What's the weirdest problem ever encountered?

The_Other_One

The_Other_One

VIP Member
I need to go to bed, but I can't sleep, and this just hit me... Lots of us have encounted many weird things with computers, but who has the most odd?

Me... I ordered a motherboard to use some of my old parts in a few years back. It worked great for a while, but then suddenly I got display problems. Basically any compressed image or video would show up as if it were highly compressed. Things would look fine on other machine, it was just this one. Even windows defaults looked messed up! Videos would have lines going though them...all grades of crap. Oh yeah, I could take an image, one that once looked fine, open it, then save it and it would be all messed up as displayed(so it wasn't just showing them wrong, it was processing them wrong!) People said it was the video card, but I tried different AGP and PCI card with no sucess. I tried different copies of windows, but it didn't help. Nor did RAM or a PSU.

On top of this, sometimes the machine wouldn't POST. Many times I'd just get a black screen, sometimes I got a CMOS checksum error. However, when it got started, it was fine. Eh, but one day, after about 10 tries, it wouldn't POST. I took out the good stuff and destroyed the motherboard so I wouldn't waste my time on it anymore :P
 
My RAM doesn't like to post. Some times when I boot it will give the a RAM error. When I restart some times it will fix it some times i have to restart again. either way after about 10-20 trys it will work. A BIOS rest will fix it for a boot or two but then it will go back to RAM errors every other Boot. It's brand new ram and mobo, thats probly my weirdest thing.
 
One of my first computers (running windows 95) completely died one day when i was surfing the start menu. The screen went completely black except for a string of white numbers scrolling across it. I tried a different tower on it and the same thing happened, so i assumed it was a monitor problem. I then went out and brought a new monitor but the same thing happened!!! so i can only assume that it was both pieces of hardware but that seems highly unlikely.......its still a mystery :confused:
 
One of mine happened just recently. I bought Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition and the menu was running REALLY slow (I posted this problem about a week ago...) Tried a number of solutions for the problem, and nothing was having any impact. Then I finally got a buddy over to directly see what the problem was, and *poof* it suddenly worked extremely well... Still don't know what was originally causing the problem.
 
One of my first computers (running windows 95) completely died one day when i was surfing the start menu. The screen went completely black except for a string of white numbers scrolling across it. I tried a different tower on it and the same thing happened, so i assumed it was a monitor problem. I then went out and brought a new monitor but the same thing happened!!! so i can only assume that it was both pieces of hardware but that seems highly unlikely.......its still a mystery
Click to expand...
LOL... thats really wierd

My old dell was in terminal condition and hated me. I would play half life 2 on it and the levels would take forever to load. It usualy took 10 minutes. Everytime I would get really mad because it wasnt loading. I would reach for the power button because it wasnt responsive. Just as the machine was about to turn off, the level would load, but by then it would be too late. It would do this in EVERY game EVERY time. It wouldnt happen after a certain amount of time or anything. Sometimes 2 minutes sometimes 10 minutes. But the level would always load once I hit the power button. I decided to outsmart the computer by "pretending" to shut it down. But the computer knew better then this and still didnt load. Then I would get even more frustrated. I would REALLY turn it off, and low and behold, the last thing I saw before a black screen was the level loaded. It REALLY pissed me off. Being outsmarted by a computer :mad:
 
The solution to the problem is not as weird as how the solution was discovered (at least the money that was spent discovering the solution)...

Simply put, the company I work for created a piece of software for the government which uses what is called an Equinox box.(which basically allows you to connect multiple computers via an Ethernet cable or serial cable to a single serial or Ethernet based hardware device...)

So, when installing the Equinox box the DHCP server reserves an IP address for the Equinox Box. Well, we got a call ($170 an hour for phone support) saying the Equinox box was flaking out and would sometimes not work, so we bought them another one, shipped it to them and sent them a bill. ($600 Equinox box plus tax and shipping)

A few days later, the new Equinox box was flaking out, so they shipped it to us. We set a router to their subnet and tested it... it worked just fine.. sent it back and it did not work. So a co-worker went down to the site and spent about 11 hours (mind you its $270 an hour) and the companies IT guys and him could not figure out why. The next day everyone was on the phone on and off for 5 hours trying to figure it out, they decided to send me and let me sit back and watch the flakiness and take notes...

