Ghost of Windows past spotted haunting Yorkshire railway station
- Reference: 1599467407
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/09/07/bork/
- Source link:
The Armagard digital signage mounted on the wall of the Selby railway station speaks of happier days for us all, with a login screen from the last decade requiring only a CTRL + ALT + DELETE to bring forth Windows 7 Professional. Alas, there was no keyboard attached for our eagle-eyed Register reader to put the poor thing out of its misery.
[1]
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Microsoft is very keen to kill off Windows 7, and finally pulled support in January 2020 (just before much of the world hit the pause button). The embedded version is due for its own meeting with a Redmond-based axe-wielding engineer in October, although the venerable operating system can be popped on life support for a few more years via Enterprise Security Updates.
Our reader noted that several of the screens at the station were similarly affected, speaking perhaps of a surprise restart or a reboot command issued by an administrator unable to then log in remotely.
Let he or she who has not issued a restart on a server while forgetting that the remote access service wouldn't auto-start cast the first three-finger salute.
[2]
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The paper posters hanging nearby are a reminder that sometimes lower-tech solutions can be more appropriate. Unless, of course, the screens are displaying an advert for a local establishment that just happens to use branding bearing a distinct resemblance to the Windows 7 login screen.
As for the screen itself, Armagard cheerfully attests it is suitable for the likes of "transport hubs" or shop fronts and will cope with temperatures from -30°C to 50°C.
Sadly, it appears unable to withstand the vagaries of Windows 7 and a possible oopsie on the part of the operator. ®
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[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/09/04/selby_bork_closeup.jpg
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/09/04/selby_bork1.jpg
[3] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Yes, retired, uhuh
I'm not typing this on a laptop running Windows 7 because our IT department is too inept to properly roll out Windows 10 without borking everything up. Nope. They didn't try to start the roll-out just 4 weeks prior to support officially ending (the last, really we're ending it NOW, ending) either. Just imagined that.
Re: Yes, retired, uhuh
My work laptop is also Windows 7 today, but is supposed to be upgraded to Windows 10 tomorrow. This is not something I am looking forward to!
Re: supposed to be upgraded
Are you having a larf. Downgraded more like if some of the [cough][cough] corporate builds I've encountered is anything to go by.
I did throw my toys out of the pram when my laptop was upgraded without me having the chance to 1) say no, 2) say 'not today' or 3) come back next year.
After a week of intermiable visits to the IT Manager responsible, he finally admitted that the corporate build was unusable by developers. I got the developer tools installed but would they run? like heck they would. There was a reason that we had local admin privs with W7. Corporate Policy dictated that no one outside the IT dept was to have those rights. Eventually they relented but it was too late. The damage was done and I left four weeks later.
The company went fatally TITSUP less than a year later after being taken over by some Vulture Capitalists.
Re: supposed to be upgraded
>I did throw my toys out of the pram when my laptop was upgraded without me having the chance to 1) say no, 2) say 'not today' or 3) come back next year.
Lol... After the same crap, i tried the simple task of resizing an image on my newly mangled win 10 laptop this morning. The pop up window had a width and a height field and a"maintain aspect ratio" checkbox which I checked. I typed 100 into the width field and the height field came up with NaN. Tried 100 in the height field and the width field changed to NaN. Gave up. Does no one at MS check code anymore?
Also my laptop seems to have caught a dose of Vista and gives me a pop up nearly everytime i do something... Aarrgghh
Re: Yes, retired, uhuh
My old laptop died a while back, so for home use I bought a micro desktop with some home usr incarnation of WX pre installed.
Whe I first fired it up, it took me a good forty minutes after the initial forty minutes of self updating, to make the thing into a semblance of a 'normal' OS.
Deleting preinstalled apps that were good for nothing and trying to find things like the control panel and the now almost useless task manager, etc, etc, etc
And don't talk to ke about the dross that comes with any patch doomsday.
Re: Yes, retired, uhuh
I can't speak for all IT Admins, but maybe they - like me - were hoping Microsoft would extend it a little further.
Again, I can't speak for all institutions but mine is full of old computers that just won't run Windows 10 properly.
Of beancounters who see a working computer and think "that works - no need to replace".
Of budgets that shrink year on year. So as much as I'd like to upgrade, I can't until the equipment is capable.
An institution that comprises of just me in IT support managing hundreds of users and hundreds of computers.
If you want to blame someone for "borking everything up", then blame Microsoft for making 10 too different to 7 to make the transition smooth.
When I looked at the thumbnail, I was wondering what the TARDIS had to do with a borkage, thenbin the full pic in the article I canbsee it's a station door.