There are a variety of ways to crash your computer into an unusable state, but some are more fun than others. It is important not to try these commands on your personal computer.
For example, on a Windows PC you can delete all of the files and folders on the C: drive by opening Powershell and entering the command below. This will delete everything on the hard drive in one go.
rd/s/q/ C:\On a Mac, you can delete all of the system files by opening the terminal and entering the command below. This will delete everything on the hard drive in one go – including all your precious photos, documents and other files!
rm -Rf /Apparently one more way that may or may not cause your laptop to crash is playing the video Rhythm Nation by Janet Jackson under the right conditions.
I know, I know – who would have thought?
Apparently, if you play the music video on your laptop, it can cause other laptops nearby to crash. Crazy, right? Raymond Chen a Senior Software Engineer with Microsoft explains the science behind what’s causing this to happen in a recent blog post “It’s because the song contains one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 rpm laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers used at the time.”
Luckily, the manufacturer worked around the problem by adding a custom filter in the audio pipeline that detected and removed the offending frequencies during audio playback. So if you’re ever feeling risky and want to watch Rhythm Nation on your laptop, go ahead! But just be aware that your computer might not be so lucky.
