Odd computer errors

[Gabi]

I'm making this thread for all odd errors out there. I know there are many, like that program my brother used which was caught by his firewall while trying to stop ITSELF from accessing the Internet, and those Windows errors that tell you that browsing the My Documents folder is potentially harmful. I'm sure you have more examples, and I'd like to see them.

Here's an odd one I got today in my Yahoo e-mail.



Note the parts marked in red.

[Sufurin Scorda]

My laptop likes to give me a "Image Size Error!!!" error when I start it up. Monitor error or something.

It has three exclamation points, so that must mean it's important. At least more important than "Image Size Error!!" or "Image Size Error!" I don't see any errors though. The monitor and everything else has been fine since the day I got it.

And sometimes when I delete a certain kind of file, and try to go to the Recycle Bin to delete it, it'll ask me if I'm sure if I want to delete the "WINDOWS" folder. It hasn't deleted it yet, but I'm still kind of paranoid about it.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

heh.

Although there has been an interesting happening recently; the ords open relay list, which was shut down in December 06, and officially deprecated in Feb 07, has decided that enough is enough, and has started returning "open relay" for -every- IP address that requests off them.

This has the effect that a couple of our clients started refusing all email, because their IT department hadn't removed the list from their spam filtering.

Which, of course, means it all ended up in -my- inbox.

Yay.

[Rakala]

I once got a virus that made my CD drive to always come out when I inserted a CD and then the speakers made a noise like somebody blowing a raspberry. It was pretty funny and luckily easy to take care of.

[blood butterfly]

does Windows Vista count as a computer error?
i had to get Xp when i was fed up with the crap the OS pulled...had a freaking mind of it's own.
viruses are one thing, but when Vista resets it's own settings an hour after you change them; there's something wrong O.O
gonna bite the guy who made vista...bite 'im hard

[Sufurin Scorda]

That sounds more like a "prank virus" to me, Rak. Like one where there'll be little pop-ups everywhere or they'll be one and if you try to click "OK", it'll move away.

And I thought everything by Microsoft was an error, BB.

[blood butterfly]

darn, good point 

although, certain features that some laptops and desktops are coming with, though not errors exactly, are annoying and sleazy.  some come with a Microsoft office 60-day "trial".  you can use it and save whatever you want, but once the days are up, you have to purchase the whole version to access it on your own computer again...and then they throw expansions and updates at you with modest fees and it's crap.

hey, perhaps Microsoft IS the error 

[Sufurin Scorda]

Solution: Use something free and better, like OpenOffice.

Haw, the only things by Microsoft I actually use are MS Paint and sometimes the calculator. I've replaced everything else.

[blood butterfly]

i can't bring myself to trust "free" downloads or the like.  not after a few of my friends lost a few computers to those things (viruses etc.)  and what is OpenOffice?  i'm guessing it's like Word?

[Suwako]

i can't bring myself to trust "free" downloads or the like.  not after a few of my friends lost a few computers to those things (viruses etc.)  and what is OpenOffice?  i'm guessing it's like Word?

It's the whole office packet in one neat little program that creates files that are exchangeable with Microsoft office, It doesn't have virusses when you download it from their own website, that is something you can be guaranteed off, just like Firefox and Thunderbird being completely save downloads if it is from their own sites. (of course, if they weren't they wouldn't be so popular)

I have a lot of free software on my computer, but then Again I am a paranoid scan my computer everyday person.. because my spyware/virus scanner chose me to be like that, scan once a week like I told you to? As if.  It probably thinks I am still using IE6 >.> 

[blood butterfly]

Woah, that rocks, yo! I'll have to look it up.  thanks.   

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

FWIW, it was originally designed for linux/unix systems. Only they figured, why limit things? If they've got the code, they might as well write minor changes to get it working on windows as well...

[Tapewolf]

i can't bring myself to trust "free" downloads or the like.  not after a few of my friends lost a few computers to those things (viruses etc.)  and what is OpenOffice?  i'm guessing it's like Word?

OpenOffice (or more properly 'openoffice.org' owing to a trademark dispute) is actually the descendant of a commercial office suite called 'StarOffice'.  If you actively wish to pay through the nose, Sun do still sell a commerical branch of it with a few proprietary extensions, although most people simply get the free one.

Basically, it's the same idea as Mozilla (formerly Netscape Navigator) - a mature product which was no longer profitable in and of itself (in Netscape's case, because MS began dumping IE) so they released the source code and the community has been improving it ever since.

While there is something to be said for not downloading any old tat without checking first, a cast-iron rule like the one you seemed to be proposing would cause you to miss out on a lot of important developments.  For instance, until XP came along you couldn't even compress files without getting some kind of shareware or freeware.  Or even view PDF files.  Or do anything online at all prior to Windows 98.

As Aiyno says, if you're at all unsure, stick with the original source site, or at least get the MD5sum and make sure it matches to ensure it's the real deal.  Not that Windows even ships with an MD5 utility either 

**EDIT**

As for actual odd errors, one of they few times I wanted to massacre the entire linux kernel team was when one of the more retarded members of the SCSI team decided it would be a good idea to trash the system if there was an error in the SCSI subsystems.

I suppose that would make some sense if the SCSI was responsible for the system disk, which it might in a precious few ultra-high-end systems, but by and large most people running Linux are doing so with IDE.

So when there was an error copying things to a SCSI device (my DVD-writer), the system output the message: "Th-th-that's all, folks!" and promptly halted leaving every single filesystem, including the backup, in a partially-corrupted state.

[LionHeart]

Woah, that rocks, yo! I'll have to look it up.  thanks.   

www.openoffice.org

It's very good. I've used it for some years now.