Brought to you by: Kazaa

Having to reformat your hard drive and reinstall a pirated version of windows XP because your computer can't stop loading porn websites and you're browser had 10 toolbars you can't remove. It's a right of passage to learn that. Honestly, the adware I got infected on the family PC just made me learn computers. And now I'm 10 years into a Software Engineering career.
Thanks adware. You kick started my career at the age of 12.

Did you guys get a lot of viruses in the 00s? I remember bumping into it more back in the good old disk days, where we got infected with skin-to-floppy contact, as the lord intended.
- Linkin Park - In The End.mp3.exe
  
  And of course the "hide extensions" option is by default.
  Windows: "I helped!"
- I didn’t but I wasn’t downloading random suspicious crap off the Internet either. I’m not sure I even saw the famous ones like I Love You or Anna Kournikova. I probably wouldn’t have been hit, though, since I’d also been taught not to open random, unexpected email attachments.
  
  I was downloading a bunch of suspicious crap, but I also was... you know, not opening executables? I feel like you heard a lot about more sophisticated attacks back then, but most of the bad stuff was super obvious. But maybe my experience is not typical, I don't know.
- There was a special time in the XP heyday before WiFi routers (hell, just routers even) were common for home users. Without some kind of AV, loads of folk were basically just rawdogging the Internet with ADSL modems.
  Simply being connected this way long enough at the height of the MS Blaster worm would almost guarantee a drive-by infection.
- I once installed pirated Counter Strike from a CD and got Hantaner.A

I remember back before I got my own PC. My brother had Windows 98, installed Morpheus (similar to Kazaa).
I looked for a game, I think it was some console game. "Wow, I didn't even know this was on PC! Wow, it's only 15MB, how did they get the game so small?? Computers are cool!"
Every time I ran it, the screen would go all funky with every click and after a while return to normal.
On a separate occasion I deleted System32 files (whichever ones it let me at the time), to free up space.
It's quite funny that a lot of people ask me for various advice, fixing devices, PCs, etc. just a friendly reminder to myself that everyone starts somewhere. Boy I messed up so many PCs when I was much younger.
- Lots of engineers probably got their start by taking random things apart and breaking them as a kid too. Clocks, radios, etc.
  
  As a current engineer I can confirm this is true
- I got into computers when I destroyed a Windows 3.11 install on a PC we'd been given.
  Nobody wanted to use it without graphics. So I started playing with it and typing words into the MS DOS prompt and reading the output.
  I found qbasic and the gorilla and snake games. Then a text editor and so I learned how to make batch files. Learned how to edit basic by trial and error so I could make the gorilla's bananas blow up the whole screen
  Found some DOS games, like scorched earth and a copy of wing commander which led to me learning to hate DRM and also how to operate an unguarded photocopier at my school.
  Fast forward 30 years and I've picked up a few more tricks
- I remember downloading 2 fast 2 furious from either Kazaa or Limewire. Pressed play. Opening scene was some detective guy stood outside on a dark evening in a long brown coat. Was kind of like a noir vibe to it. Then all of a sudden it cuts to a woman just sucking him off on the pavement. Had to nope the fuck out as quick as possible as my family were in the room lol.

I dunno what to say. I never got any viruses. I scanned everything before I opened it and never downloaded any exes.

Remember when you could download limewire pro using limewire? Those were the days.
Every other song I downloaded was actually just bill Clinton's speech: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

So much time wasted running antivirus scans that ate up the whole computer.

lmfao i remember when i was like 11 in the early 00s a creepy friend of my mom’s downloaded limp bizkit songs for me on limewire or kazaa (never listened to it nor cared to) and got a bunch of viruses (good)

- Azereus was pretty good. But vuze is when it went to shit if I remember right. It basically followed the same path as uTorrent by selling to ad companies and became adware.
  Also, if anyone is wondering the modern torrent clients today that are clean of any adware are Qbittorrent, Deluge, and Transmission.

I have a 4gb drive of mp3s at various bitrates. Some of them are missing entire instruments, and it's actually kind of cool.
Also on that drive I have the proper versions when Google allowed everyone to upload their songs, then download them again anywhere. But the downloaded version was their copy, not your original.

I was lucky that my family had a Mac when I was a kid. I did all my stupid downloading of random .exe files from sketchy sites on a machine that couldn't run them, and by the time I got my own PC in high school, I knew a bit better.

Yeah but what about Limewire, then?