1. Index
  2. Literature
  3. Tech Support Humour
  4. CD's

Midimusic.org.uk Computer Humour, Hardware

2.7 CDs and CDROM Drives

Confusion about CDROM drives is enhanced further by the fact that they are so similar in appearance and function to 5 1/4" floppy disk drives and contain information stored on a commonly recognized medium.

A lady bought a computer from us. About a month later, she came in and asked us to install a sound card which can support CDROM drives. So we installed a Soundblaster Pro for her. A week later, she brings the machine in and starts ragging us out because her CDROM drive isn't working, and "It won't eject the disk."

I look at the computer. "But you don't have a CDROM drive!" I exclaim. She points at the 5 1/4" disk drive and says, "What kind of computer salesman are you? Can't even recognize a CDROM drive when you see one?"

It seems she had decided her 5 1/4" floppy drive was in fact a CDROM drive, and since the CD fit in quite nicely, it had to be a CDROM drive.

Long and short of it: the drive was destroyed, the CD was destroyed, and all the technicians were laughing for a few hours.

When working at the Blinn College computer lab I had a girl come up to the desk and ask why her CDROM drive was not working. I went to check it out and to my surprise she had crammed the expensive software CD into the 5 1/4" drive. I had to take apart the drive to get the CD out, and of course it was ruined. A week later, the same girl came in and did it again.

We replaced a large number of very old PCs with the latest and greatest. This meant that new techonology was being introduced to users who had previously used dumb terminals or 16mhz 386s.

One user asked if he could use his CDROM to play music CDs. I said he could, but he would need speakers or headphones. He replied that he didn't have either, but in the mean time, he would listen to the music coming out of the little hole (headphone jack). I nodded and left quickly.

Recently, my CD drive stopped working. I concluded that somehow a driver had been lost or corrupted. I emailed the company requesting a new driver. A few days later the driver was mailed to me, on CD.

I walked her through the basic steps of inserting the CDROM disk and getting to the 'Run' window.

I tried several things. I tried different drive letters. I made sure the colon was actually a colon and the backslash was really a backslash.

AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!! (bang head, thump, thump, thump)

I recently helped my friend buy a new computer. I set it up for him and showed him all the basics. Several days later, he called me.

One night I asked a customer which drive was his CDROM drive. He told me it was the one on top.

I work as a computer consultant at a certain university computing site...so naturally, I was approached by a user on my day off at a site where I don't work.

I explained that CD-ROM and CD-R drives use different types of lasers and optics, that CD-Rs cost a lot more than CD-ROMs, and that very few computers at this university have CD-Rs.

I suggested he use a ZIP disk for his mass storage needs and exited post haste.

As a service technician I have to deliver and set up many computers. The majority of my clients are teachers and schools. While setting up several systems for a school one day, one of the teachers asked me to come and take her system back. Curious, I asked why. She replied back that the CDROM drive was not working. Well, knowing that the systems had no CDROM installed, I asked her what had it done wrong. She replied back that she put a CD in, and she couldn't get it back out. I walked back to her room, and she quickly pointed to the face of the system between two blank bezels and said, "I put it there in the CDROM drive, and it isn't working." I explained that the computer didn't have a CDROM drive because the school hadn't ordered one. Now furious with me, she ordered me to remove the system from her room. I obeyed and went to the principle. He told me to put it somewhere else where it would be appreciated.

Slowly it dawned on me that the shiny record was a CDROM disk, and the slot was the 3 1/2" floppy drive. She had no idea what a CD was or how to use it.

Posted to comp.security.misc:

I need to kow how to disable D: write-protection. I want to delete a very bad music CD I once bought. Contact me with info. at [email address].

One of our clients ordered an Quadra 840AV, but they did not want the internal CD which comes standard in that box. No problem, I took the CD out before I delivered it to the customer. However I did not have the blank bezel with which to cover the opening. I set the system up for them, gave them a quick lesson on its ins and outs, and told him I would be back in a couple of days to replace the bezel.

I returned two days later, opened up the case of the 840 to install the new bezel and found about a dozen slips of used post-it note papers. Upon asking the operator about it I was told that she had put them in there because she thought that the original CD bezel, with it's long slim opening, looked like one of those trash recepticles they have on the ATM machines.

I verified that he is typing the correct command to run the install program. He is.

A client phoned up complaining that her PC had frozen with the cursor in the middle of the screen. The keyboard seemed locked as well so we couldn't kill the offending application. So I told her to switch off her computer and turn it back on again. After about twenty seconds she said it came back on and it was still frozen. I asked if she switched it off properly or if she just switch off the monitor. And she assured me that it was the computer she switched off. We did this again, just to be sure, and this time it only took five seconds to turn back on, still frozen. So I knew she was hit the monitor button. I asked the question again, and she got a little uptight, saying there was only one button, and that's what she's pressed.

We discussed TV-like items on her desk, and I asked if there was something else on or around her desk. After the list of pens and pencils and other assorted desk supplies, she mentioned her "CD holder."

On a hunch I asked if this "CD holder" was two feet tall and beige. Sure enough it was. We switched it off and on, and it worked. She honestly thought the computer was just a place to keep her Windows CD.

At this point the Tech Rep had to mute the caller, because he couldn't stand it. The caller had been using the load drawer of the CDROM drive as a cup holder and snapped it off the drive.

I once had a customer who had been trying to put his CD in his computer. He didn't have a CDROM drive so, naturally, the task was difficult. He could not figure it out, and finally ended up opening his system to try to put it in a card slot.

I spent ten minutes explaining what his disk drive was and that he did not, in fact, have a CDROM drive. I sent a disk to him and explained how it goes in the system. When I was finished, I went in to the bathroom and laughed for about five minutes straight. Hysterical, uncontrollable laughter.

  1. Index
  2. Literature
  3. Tech Support Humour
  4. CD's