I went down there the next day and went over to the Equinox box, the first thing I noticed was that there was a brand new HP network printer sitting next to an older one, all on the same table. I just happened to ask when it was first put in (cause it was an awesome looking printer) and the IT guy said the same day as when the Equinox box started to fail... At the same instant we both realized the problem... The HP printer was using the same IP address as the IP address that was "supposed" to be reserved for the Equinox Box... :eek: ....

So, 11 hours of site labor, about 5-6 hours of support on the phone, a new Equinox box, and the government being out almost $5500 and all they had to do was send me to the site for 5 minutes.... :rolleyes:

..okay, not that weird.. but I thought it was kinda a weird one..

 
SFR said:
The solution to the problem is not as weird as how the solution was discovered (at least the money that was spent discovering the solution)...

Simply put, the company I work for created a piece of software for the government which uses what is called an Equinox box.(which basically allows you to connect multiple computers via an Ethernet cable or serial cable to a single serial or Ethernet based hardware device...)

So, when installing the Equinox box the DHCP server reserves an IP address for the Equinox Box. Well, we got a call ($170 an hour for phone support) saying the Equinox box was flaking out and would sometimes not work, so we bought them another one, shipped it to them and sent them a bill. ($600 Equinox box plus tax and shipping)

A few days later, the new Equinox box was flaking out, so they shipped it to us. We set a router to their subnet and tested it... it worked just fine.. sent it back and it did not work. So a co-worker went down to the site and spent about 11 hours (mind you its $270 an hour) and the companies IT guys and him could not figure out why. The next day everyone was on the phone on and off for 5 hours trying to figure it out, they decided to send me and let me sit back and watch the flakiness and take notes...

I went down there the next day and went over to the Equinox box, the first thing I noticed was that there was a brand new HP network printer sitting next to an older one, all on the same table. I just happened to ask when it was first put in (cause it was an awesome looking printer) and the IT guy said the same day as when the Equinox box started to fail... At the same instant we both realized the problem... The HP printer was using the same IP address as the IP address that was "supposed" to be reserved for the Equinox Box... :eek: ....

So, 11 hours of site labor, about 5-6 hours of support on the phone, a new Equinox box, and the government being out almost $5500 and all they had to do was send me to the site for 5 minutes.... :rolleyes:

..okay, not that weird.. but I thought it was kinda a weird one..

Click to expand...

wow, i wish i got paid $270 and hour
 
My RAM doesn't like to post. Some times when I boot it will give the a RAM error. When I restart some times it will fix it some times i have to restart again. either way after about 10-20 trys it will work. A BIOS rest will fix it for a boot or two but then it will go back to RAM errors every other Boot. It's brand new ram and mobo, thats probly my weirdest thing.
Click to expand...

Mine does this too, I'm sending it back for a replacement
 
Lots of us have encounted many weird things with computers, but who has the most odd?
Click to expand...
Randomly the thermal sensor will register the temps as 128C/-127C ... the OS would read 128C, the BIOS would read -127C ... but the NB fan cuts off when the temp is <25C .... :P
 
Had a service call , that at first thought the customer was crazy. The service call said that the cdrom tray would open and close on it's own, music would play through the speakers, a picture would appear on the screen then would be gone. After running a virus scanner, then a trojan scanner found that, I think it was SUB 7, a trojan, was running on the pc. Using a biult in cmd prompt tool, I found the ip address of the perp that was connecting to the customers pc with the trojan and hooking the hardwae routines, playing errie sounds / music.
 
My weirdest prob with a computer is when i replaced a heatsink on a previously working pentium 166 box. no post afterwards. I figured just screw this and donated the box to goodwill.
 
My first pc running win 3.1 would not switch on properly.If you did not use it for a few days you would have 2 press the power button about 10 times before it switched on,i replaced the power box and the same thing happend,then i changed to motherboard and still the the same thing happend,my friend came over to look at it,and it worked fine!!!When he went it the problem started again,i ended up just buying another computer and burning the other one out of anger!!= )...................it deserved it
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top