One of my jobs at QWE Computers was to do on-site visits to homes and businesses throughout the area. The subject of these service calls varied, sometimes being for a network setup, other times for a printer issue, etc…. No two were ever the same, and there were always interesting people to meet.

It had been a rather busy day, and I was headed up to my last call. And by headed up, I mean up. My destination was a gigantic log home in the mountains just outside of town (a half-hour drive constitutes as ‘just outside’ around here). Upon arriving, I introduced myself, confirmed this was the right place, and was taken to the office with the offending computer.

The system, much like the couple, was old – a Pentium 2 300Mhz with 64MB RAM. The couple were in their late sixties, and also a little short on memory. I was asked to give the computer a once-over, make sure Windows was up-to-date, and load on some anti-virus software – pretty basic stuff. Hitting the power button, I watched the POST screen for a solid thirty seconds, and then the boot logo appeared. I think it looked something like this:

Slightly horrified, but knowing the computer probably wasn’t able to run anything else (XP being at Service Pack 2 by this point), and that replacing the computer ‘just wasn’t in the budget’, I continued on, working away.

As I got near the end of the cleanup, I noticed that Active Desktop was enabled. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, however for a computer with 64MB RAM, this simple visual tweak was literally bringing the computer to its knees. I offered to disable it, explaining what it was and that I could just reset the wallpaper. The couple agreed, and I unchecked the ‘Use Active Desktop’ option. Then my jaw hit the desk.

You see, when Active Desktop is enabled, and you apply a wallpaper, it doesn’t replace the existing one. Instead, it places the new one over top. When you disable Active Desktop, it removes that new layer, and you see the wallpaper that was there in the first place.

In this event, that wallpaper happened to the customer’s 60-something wife, completely naked, sitting on the floor with her knees up to her chin, with literally everything on display for the world, or at least me, to see.

Scrambling as fast as I could I reset the wallpaper to one of the stock ones, scrawled out an invoice, grabbed the cheque, and practically ran for the door, not making eye contact at all. I don’t know what happened that couple, because oddly enough, I was never called back again….