Har!

Just been demonstrating. Afterwards someone got their laptop out to show us what was wrong with it and see if we could give him some advice. He was using Windows XP Home Edition (*shudder*). The machine looked like it was quite healthy, it didn't take too long to start up, but when it reached the user screen and helpfully prompted with "Click your username to continue" there were no usernames to click. None at all. Not one. Zero. Count them: None.

I was interested by this. We tried all the usual Windows hacks (trying the Administrator username, the Guest account etc) but they were all securely locked down. Typical. After we'd determined that Windows needed to be reinstalled I asked what was the last thing he did before it "broke". "I'll show you on this computer" he said, pointing to a public workstation. Guardedly I replied "okay... but don't break it!"

He logged in and then started to search through the menus but was unable to find what he was looking for. I could see what was coming next but waited patiently. Eventually he explained: "It was just this thing in the menu and I deleted the username from it".

"Was this 'thing' by any chance called the 'Control Panel'?"

The stupidity of some people amazes me. He deletes his user account off the computer and then wonders why it doesn't work. What amazes me is the fact that Windows let him. Home Edition is marketed for, well, for home users. How difficult would it be to have a tiny bit of code that looks like this before they perform the delete?

That took me about 30 seconds to write. I even wrote it in VB so it would be usable on a Windows machine. Personally I am of the opinion that if I say "delete this user" then I am big enough and stupid enough to suffer the consequences if it were the only user on the system, fair enough. A system that tells me to go to hell when I try to do something slightly odd would piss me off something chronic and I would hate the above code to exist on MY system - but that's because I'm a power user. When I do something slightly stupid there's (usually) a good reason for it. When a Home Edition user does something stupid it's because they're stupid, and so a piece of code like that above is essential.

People never cease to amaze me.