Software support chap survived breaking his customer
- Reference: 1714376766
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/04/29/who_me/
- Source link:
In this week's instalment, our hero – who we will Regomize as "Percy" – totally got away with wrecking a client's machine purely because said client was … to put it kindly … not technically proficient.
Our story starts some years ago, when Percy was working in tech support for "a major UK software company" specifically in the payroll and accounting sphere. When users of the software had issues, Percy was one of the bods whose job was to get them up and running again – generally via remote access.
[1]
One fine day he received a call from a customer whose accounting data had become hopelessly corrupted and he didn't know why.
[2]
[3]
Percy leapt into action, remotely logging into the customer's system and performing diagnostics. What he found was a complete fustercluck: clearing caches didn't work, none of the recovery tools worked. It was utterly borked.
With the customer's permission, he started exploring the system to see if some larger issue was at play. Within his accounts data there were a bunch of large folders that shouldn't have been there – nine gigabytes of stuff that did not belong within the accounts data folders.
[4]
Making an educated guess that these folders might be causing the problem, Percy deleted them. I mean, who doesn't feel better after purging 9GB of junk, right?
Well, as it happened, those specific 9GB were the customer's financial records. Eleven years of them, dating back to the beginning of his business. And now they were gone.
[5]Rarest, strangest, form of Windows saved techie from moment of security madness
[6]Tired techie 'fixed' a server, blamed Microsoft, and got away with it
[7]Windows 95 support chap skipped a step and sent user into Micro-hell
[8]You break it, you ... run away and hope somebody else fixes it
Did the customer have a backup? Of course not. The customer was storing financial data in entirely the wrong place on the drive so that it looked like junk. This was not someone with a sensible backup strategy.
Of course nowadays it would all be cloud-synced so no big issue. This was not nowadays.
Percy's mission shifted to data recovery in rather a hurry. He ran a few utilities in the desperate hope of resurrecting the lost data, with no luck.
[9]
He asked the user to restart the machine, in hopes that after a restart there might be more success. And moments later his remote connection vanished.
That was awfully quick, thought our hero. Restart usually takes a tad longer than that.
How exactly did you shut down the machine, asked Percy?
The user explained that he just pulled the plug from the wall. Like he always does.
Ah. Well, the initial cause of the data corruption suddenly became clear. And, as it happened, a lifeline.
Percy explained to the user how to shut the system down properly at the end of a work day. By doing so, you can avoid irreparable data corruption – not to mention the tragic loss of 9GB of business records that should have been backed up.
Chastened, but feeling educated, the customer gave Percy a 10/10 on his satisfaction survey. And Percy kept his job. To this day he still works in the same place – so don't tell anyone, OK?
The world is full of Percys, saved from the consequences of their stuff-ups by someone else's bigger stuff-up. If that sounds like you, we'd like to hear from you. [10]Click here to send an email to Who, Me? and we'll share your exploits with the world – secretly.
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He started that way, but slimmed down to the 0Gig.
Percy didn't go to market.
He should have stayed at home.
He could have eaten roast beef.
Or he could have had none.
Percy nearly wee-weed all the way home.
Ouch!
Personally, I would be VERY reticent to remove files from a corrupted machine by deleting them. I like to make a back-up of any drive before touching the contents, so I can restore things I break. This may not have been an option for Percy, given the technical acumen of the user in question, and the remote access.
I have spent many an hour trying to recover data OTHER people borked or deleted by various means, with varying degrees of success, I should add. I remember a case of a friend storing her entire PhD thesis on her hard drive without any back-up. Luckily I was able to recover well over 95% (this was in the days when Norton's Utilities for MS-DOS were REALLY useful). Once I had repaired most of the damage, I immediately proceeded to make TWO back-ups. One to store at her home, and one at my place (old school off-site back-up). Cost me quite some time, but the look of relief on my friend's face was more than worth it. She also gave me a nice bottle of wine for my efforts. She dutifully made weekly back-ups after that.
Re: Ouch!
Norton's Utilities for MS-DOS were REALLY useful
Absolutely...
At one company we had a foreign student placement doing some translation for us. She spent a whole day writing a Word document, fine but she didn't once save it during the day and she then closed Word, still without saving.
Thanks to Norton Utilities I was able to reconstruct the temp file (it wouldn't just undelete but I could hack the FAT) so that at least she had the wording back and could reformat it.
Undelete was useful when I was switching between PC Compatibles (C: for the HD, A: for floppies) and ACT Apricot (A: for the HD, B: for floppies) when I accidentally did Format A: for the latter! fortunately I realised quickly and was able to recover the files.
Re: Ouch!
OMG, that brings back so many memories. Thumbs up & a pint for that
Re: Ouch!
Stephen Fry has a similar story about recovering data for a script/book from Emma Thompson's computer back in the late 80s/early 90s. It came up in one of the early episodes of QI I think.
Re: Ouch!
[T]his was in the days when Norton's Utilities for MS-DOS were REALLY useful Or, to put it another way, MS-DOS was incomplete.
delete is a two stage process
I learned the hard way that delete is short hand for
- Rename the file to have today's date and "DELETE" at the end.
- Once you have rebooted a couple of times you can then delete it.
You cannot always just recreate the file. For example
- It has special attributes (which you did not check for before deleting the file) or attributes that only a super user can set
- The file content may not be obvious such as tabs instead of spaces - you cant see them - but they are needed.
It is a tough call when the disk has filled up.
9Gb of unknown info wiped?
This tale was set some years ago - 9Gb was probably a very substantial volume of data (it's not insignificant even now) and I'd be very reluctant to just wipe that without ensuring there was a recovery plan. Move it somewhere, perhaps but delete it? Not at my pay grade! :)
He got a very lucky break discovering a 'hard reset' issue though!
Re: 9Gb of unknown info wiped?
Yeah,9Gb today = Microsoft notepad file with “This is a test” as the contents
Picking the data to delete
Back around the turn of the century, I'd often be asked to look at colleagues' Windows 95 machines - usually something simple like the disk being full. I remember being confronted with a machine like this, so deleted a load of temp files and emptied the Recycle Bin. Got a call later as the user had lost a file in their backup folder, namely the Recycle Bin. Taught me to ask in future, although I did of course roll my eyes at the idea of keeping important stuff there.
Re: Picking the data to delete
same applies to Outlook's bin / deleted whatever .
People keep stuff in there!
who knew!
Within his accounts data there were a bunch of large folders that shouldn't have been there
C'mon Percy , at least try to put 2 & 2 together
Thats quite the coverup , losing 9 years of finance sounds like a big deal, although we dont know if the files would have been salvageable had Percy attempted to look at them further.
Also powering the PC off at the plug is top tier user incompetence that really drains your sympathy levels.
Was...
The 9 GB of purest green garbage?
Re: Was...
Oh, Edmund! Could it be that I hold in my hard drives a lump of purest green?
So it was Percy the 9Gig?