My sister called me freaking out that her computer was "fried" again.  This was particularly troubling since she had already "fried" her own computer a few months ago and this new computer didn't belong to her. 

    Last time it "fried" she took it to a computer shop who said she would have to buy a whole new computer (bullsh!t if I ever heard it), and this time, she said, the exact same thing was happening. 

    So I asked her what the error message was.  She said "It says ERROR and doesn't work."  DAMNIT - ALL error messages are not created equal?  It's actually important what it says - just making something up doesn't pacify me.

    So I told her I would take a look at it and swung by her house and picked it up.  Upon plugging it in and powering it up at my house I was given the error "NON SYSTEM DISK OR DISK ERROR."  Wow!  A far cry from her version of the error message.

    So anyway, I popped out the FLOPPY DISK that was in the drive and it booted up with no problems.  You know - every single person asking me to fix their computers every day is enough - at LEAST read me the error message when I ask because we might just be able to fix it in half a second over the phone.