• Clean C Dee (unregistered) in reply to Grant
    Grant:
    Can I also prevent viruses by putting a condom on the CD tray first?
    No, you should obviously put it inside the CD tray, around the CD.

    I mean, when YOU put on a condom, you don't put it AROUND the two of you, do you?

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Clean C Dee
    Clean C Dee:
    Grant:
    Can I also prevent viruses by putting a condom on the CD tray first?
    No, you should obviously put it inside the CD tray, around the CD.

    I mean, when YOU put on a condom, you don't put it AROUND the two of you, do you?

    Before you answer: Pics or it didn't happen.

  • (cs) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    When I was first installing my wireless router, I couldn't connect to my ISP.

    Remove the router, connects fine.
    Add the router, fail.

    I do some other diagnosing and about 40 minutes later, I call my ISP helpdesk. I begin a detailed explanation of what was going on so I wouldn't be subjected to the whole "Is your PC turned on?" script. They needed to know they weren't dealing with an idiot!

    The tech interrupts (very rudely, I thought), "Do you want your connection fixed or not"? "Well, yes but I ..." "Then stop talking and let me tell you what to do."

    3 minutes later I was saying, "Thank you, it's working now."

    humble

    pwned! I mean... pumbled!

  • (cs) in reply to Marc
    Marc:
    When working for tech support, I once told a guy he would need to clean his hard drive (as there wasn't any space left to install his program). He thanks me and hangs up the phone.

    Thirty minutes later he calls back and starts swearing at me saying his computer won't turn on. After 20 minutes of troubleshooting I find out that in order to "clean" his computer, he took the side panel off the case, put it on this patio table and sprayed it with the garden hose.

    /Seriously

    I'll bet that eliminated all the DIRTY pictures he had!
  • Anonymous coward (unregistered)

    That reminds me of installing XP on BootCamp. The original XP CD didn't work and the workaround was to make a dupe of the CD and install from that. Sure enough, it worked.

  • Emily (unregistered)

    Notice that it also recommends cleaning in a circular motion instead of from the center out, thus creating the potential for even more damage to the CD.

  • iMalc (unregistered)

    And with a bit of spraypaint, you too can re-image your PC.

  • LEGO (unregistered)

    All right, I thought a clean install, let's read on and see how to do a clean install:

    1. Place a small amount of nonabrasive, liquid soap on the shiny side of the CD or DVD.

    Oooooh!

    1. Using your fingertips and warm water, gently rub the soap on the disc in a circular motion.

    Oh, oh, oh, ohh, ohhh, yes, yes, yes, Yes, Yes, YES, YES,YESYESYESYESYES YEESSSS!

    1. Rinse the disc thoroughly and dry it using a clean, soft T-shirt or lint-free towel. Do not use paper towels or tissue paper.
    1. Install the program.

    No need, I'm already done.

    Doing a "clean install" has now taken on a new meaning for me.

    Me too.

  • SarcasmFTW (unregistered) in reply to sweavo
    sweavo:
    SarcasmFTW:
    I give them the benefit of the doubt all the time, but after talking with me savvy person for a few minutes it should be obvious that the person isn't an idiot, and perhaps its time to try the less inane solutions.

    Maybe the helpdesk person spotted your inability to string together a sentence and decided to give you extra help?

    If there is a way to edit these after you post them I missed it.

    I was stringing two thoughts together and didn't finish deleting one of them. Oh well.

  • Legis (unregistered)

    Laugh all you want, but I've long used toothpaste to clean CDs/DVDs that are mildly scratched (bad enough they skip/fail installs) with good results. Always made sense to use a gentle polishing agent.

    *Make sure you get all the toothpaste off. I've no idea what happens when toothpaste gets on the INSIDE of a CD/DVD drive, but it probably will not be good.

  • realsteve (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous coward

    Boot camp! That's for cavemen! Civilized folks use Parallels, or Fusion. Not free but wicked cool.

  • (cs) in reply to acsi
    acsi:
    T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM:

    Unclosed quotation mark before the character string ';drop database encore;--'.

    try replacing the -- with something missing a quote, like 

    select 1 where 'a'='a

    there are ways, but I won't investigate them :)

  • jayh (unregistered)

    I remember an online article by a tech support guy. One user that called obviously had a mental disability and the tech was prepared for the worst. Instead this person did exactly what he was asked, did not try to run ahead or second guess the tech or supply his own ideas. Turned out to be an easier than usual support call.

