Computer Bloopers - Idiocy

Some people just don't get the most basic things sometimes. Admit it, we've all been in this situation before.

• Me: "What's your email address?"
• Friend: "It's [name] and then the A thing with a circle around it..."
• Me: "At?"
• Friend: "No, you know, the A thing, then 'hotmail.com'"
• Me: "So it's @hotmail.com?"
• Friend: "NO, it's A, but with a sort of circle around it... you know, the thing in an email address."
• Me: "Yes, I know. That's the 'at' symbol."

I was helping a friend over the phone recover his Vista bootloader after he had deleted his Linux partition.

• Me: "Now, type 'bootrec.exe /fixmbr'".
• Him: "Huh?"
• Me: "Boot R-E-C dot E-X-E space slash fix M-B-R"

After many complaints of it not working, I asked him to read off what he had typed, letter by letter.

• Him: "B-O-O-T-R-E-C-dot-E-X-E-space-S-L-A-S-H-F-I-X-M-B-R"
• Me: "You need to type a slash, and not S-L-A-S-H".
• Him: "Slash? How do I type that?"

(He's a computer-literate person.)

• Me: "You know, the slash key. Right above the enter key."
• Him: "Oh... the slash key... I see now! Man, I feel stupid."

My friend had given his older computer (with an OEM motherboard that did not support overclocking) to one of his friends.

• Friend: "If I take my friend's 3800, put it in my computer, overclock it, and put it back in their computer, will it work? I mean, I know it will probably get a BSOD"
• Me: "Are you serious?"

(After some thinking)

• Friend: "Oh, I see now!"

"What does IDK mean in computer language? I see it often, but I don't know what it means!"

I asked my teacher for some files, and since they were fairly big, she asked me to bring a blank DVD to put them on. After a few weeks, I still hadn't gotten the files, so I asked her.

• Me: "Did you burn those files onto the DVD?"
• Her: "No. When I tried burning them on, it told me that they were in the wrong format. in order for me to be able to burn them, I will need to convert them, and I don't have time for that."
• Me: "You can burn any format onto a DVD if you burn it as data. Do you use Nero or Roxio to burn CDs and DVDs?"
• Her: "I use Nero."
• Me: "Then, click 'Data Disc' and just drag the files onto it!"
• Her: "I told you! It doesn't work!"

The next day...

• Her: "One other thing. I found out that the computer doesn't have a DVD burner."