I took the drive to the backyard. I placed it on a concrete block. I took a 5-pound sledgehammer to it. First hit: The aluminum casing dented. Second hit: The platters shattered. I swept the shards into a bucket, poured lighter fluid on them, and lit a match. The flame burned blue and green. It smelled like ozone and burnt plastic.
I walked downstairs to pull an old file. The monitor was off, but the power light on the tower was blinking. That was odd. I don’t leave it on. I pressed the spacebar. The CRT hummed to life. There was the desktop. Green hills. Blue sky. Bliss. But something was wrong. The Start button wasn't at the bottom left. It was at the top right. I blinked. Then it snapped back. Weird , I thought. Ghost in the machine. winxp horror destructive
I went back inside. The basement light was off. I flicked the switch. Nothing. I walked down the wooden steps. In the corner, the beige box was humming. The monitor was on. The green hills were back. The hard drive was in a bucket of ash outside. The RAM was in my pocket. But the machine was humming. The screen displayed a single dialogue box. Not a blue screen. Not an error. Just a cursor blinking in the top left corner. Blink. Wait. Blink. Then, it typed: I took the drive to the backyard
Last week, I made a mistake. I booted the old machine. First hit: The aluminum casing dented
I decided to nuke it. Boot from a DBAN disk. Scorched earth. The BIOS splash screen appeared. I hit F12 for boot menu. Nothing. I hit Delete for Setup. Nothing. The screen flickered. The green hills of Bliss were back. But they were inverted. The sky was green. The grass was blue. A window popped up. It was the classic XP "End Task" dialogue box. But the task wasn't "Explorer.exe" or "Svchost." The task was "YOU." The options were: [End Now] or [Cancel] . I clicked Cancel. The cursor moved to End Now by itself. I ripped the power cord out of the wall.