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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026
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Should have added "no mistakes, no bugs" to the prompt! Pffft, amateur.
"DON'T HALLUCINATE!" that's always my favourite.
That takes me back to 2004
No Smoke, by unknown,
Tech: "Hello. How can I help you today?"
Customer: "There's smoke coming from the power supply on my computer."
Tech: "Sounds like you need a new power supply."
Customer: "No, I don't! I just need to change the startup files."
Tech: "Sir, what you describe is a faulty power supply. You need to replace it."
Customer: "No way! Someone told me that I just had to change the system startup files to fix the problem! All I need is for you to tell me the right command."
(Ten minutes later...)
Tech: "Well, we don’t normally tell our customers this, but there's an undocumented command that will fix the problem. Add the line "LOAD NOSMOKE.COM" at the end of the CONFIG.SYS file and everything should work fine."
(Five minutes later...)
Customer: "It didn’t work. The power supply is still smoking."
Tech: "Well, what version of Windows are you using?"
Customer: "Windows 98."
Tech: "Well, that's your problem. That version of Windows doesn't include NOSMOKE. You'll need to contact Microsoft and ask them for a patch."
(When nearly an hour had passed, the phone rang again...)
Customer: "I need a new power supply."
Tech: "How did you come to that conclusion?"
Customer: "Well, I called Microsoft and told the technician what you said, and he started asking me questions about the make of the power supply."
Tech: "What did he tell you?"
Customer: "He said my power supply is not compatible with NOSMOKE."
Meanwhile in 2003 I contacted our it department to report that one of the PCs in our area literally lit on fire. I had watched it with my own eyes, and the smoke was in the air. PSU go poof. The techs came, took a look at it, said yeah we see no problem, left and closed the ticket.
So idiots are literally everywhere that's the moral of the story I guess.
That is way older that 2004. I first read that in the early 90s.
TIL Win98 was out in the early '90s....
That's because the joke got updated to the newest OS version until CONFIG.SYS got entirely removed in Windows ME and it just didn't work any more.
It's originally from MS-DOS times. Earliest telling of it I know of is from 1996.
The 60's happened in the 70's.
The 70's happened in the 80's.
You get where I'm going here?
I think so. The 2010-2020s happened in the 1930-1940s, amirite?
Lol. "do magic"
"or you go to jail"