  • Wodin (unregistered) in reply to tardibear
    tardibear:
    It gets worse - the installation instructions tell you to run MSCONFIG, make a note of and disable each startup item, and then reboot before running the installer :-

    http://support.broderbund.com/fix.asp?isid=44676&prog=1294820992&printer=1

    I would never have guessed the Broederbond wrote desktop publishing software!
  • Hristo Todorov (unregistered)

    I actually had this conversation with a client on the phone who was not able to install some software back in the days of win 98. It went to blue screen saying the CD got removed unexpectedly. I found out someone had left her lips with a lipstick on the data side. It turned out he does not have anything other suitable for cleaning than wine brandy, but eventually he was able to instal just fine having cleaned the disk.

  • (cs) in reply to warl0ck
    warl0ck:
    Girl: What are you doing honey? Guy: Running disk defrag... will later uninstall programs that are not required and clean the hard drive... U better sleep.. this is gonna take some time...

    The Next day... Girl: What are you doing honey? Guy: Damn the computer's not starting... Just checking if the cables are connected fine... Girl: Oh them.. I couldn't figure out how to put them back today morning when i cleaned the hard drive... Guy: ?????????????? Girl: Oh don't worry... I just sprayed it with water and wiped off all the dust... there was dust on the fan too... and there was this long chip... green in color..

    They never slept together again...

    </Aaargh..>

    Wow.

    You seriously need to get laid.

    May I recommend extra large, farm fresh, organic eggs? There are several places to stick them, but I'm sure you can guess which one I think would work for you...

  • Rboy (unregistered) in reply to tardibear
    tardibear:
    It gets worse - the installation instructions tell you to run MSCONFIG, make a note of and disable each startup item, and then reboot before running the installer :-

    http://support.broderbund.com/fix.asp?isid=44676&prog=1294820992&printer=1

    Broderbund really is the learning company, isn't it? I've learned the reason why that Broderbund software has been dreck sometime after the C=64 days.

  • idan (unregistered)

    brilliant!

    I think i'm going to do a clean install to my windows, then to my dishes.

  • Bob (unregistered)

    Looks to me like the WTF is on you people. A 1335 can be caused by a dirty CD - even MS recommends cleaning the CD as a possible solution.

  • (cs) in reply to t-bone
    t-bone:
    acsi:
    T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM:

    Unclosed quotation mark before the character string ';drop database encore;--'.

    try replacing the -- with something missing a quote, like 

    select 1 where 'a'='a

    there are ways, but I won't investigate them :)

    If the DB was configured by a semi-sane person they'd have no DROP permissions for the website's user. Judging from fact that apparently each support article is it's own table though, I think it's safe to say it's all broken all around.

  • a nick (unregistered) in reply to tin

    huh? no, please consider what the query would look like

    select * from kb where id=bob

    hence the invalid column name bob, they aren't quoting the input at all

    just so you know, the table or alias is in fact kb, and they are replacing lowercase "select" with "" if you decide to put that in...

    this works just fine: http://support.encoreusa.com/kb.asp?id=55select4

  • a nack (unregistered) in reply to a nick

    They're still insanely wide open though. They may be replacing the lower case "select" with "", but they should obviously be forcing the input to lowercase before checking for that. Well actually, they should even need to check for any type of keyword, they should be validating the id with IsNumeric as step 1.

    Thankfully I'm soley a curious user and not a malicious one, because as someone else said, there are ways to get at them the way they have this set up.

  • fred (unregistered) in reply to tardibear

    OMG. That is what the legendary brøderbund have become ?

    Lode Runner forever!

  • Odor (unregistered)

    The funninest part is the Google Adsense ad below the article for: http://remove-cat-urine-odor.com ! ;-)

  • me (unregistered) in reply to a nick

    I swear I didn't mean to delete those articles. I thought they had all bases covered.

  • (cs) in reply to nat42
    nat42:
    facilisis:
    I actually had to do that with a CD of customer data someone sent us, they somehow got fingerprints all over the important side.

    The 'true' W.T.F. is... [A.K.A. unjustified rant from left field follows...] C.D.s themselves! Why do people care so much about the shiny side - yes, true, it is the side read with a <quote> L.A.S.E.R. </quote> but it is adequately protected with a 1m.m. thick layer of plastic! What about the boring label side though - A thin coat of paint - yeah that'll protect that ulta-thin super important foil layer - not. Same Mistake for D.V.D.s dear god why I cry did Sony folly to protect but one side. It's like if God designed a turtle, echidna or armadillo which got around upside-down - unprotected belly exposed - oh the horror of it all.

    I take it that you have not looked closely at a DVD. DVDs do use 2 pieces of polycarbonate, with the data layer(s) sandwiched between them. But I'll agree that the CD design was poor - the data layers were open to all sorts of damage, under that thin layer of lacquer. Including microbial atack: Have you got a CD with little swirls eaten out of it by some aluminium-loving beastie? I have a couple.

