What's your strangest computer-related error?

[gamepopper101]

While I have no qualifications and I'm not a professional computer technician, but I, like many people on this forum, have a good knowledge of computers and would have a good idea of how to fix a problem. But computers are notorious for having the most bizarre problems ever to exist on a machine, and can only be fixed by either reinstalling a program, or the entire computer.

I have experianced two cases of this, the first was several years ago:
When I used Windows Movie Maker on a Windows XP Laptop, some how I got this error. When you make a project and put in seven (and exactly seven) separate video clips into the project timeline, the program would just close unexpectingly, with no error message or sign of notification, and it wouldn't save or even have a backup of your work. I used to just get by this when making videos by creating a part of the video with six video clips, output the project and then create a new one with that output video and carry on, but eventually I had to do a system restore on the PC and Windows Movie Maker returned to normal.

The second was not too long ago, my Uncle couldn't get his printer to work, it wouldn't let him print anything. I was willing to help and I thought it was an easy fix, I went over to his house to see what I could do. After checking the printer itself, see if it was properly installed, if there was something wrong with the software, I found that the problem was that for some reason the computer wasn't detecting the printer was connected at all. I took the printer to my place and tried it on my computer and the printer worked like normal, and connected with no problems. We couldn't come up with a solution so he just ended up taking the printer back to be looked at.

Sorry if that was long-winded, so my question for discussion is, what is the strangest computer problem you have encountered?
If any expert knows any solution or reason for any problems posted, feel free to give advice and help us all!

 

[The Procrastinated End]

One of my friends put a virus on my computer that switched the keyboard commands every ten seconds or so. Got really annoying after a while but he thought it was hilarious.

 

[Mr Pantomime]

Man, I have a certificate in computing and still cant get the damn thing to work half the time. Magic Pixie boxes i tell you

 

[orangebandguy]

Windows Movie maker is an unrelaible piece of shit.

I hate it.

 

[Sassafrass]

The strangest one I've had is when my laptop suddenly shuts down without warning on at least half battery. It hasn't done for a couple of months now so maybe it was just shutting down due to over-heating issues or something.

Oh, and my key-baord keeps switching from English key settings to American settings for some bizarre reason. " becomes @ and vice versa and ~ becomes |. It's annoying when writing a review and you look up only to see half the sentence is rubbish.

 

[Hedberger]

Does it count that my hamster pissed on my mom's laptop's keyboard when i was ten? :/

 

[Jack_Uzi]

I will always love the: "No keyboard detected, press F(12 or 8?) to continue" Brilliant!!

 

[cainstwin]

on vista when trying to install a game in compatability mode. Set the disc to be run in compatability, makes sense. I click "install" on the auto run screen and it tells me the link is broken... i know thats just appalling programming but u wod have thought sum1 might have worked out it needed fixing:S

 

[Keava]

Man, I have a certificate in computing and still cant get the damn thing to work half the time. Magic Pixie boxes i tell you

Didn't they teach you on that certificate courses that you need to leave a saucer of milk in front of the PC ever night ? The pixies can get very rebellious if you don't feed them.

As for the OP, i don;t really have that much issues with software, i think zBrush is the only one that still occasionally gives me issues despite running it with 8 GB ram, as much as i love the tool it tends to crash randomly every now and then even when working below 1 mil polygons.

 

[wooty]

Every time I turn my PC on, the time resets to 23:45 and the date will always go to 17th Jan 2007. No idea why it does it, but it just does.

 

[2xDouble]

In the startup scrawl...
"*this OS is for hard drives and optical drives only*
...
Error - no floppy drive detected."

 

[Quaxar]

Every time I turn my PC on, the time resets to 23:45 and the date will always go to 17th Jan 2007. No idea why it does it, but it just does.

Sounds like the little battery on the motherboard is damaged. One of our old PCs had this issue too, we used it to install 30-day trials... never ran out of time.

 

[Brandon237]

Every time I turn my PC on, the time resets to 23:45 and the date will always go to 17th Jan 2007. No idea why it does it, but it just does.

Sounds like the little battery on the motherboard is damaged. One of our old PCs had this issue too, we used it to install 30-day trials... never ran out of time.

I want that computer...

Sometimes my mouse port stops working, the keyboard is working fine, mouse isn't, I disconnect, reconnect, get different mouse. Nothing works.

I also get really odd error messages fro time to time about missing Dlls, Run.DLL could not be found... I've seen that one twice today.

 

[Quaxar]

Every time I turn my PC on, the time resets to 23:45 and the date will always go to 17th Jan 2007. No idea why it does it, but it just does.

Sounds like the little battery on the motherboard is damaged. One of our old PCs had this issue too, we used it to install 30-day trials... never ran out of time.

I want that computer...

Probably not, I think it ran Win 2k or even 98. But yes, it was fun to see the programs announce every day that "trial period just started".

 

[TheComedown]

The crap that is the ATI driver, one set of drivers works well for most things except one or 2 games, so I update my drivers those to games work, but it then causes most of my other games to become jittery, so if I want to play worms reloaded, I have to change drivers. Tho sometimes the jitters are ignorable.

 

[Sn1P3r M98]

I can't play Battlefield 2. Every time I join a multiplayer game the computer crashes. That's pretty strange I think.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

I have a total of 6 USB ports on my computer. Only one of which works consistently. The others will work from time to time but depending on the time, tides, alignment of the planets and random whims of fate they just stop working and no matter how many times I rebuild the connections they just don't want to work properly.

Also my copy of Photoshop seems to have developed something of an antisocial personality disorder.
It doesn't want to create layers properly, it randomly decides that it doesn't want to recognize the pressure sensitivity of the tablet and sometimes, not frequently, but sometimes it just stops painting colors and reverts the palette to grayscale.

 

[CitySquirrel]

I was trying to reinstall my copy of vista (I have never had any issues with vista before or since) and it just wouldn't bloody reinstall. I kept getting the same stupid error... (I can no longer remember the code). It turned out to be a bug in vista's ability to detect partitions of a certain multiple of four if the hard drive is over a certain size. And, oh yeah, Dell laptops come with a partition that happens to meet these requirements. That was a week of fury.

 

[soilent]

When I first bought my computer, it was fresh out of the box, from the maker, and the name of the login on it was Richard, I am not Richard.

I think its haunted so I left it alone.

 

[Tharwen]

Try using a 64-bit PC to connect to a Microsoft Access database in Visual Basic.NET. Go on, I dare you!

You'll never want to see another error message again...

EDIT: Oh, and my first-gen MacBook would sometimes decide to forget all about that messy 'interactive interface' thing. Anyone who says that Macs have no issues needs to come and use that laptop for a couple of hours.