dr_st wrote:

I already told of myself accidentally deleting most of my C:\ via a corrupted recursive directory link, but your story reminded […]
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Rhuwyn wrote:

My very first screwup was when I was in 2nd grade I was trying to free up hard drive space on my 170MB hard drive on my 486SX33. I was going too quickly and suddenly realized I was deleteing the Windows (version 3.1) directory. I figured out how to reinstall it before my parents found out. Keep in mind I was only like 8.

I already told of myself accidentally deleting most of my C:\ via a corrupted recursive directory link, but your story reminded me of something similar Somebody brought my parents Word 6 on floppies, and installed it into the default directory of C:\WINWORD. But I wanted all the applications on the D:\ partition, so I just moved the directory. Of course it did not work, because as you know Office program installations modify Windows settings in many ways, and somehow the original install locations was tied to it, so it refused to launch from the new directory on D:\. Worse, when I moved it back, it still didn't work because somehow something got corrupted. Back then I did not know enough to deal with this corruption, and since I did not have the installation floppies to undo the damage, my parents did find out, and were not happy. I think that where I got the habit of keeping copies of installation floppies on my hard drive. 😀

Rhuwyn wrote:

Fast forward to where I got my first job and earned my own money so I could build my first PC. I built a Pentium 2 266 with 32MB of Ram. I told a friend of my parents that I could fix their PC which was a K6-300 I think. I was working with it on shag carpet and killed the motherboard. I felt so bad I put my NEW Pentium2 and board in his case and got him back up and running. I ended up buying a Super Socket 7 board and getting a K6-2. Don't ask me why I didnt just get him a new board and keep my P2. I was panicing at the time.

Were you trying to hide the fact that you damaged something, or did he know that already? In any case, it's commendable that you put his needs ahead of yours and did whatever you could do to minimize his downtime. I wish most repair technicians were like this. 🤣

Ha yeah I pretty much completely took over my parents 486 back in those days they only used it for a microsoft office stuff and my dad played Links386 golf. Everything else was mine.

Honestly, I don't remember if I told them or not. But, either way I felt I had to do the right thing. I look back on it and realize that it was those experiances that allowed me to walk into a local computer store and get my first job. Told them I'd work for cheap and I had no professional experience but that I could prove I could build and fix PCs. He sat me down in front of 3 computers with problems and I fixed them all inside an hour. That was almost 18 years ago and set me on the path I am today so I can't complain.