    And while I'm ranting - what ever happened to putting full stops in acronyms?
    It looks ugly. Stop.
  • Kari (unregistered) in reply to me
    me:
    I swear I didn't mean to delete those articles. I thought they had all bases covered.

    Oh My GooDness, This quote went for the RWTF.

    First someone find's that there is small vulnerability on SQL. Next thing that somebody needs to send a how to query all the tables. And finally they got owned when someone not so tech savvy need's to test could i use delete to that and removes all the table's.

    This i would say is the RWTF, why do you need to even try that?

    Well done for the users for helping this poor misfortuned user who didnt know what he might be able to do, now he does and might have nice small sentence and couple of thoulsand dollars worth of fines coming to him / her.

    What else i could say.

  • (cs)

    Hah, someone finally did it.

    If you were going to delete stuff though you should have deleted those stupid banner ads. ;-)

  • david (unregistered) in reply to Whoosis
    Whoosis:
    When I was at school (early-1990s) there was a policy that any disk you wanted to use on the school's computers had to be 'checked for viruses' by the IT teacher. The first occasion that I brought in a 3.5" floppy, I dutifully handed it to the teacher, assuming he was going to go to his office, or at least a nearby computer, and run some kind of check.

    Instead, he stood there in front of me, pulled back the sprung metal cover on the disk case, looked at the small portion of disk visible within, peering at it from a couple of angles, and handed it back to me, saying "Looks clean to me, go ahead."

    I'm not sure if he was trying to be funny; judging by his general absence of humour, I don't think so. After that I never bothered getting him to 'check' anything else.

    Drop of oil on the disk causes the read heads to de-laminate.

    Told that by a production engineer at a floppy disk manufacturer in the late 80's. They used it to poison their discards, because they were having a problem with people going through their garbage.

    IT teachers also have to worry about students stealing the mouse balls, and re-setting the voltage at the back of the computer case.

  • (cs) in reply to lolwtf
    lolwtf:
    Hah, someone finally did it.

    If you were going to delete stuff though you should have deleted those stupid banner ads. ;-)

    Haha. I was reading through the thread, I never thought anyone would do the nasty... I clicked one of the links with the comments in before I read it.

    So, Alex, you have to turn over IP addresses now or wait for the paperwork?

    This goes to show that even if you don't expect visitors, you should work on sanitizing user input.

    So, the REAL WTF is that someone actually deleted all their content.

    Anyone know if they have copies? Maybe they put the screens on the Xerox machines and printed some off before hand.

  • b0b g0ats3 (unregistered)

    81st!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111!!oneone!11

  • ThisIsMe (unregistered) in reply to fash
    fash:
    At least he got that far. I tried to "Install The Print Shop® from scratch" according to the manual and the disc wasn't even readable.

    obviously you didn't read the instructions properly:

    Using your fingertips and warm water, gently rub the soap on the disc in a circular motion

    It says gently, you must have rubbed too hard ... :p

  • Jon B (unregistered) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    Looks to me like the WTF is on you people. A 1335 can be caused by a dirty CD - even MS recommends cleaning the CD as a possible solution.

    The WTF is that they call that a "clean" install.

  • (cs) in reply to lolwtf
    lolwtf:
    Hah, someone finally did it.

    If you were going to delete stuff though you should have deleted those stupid banner ads. ;-)

    Oh my gourd... You guys finally did it. Now we're front page material on MSNBC. They'll probably take down this site now.

  • (cs) in reply to Pope
    Pope:
    lolwtf:
    Hah, someone finally did it.

    If you were going to delete stuff though you should have deleted those stupid banner ads. ;-)

    Oh my gourd... You guys finally did it. Now we're front page material on MSNBC. They'll probably take down this site now.

    QNZA LBH EVPX NFGYRL!

  • (cs) in reply to a nick
    a nick:
    huh? no, please consider what the query would look like

    select * from kb where id=bob

    hence the invalid column name bob, they aren't quoting the input at all

    just so you know, the table or alias is in fact kb, and they are replacing lowercase "select" with "" if you decide to put that in...

    this works just fine: http://support.encoreusa.com/kb.asp?id=55select4

    If "id=bob" results in "invalid column 'bob'", then it seems likely that it's more like:

    select bob from kb

    It's bizarre, but why else would an id value of 'bob' fail to find a column named 'bob'?

    -dZ.
  • (cs) in reply to nat42
    nat42:
    Same Mistake for D.V.D.s dear god why I cry did Sony folly to protect but one side.

    Whatever happened to putting commas in interjections and subordinate clauses?

    -dZ.

  • (cs) in reply to SarcasmFTW

    The sad story is that there's a great many people who really can emulate 'savvy' when it comes to typical problems, and who are behind the scenes just the same old idiots.

