Fun with screensavers

[edible_hat]

My A+ instructor has a screensaver on his machine that emulates a Windows XP Blue screen and reboot over and over again.

I came up to talk to him last week and saw it.

"Um... that's not a good sign..."


Eric the Grey

There's a Linux one that emulates a bunch of errors from different operating systems. The first time my dad saw it he thought I'd somehow installed Amiga OS on my PC.

[technical.angel]

My A+ instructor has a screensaver on his machine that emulates a Windows XP Blue screen and reboot over and over again.

I came up to talk to him last week and saw it.

"Um... that's not a good sign..."


Eric the Grey

I put that on my machine. THAT DAY, which is the day that I was working on a Vista dual boot, the now former bossman had to either pick up my phone, or put something on my desk while I was at lunch.

When I got back, he started yelling at me, what did I do to my computer to make it BSOD? I pretty much died.

[RoLleRKoaSTeR]

The BSOD screen saver

Yep, got one for my work computer. Keeps others guessing and me entertained.

[boffomusic]

I remember back in the Windows 3.1 days, I changed the screen saver/desktop image/color scheme settings a few times. My parents objected because they didn't understand how those settings worked and they thought I was somehow monkeying with the internal workings of the computer. The one that really made dad go nuts was when I changed the background to red with giant letters saying, "Access Denied." He actually thought he'd somehow been locked out of the computer. I tried to explain that it was just a picture, but I don't think he ever fully bought it. (It probably didn't help that I had set Windows to open with Program Manager minimized.)

So when the monitor actually broke (green gun stopped working, turning everything pink) they roused me out of a sound sleep, marched me downstairs and demanded to know what I had done and how to change it back. They weren't fully convinced until they had actually shipped the monitor back to the dealer (this was shortly before you could just walk into a store and buy a computer) and gotten the verdict (something along the lines of, "Yep, it's broken." I think dad's still convinced it had something to do with some setting I changed.

Yeah... I pretty much became the scapegoat for anything that went wrong with the computer. Even the time my parents tried to install a new internal hard drive and suddenly their bookkeeping software stopped working .

Strangely enough they loved the little trivia games I would program in QBasic. (Self-taught )

[Daisy]

I used to have a screensaver that looked just like your desktop, but when you'd try to click something, the icon would get up and walk away. Drove my ex nuts.


At my last office job, I'd come back from lunch to find someone had been playing solitaire on my computer. So I put on the Don't Touch My Computer screensaver. If you haven't seen it, it's a cute shaggy doggy running around in an office, but if you touch the keyboard or mouse, the dog runs up like he's gonna jump out of the screen, complete with loud barking. I didn't have a problem after that

[SuperB]

I love all the ideas. I would love to try one on a co-worker who made me sound like an idiot to tech support not long ago.

On our system, once the screen saver (which we can't disable) starts you have to deal with logging back on to get back to whatever you were doing. To avoid the screen saver I play windows media player (with the animation going) and it keeps the screen saver away. When trying to download something we needed to install a new printer on dialup I told her to run WMP while it was downloading and thought she understood why. The download would be interrupted if the screen saver kicks in.
She told tech support that I told her that running WMP would make it download faster.

[technical.angel]

She told tech support that I told her that running WMP would make it download faster.

In a way, yes, because a download running it's full course is a lot faster than a download you have to keep restarting.

Jenni, trying to see the brighter side of life.

[Broomjockey]

What confuses me is that the screensaver starting kills the download. Is that normal for dial-up or something? (Have had high-speed in various forms longer than I'd had dial-up, so I can't remember)

[SuperB]

It's the Post Office system and it logs each user out each time the screensaver comes on so it kept killing the download. I think it's designed to keep your login from being used by someone else if you're away from it for too long.
At the time we were using dialup. We have a much better connection now.