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Failed Win XP Upgrade Wipes Out UK Government Agency
Lurker McLurker writes "The BBC and the Register report that the UK Government's Department for Work and Pensions attempted to upgrade seven PCs from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, and ended up with BSODs on over 60,000 machines. I wonder if the National Health Service is regretting awarding Microsoft a £500 million contract now." The Guardian also has a good story.
They wanted that new version of Internet Explorer with the fancy built-in pop-up blocker.
OH SHI-
But still I have to say it: "HAHA!"
Every Desktop Shutdown.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Hey, they may have shite for brains, but the money was worth it! No trouble with the dreaded 228 patents that Linux supposedly infringes!
It's like a thousand solitaire players suddenly cried out in frustration and then silence...
I like muppets.
From the Guardian article: "At this point there is no known solution or ETA"
I RTFA and all I see is a money discussion, not a technical discussion. I would speculate that an SMS or Zenworks push or somthing similar which was supposed to be restriced to the 7 PC's went almost everywhere. It might be a fair bet that the remaining 20,000 might have been upgraded too if those people had been at work and turned on their computers. IT Computer management tools give the department much power, which could do plenty of damage in the wrong hands.
Have you Meta Moderated t
It seems your firm is costing the British tax payer enormous quantities of cash, predominently through incompetence. Please take any drastic steps necessary to prevent any further IT disasters and consider if your firm deserves the billions of consulting dollars it has already banked.
Yours,
Jim.
i'm trying to give up sigs.
When a government ends up with BSODs on 60000 computers, it can't be good for Microsoft.
Yea, I can just see them going bankrupt over this. Their coffin was half closed before, but now they're bound to be pennystock.
Obviously these sysadmins were incompetent. Everybody knows that a BSOD is impossible under Windows XP. If they had simply upgraded the other 60,000 machines to XP first, and then updated these 7 problem systems, this whole problem would easily have been avoided.
Here, in Canada, we don't have that kind of problems, as they spend the money on importing cocaine, censoring radio stations, funding lefty newspaper that help them spread the haterd of jews and americans, spreading cash around healthcare but not making the personel wash their hands (resulting in hundreds of deaths from infection), hiring lawyers to keep the mouths of people who had infected blood transfered to them shut and helping pedophiles reintegrate society instead of buying Microsoft stuff
When a government ends up with BSODs on 60000 computers, it can't be good for Microsoft.
No, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad for the rest of us!
Let's hope Congress plans to upgrade soon!
See? Even Microsoft is good for something!
Im pretty embarrassed for my country right now. How the fuck did we go from technological pioneers to this? And its only the tip of the iceberg, what with Ken Livingstone's numerous stupid ideas, David Blunkett's insanity and the incompetence of 100's of 'IT' projects (hint: if its called an IT project it means its run by incompetent MCSEs and it will fail catastrophically leaving millions of people without a service or having planes crashing into the ground, time and time again) with tax money falling out of their pockets, fuck them! Why do these idiots get the contracts? What happened to all the competent people??
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was the government spokesperson. After the intro to this piece on Radio 4 this morning, her opening sentence was "Let me correct you, 20% of our workstations are functioning". Talk about a positive spin.
..and they thought this would work?
They must be double stupid, with knobs on.
I can't believe it!! They Upgraded, rofl..
Fnord Fnord Fnord
No, no, no, this is the one we lobby them to employ EDS and Microsoft on!
If MPs are stupid enough to implement Blunkettcards we should at least get some entertainment out of it.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Easy, a dialog like this appeared:
"Do you want to update the machines on your network now?"
[Accept]
No cancel button.
--
Wiki de Ciencia Ficcion y Fantasia, un cuento por Fly.
With a service history like this:
p ort_agency_it_failure/ v enue_sacks_eds/ _ abbey_offshore/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/26/child_sup
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/12/11/inland_re
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/04/eds_mulls
How do these guys win new contracts from major companies? Amazing, truly amazing... I interviewed there once, got an offer, but that very night when I was thinking about taking the job, I had a pentagram stigmata burns appear on my back! It took 3 months of holy water baths to get it off...
"Where to have the debate where it might be read by those who mater:"
And you lead with Boris?!
you can call them senators if it makes you feel better.
"Hmmm? Oh, what? Oh, yes old bean, jolly bad show. Yes. Those bounders at the NHS need a...oh, just a moment, my phone's ringing, give me a minute. What? No, I'm giving a quote. Yes, thank you. Right, right, right. Yes. Microsoft. Very naughty blighters indeed. I shall immediately...I'm sorry, what was the question? Don't we do the caption round at this point? Gosh."
"They emigrated, most likely. One of the problems with incompetence is that it's self-reinforcing, the competent get more and more fed up with having to deal with incompetence all day and find something better to do with their time."
We're all moving to the Hurd. Care to join us?
Now imagine that had been, say, a Linux deployment... Who could EDS have called then?
This is actually a really good question. One thing I've found in Linux support is much of the software (the new software raid as an example) isn't clearly documented and when you do run into serious problems beyond a few simple things to try people generally seem clueless - even very experienced people. I blame a lot of this on constantly moving support targets (the day you document one issue, and its solution there have been 2-3 more kernels/patches with either a fix or a new issue). Plus there's no clear support message - who do I call - who can I blaim when everything blows up? Are the answers I get consistent (ie one support group will say/setup the system one way, and another a different way).
"the drives seem totally wiped - why that would happen after taking the raid offline and back online is beyond me" was quite literally the answer I got when I did have some serious problems with a 4 drive software raid setup.
A lot of people see Borris as a potential party leader (including members of his party) and recently sacked or not, MPs are likely to listen to what he has to say.
= The ohno second - That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
She added that the emergency payments system was "working perfectly."
Jones agreed, "I still have plenty of blank cheques. My pen is at room temperature."
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
I guess one to do it and a hundred to undo the damage?
I do hope so! Blunkettcards can also be called 'Your inflexible friend' and should marketed with the slogan 'I know what's in your pocket.'
Best wishes,
Mike.