    I had a doctor as a client, whom I had setup a small office network with a couple servers, some phone equipment, and the necessary networking components. He called to mention his internet was down, said he had rebooted the router, rebooted the cable modem, and had even tried plugging in directly to the cable modem with no luck. I walked him through trying a DHCP refresh to see if he could get a new address, and after finding that he could and still had no connection I headed down to check things out.

    Turned out that in the process of troubleshooting things he had re-cabled half the closet (unplugging, looking at the connector, and plugging the cable into anything that it fits in) and by "reboot the router" he actually rebooted the whole rack. It took me all afternoon and most of the evening to clean up the mess he made.

    The worst part? The problem was that he had bumped the stupid Internet On/Off button on the cable modem to kickstart the whole issue while grabbing some junk he was storing on the top of the rack.

  • (cs) in reply to NaN
    NaN:

    QNZA LBH EVPX NFGYRL!

    I know. I hate myself for doing it. But it was the perfect opportunity. My heart sunk when I saw that someone took the plunge and I immediately thought about how they could easily make us look like criminals if we ended up on MSNBC. Then I thought about how eager people would be to read an article like that. I hate that joke too, but it had to be done. It was a moral imperative. It had to be done, sir!

  • (cs) in reply to Radranic
    Radranic:
    I'm a little bit more worried that changing

    http://support.encoreusa.com/kb.asp?id=554

    to...

    http://support.encoreusa.com/kb.asp?id=bob

    gives....

    "Invalid column name 'bob'."

    http://support.encoreusa.com/kb.asp?id=user

    Syntax error converting the nvarchar value 'crm' to a column of data type int.
    http://support.encoreusa.com/kb.asp?id=us;er
    Line 1: Incorrect syntax near 'er'.
    I have a feeling they should take the site down for maintenance... :-/
  • a nack (unregistered) in reply to DZ-Jay

    Because they're not wrapping the inputed ID in quotes. If you're working with numerical values in SQL like integers or floats.

    So assuming you had a table named "B" which had two columns "A" and "C", you can just do

    "Select A From B Where C = 1"

    you DON'T need to wrap the 1 like this

    "Select A From B Where C = '1'"

    becase SQL recgonizes these as values you're testing against. However, if you then replace the 1 with a single word and no spaces

    "Select A From B Where C = D"

    SQL now interprets this as you trying to match column C to columnd D on table B. And since column D doesn't exist, you get the nice little error that was posted earlier...

    "invalid column 'bob'"

  • km (unregistered) in reply to Radranic

    well.. this >> http://support.encoreusa.com/kb.asp?id=554 gives me this >> "Article could not not be found."

  • caveman (unregistered) in reply to realsteve
    realsteve:
    Boot camp! That's for cavemen! Civilized folks use Parallels, or Fusion. Not free but wicked cool.

    well, i guess being a caveman is better these days.. you civilised folks are useless anyway.. its the civilised folks who hose down their computers with garden hoses.. LoL..

    anyways folks.. back to the "clean install" issue.. ;)

    seems to be a big issue at ur place man.. pretty long discussion on the topic.. l0l...

    well it ain't ur fault actually..

    Its the Microsoft bred values (yuck!) you know.. any windoes user can't really help :(

  • Arioch (unregistered)

    that you never should rub optical media in 'circular' manner. You should avoid any tangential direction, when rubbing CD/DVD/etc.

    one is to use radial direction, and radial scratches are almost invisible to drive, while tangential scratch can easily make disc unreadable. Clean-never-install-me-again!

  • caveman (unregistered) in reply to me
    me:
    I swear I didn't mean to delete those articles. I thought they had all bases covered.

    LoL.. you are the one who deleted those articles.. i was wondering what's everyone talking about. heheh...

  • bartolo & the nigth breakers (unregistered) in reply to caveman
    caveman:
    me:
    I swear I didn't mean to delete those articles. I thought they had all bases covered.

    LoL.. you are the one who deleted those articles.. i was wondering what's everyone talking about. heheh...

    well they are back..... but for how long?

  • Grant P. (unregistered)

    The real WTF is that it says to clean the CD with a circular motion - EVERYBODY knows to wipe from the center to the edge.

  • Grant P. (unregistered) in reply to Arioch

    Yeah, like he said!

  • anonymous (unregistered)

    Those instructions are crappy, you should always clean discs from the inside out (or outside in), not with a cricualr motion.

  • Mackenzie (unregistered) in reply to t-bone
    t-bone:
    acsi:
    T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM:

    Unclosed quotation mark before the character string ';drop database encore;--'.

    try replacing the -- with something missing a quote, like 

    select 1 where 'a'='a

    there are ways, but I won't investigate them :)

    I think the problem is the ' after the number 64.

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