My auntie somehow managed to get a virus that played Für Elise through the motherboard speaker and never stopped so long as the thing was on. I don't think they ever solved it, in the end they just got a new PC.

[–] bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world 55 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Drain.exe would say "water in drive a:, commencing spin cycle" then power up the drive and make a gurgling sound.

Sheep.exe ... would create a sheep that would wander the desktop.

[–] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml 39 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Haha, in highschool I put sheep.exes into the school labs startup folders as a prank once. A couple days later the tech teacher approached me and was like "nobody's in trouble but these things are a nightmare and if I have to reimage half the lab to get rid of them it would personally ruin my day". Somehow all the sheep were gone by the next day

[–] ssj2marx@lemmy.ml 23 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

School computers back then were a wild west. I remember having Starcraft on the school shared drive and playing it in homeroom.

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 7 points 3 weeks ago

I remember getting sent to the principals office for "hacking" (pinging the computer in the next room) in like 8th grade.

Back in 4th/5th I actually was hacking, modifying our user menu to add Windows 3.1 and a password (copying config from a teacher's profile). Also brute-forced at least two teachers passwords.

I'm a network architect now, so there's that.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 weeks ago

I remember labs full of networked Win 98 machines in middle school, with like Novell software on them for login credentials and whatnot. The computers sat there with a login screen and when students logged into it you would be presented with the Office suite and a restricted web browser and some educational packages. A lot of normal Win 98 stuff wasn't there though, like any settings menus. But there was some convoluted way where you could bring up a help text and then by navigating deep in the menu system somehow cause it to launch to a "normal" Win 98 desktop.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 4 points 3 weeks ago

I'd often bring a floppy with wolf3d or doom to deal with the boredom

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 14 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Ah shit the sheep thing! In fact, there were others I can't remember. And I seem to remember somewhere along the line they went from fun to spam things walking around your screen trying to make you buy shit or maybe they were trying to scam you, I can't remember but they weren't fun anymore, and hard to get rid of.

[–] bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I remember an obscure one named "grommit" that was a dancing animated character and you'd click it to change arm and leg movements.

Bonzi buddy was over of the bad ones, maybe?

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Bonzai buddy! Yes, that was one. Also I seem to recall naked women ones you couldn't close.

I don't remember grommit, but also I failed to find anything when trying to search it up. It shares its name with too many things.

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 3 points 3 weeks ago

I had a cottonelle puppy so basically a toilet paper ad. But it's not even sold in my country, we have other brands.

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