing a scratching noise I had a rusty, bloody hook stuck to my car door.

Also my boss constantly has "problems" which her computer which require me to usually turn on the monitor or something like that. And while she can use most software she insists that I install it as she can't do that very well...

I too have experienced the "the computer's not working" when in fact the power is off thing, what's sad is that it was several graduate students and their PhD endowed boss that could not figure out how to solve the issue.

Also I knew a guy who took the fan out of his computer to make more space for other components he needed... guess the result.

[Col]

I know a girl whose mother ruined several keyboards by washing and scrubbing them in a tub.

You know, as long as you're not too rough, rinse them well and let them drain thoroughly, I'm not so sure that wouldn't work. They're hardly delicate things nowdays and they're not exactly packed with complicated hi-tech circuitry.

- Joel Fagin

Yeah, but that'd take a darn long time to dry.

[Helixdq]

The belief that a computer should be formated periodicallly, and the extrimely wispread belief that OSs (in particular Windows) should be reinstalled every couple of months.

Microsoft itself recommended that users should reinstall Windows 98 and ME every six months. I haven't heard about XP either way but Windows does get seriously clogged up, especially if you install and uninstall lots of shareware, games or other software. Stuff gets left behind on the hard drive and in the Registry.

- Joel Fagin

I have both Windows 98 and Windows 2000 running fine since around 2001, and i've installed and uninstalled countless applications since then.
It's really all about knowing how to maintain a system, that need to reinstall is mostly a myth.
Some buggy applications can screw up a system, but almost all the time, the stuff that's left behind has no consequence on both speed and on a modern system, even disk space.
Anyway while i agree that you might want to do that on your Win98 boxes every once in a while, i keep getting nagged by people who always decide they must reinstall XP (yet are incapable to do it themselves).

And really most *IXes are much, much worse with respect to installing and above all uninstalling stuff. Automated uninstallation simply does not exist in many cases, if the app just sits in its own directory and has no dependencies then you're in luck, if not prepare to go through hell.
And ofc, this being an *IX you'll be blamed for not finding the right libraries, or not being able to scour your system for any changes and removing them manually, because you're supposed to know all this or it's badly documented some place random.

[Prettydragoon]

I know a girl whose mother ruined several keyboards by washing and scrubbing them in a tub.

You know, as long as you're not too rough, rinse them well and let them drain thoroughly, I'm not so sure that wouldn't work. They're hardly delicate things nowdays and they're not exactly packed with complicated hi-tech circuitry.

- Joel Fagin

Yeah, but that'd take a darn long time to dry.

Couldn't you just stick them in the microwave?

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

My keyboard is clear, so you can see all the pencil shavings, erasers residue, and fingernails inside. When I take the canned air to it, all this crap flies out in a cloud of yuck.

[Ti-Phil]

Computer urban legend? I used to teach computer classes in a help center in Rawdon, and there was Ren

[Carlin]

Don't you just love it when a person has more spyware than programs on his computer? It's fun to get 32 popups when your offline! (actually happened to a guy I know...)