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Ridiculous Software Bug Workarounds?

Posted by kdawson on from the holding-your-mouth-right dept.

theodp writes "Ever get a workaround for a bug from a vendor that's so rigoddamndiculous that there has to be a clueless MBA or an ornery developer behind it? For example, Microsoft once instructed users to wiggle their mouse continuously for several minutes if they wanted to see their Oracle data make it into Excel (yes, it worked!). And more recently, frustrated HP customers were instructed to use non-HP printers as their default printer if they don't want Microsoft Office 2007 to crash (was this demoed in The Mojave Experiment?). Any other candidates for the Lame Workaround Hall of Fame?"

7 of 655 comments (clear)

  1. Don't have the details by VShael · · Score: 5, Interesting

    but it was back in the days of Windows 95. I was working in software Localisation for a Lotus Notes product. We had several machines working in the test lab based on ghost images, so they were all pretty much identical.

    One of the machines kept dying on us during the test phase, but none of the others did. Very confusing, for about a day. Until we realised that the machine which was crashing had an audio CD in the drive. (Not playing, not in Explorer. Just present in the drive.)

    We verified it by swapping the audio cd into other machines, and running the same tests. Invariably, the machine with the CD in, crashed when we tried to perform task "x" in Lotus Notes.

    It was escalated up, as I recall. And we eventually got a note back saying "Don't put CD's in the CD-Rom drives."

    I still remember it (as a recent graduate) as my first exposure to management-style thinking.

  2. Stupid MS Office 2007 bug by cyber-vandal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Double click on a document. Word sits there for what seems like hours saying something like "Connecting to default printer. Press ESC to stop" so you give up and press ESC and start editing the document. Word promptly crashes. The workaround - set the default printer to Microsoft XPS and select the printer manually when you need it and wait the eternity it takes to communicate with the network printer. And sometimes it crashes again. WTF?

  3. Mouse wiggling not that unusual, surprisingly by scdeimos · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Lotus Domino server installations (circa 2000) would complete at about four to five times their "normal" speed if someone just sat there moving the mouse around whilst the install wizard was copying files. Go figure.

  4. The case of the 500-mile email by Warlord88 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I guess many would be aware of the case of the 500-mile email. An office was not able to send emails to places which were physically located at a distance greater than 500 miles from the office! Entire story and the logic behind it can be read here - http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html

  5. Ubisoft DRM fix by quall · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How about Ubisoft and RB6 Vegas? Remember that their fix around a big DRM issue was basically to install a no-cd crack by Reloaded? They just took the crack, renamed it, and then released as an official patch.

  6. You're lucky you use sqrt(2) sized paper by tepples · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I had an older version of Word and I wanted to make an A3 document - but my printer only supported A4.

    You're lucky in that you appear to live in a locale that uses ISO 216 (A-series) paper sizes. ISO paper, unlike the U.S. letter series, has a nice mathematical definition: all sizes are the same aspect ratio of sqrt(2):1, and each size has twice the area and sqrt(2) times the length and width of the size below it. So make your document on A4 and print it on A3 at 141%.

  7. I've JUST been seeing this on my MAC by bill_kress · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I really love my MAC, I've completely switched over after using PCs since early dos days.

    Lately I've been trying to install parallels so I can run a few Windows games.

    Parallels struggles for a while, then says that there are "unmovable files" and that I need to back up my hard disk and re-install OS-X!

    After looking into it, The problem is that the mac drive is fragmented and the mac has no way to defragment some system files (the file in question appears to be the latest OS upgrade which seems to be kept inside it's original file).

    So, I looked around for defragmenting programs, but nearly every reference is either Apple or Apple fanboys telling you that the mac doesn't need defragmenting.

    Well, I guess it's true, the mac does NOT need defragmenting, just the occasional wipe and re-install!

    I'm not really disagreeing with the concepts here--the OS does self-defragment to a degree, the file IS a system file and shouldn't be movable, etc. What I hate is the damn arrogance, every reply to a post on defragmenting was along the lines of "Man are you STUPID, MACs don't need defragmenting! That's so PC" (and yet apple itself recommending a re-install to force a defragment when it is needed).

    Makes me hate this cult I appear to be a member of.