Oh. Goodie.

[selenay]

It's fun working for a company with no concept of IT systems.

Today's little bit of fun: just after lunch, a software update started. At the end of the update, it wanted to shut down the computer.

It wasn't one of those "The computer must be shut down for the upgrade to take. Do you want to do that now?" dialogs. It was "The computer will reboot in 30 seconds."

Huh.

The postpone button gave you 5 minutes grace. Just about long enough to shut down things (given our fabulous network speeds) if you weren't in the middle of running someone. Not long enough if you had a report running on the data warehouse. If you didn't press postpone within 30 seconds, the PC rebooted no matter what. Yay. So if you weren't at your desk when it happened, the PC rebooted and you lost all your work.

For those who were at their desks, there was no way to anything other than reboot now or five minutes. There was no option to choose when to reboot.

Can you imagine the chaos and shouting when that happened to everyone in the department? I knew you could *sigh*

Oh, the joys of co-ordinated IT.

Comments

[gmul.livejournal.com]

Nope, the joys of a Desktop operating system by Microsoft. The available options for managed roll-outs of updates are rather inadequate, shall we say. There is no "install when they next reboot, unless they don't log off for three days, in which case do it tonight anyway *unless* there's a high CPU usage task running, in which case pop up a message to see if it's a)intentional or b)a bot-net/virus and wait until 10am tomorrow morning for an answer, just in case" option.

[Within group policy (and I'm not allowing for any other tools your bunch might be using) there are basically 5 options which control when automatic updates happen. Some affect each other too so it's not just a case of selecting the right option, you have to select the right *combination* of options.]

See why I want to change career?

[selenay]

I like the option you suggested - sounds eminently sensible to me! Every time I realise that something I thoroughly dislike about a computer is down to Microsoft, I wonder why the hell we keep using it. Except that there isn't really an option in a major corporation *sigh* They don't tend to see the network admin side of why they should invest in non-Microcrap stuff.

Yes, I see why you want to change career :-)

[gmul.livejournal.com]

Of course, when work gets too bad, I find http://www.neenaw.co.uk/ provides a useful antidote, especially the last couple. Our jobs are pleasant and unruffled in comparison...

[selenay]

Thanks for that link - it's going to be bookmarked for those days when the job seems too crap for words. At least I don't have to go through what he does.

[paranoidangel]

We have that too. It's really annoying - you have to try and not leave your desk for more than 5 minutes once that comes up, and make sure you save whenever you do.

It annoys everyone, so we've had it for ages and nothing is going to change.

[selenay]

So it's not just a My Employer thing? Damn :-( That really wasn't fun. A couple of people lost their morning's work because they were away from their desks when it all went off.

[paranoidangel]

No, it seems to be a useless employer thing.

[catspaw-sgjd.livejournal.com]

Good grief, these buggers are *mental* :-(

[selenay]

Apparently this isn't just my employer who does this *sigh* But yes, it's bloody mental and created way more stress than any of us needed today.

[nic]

ARGH!

(That has happened to me before... another reason to very strongly dislike Microsoft....)