back to article Borking all over the world: At home or abroad, you're never more than 6ft from a BSOD

We live in a global village and Microsoft is often at pains to remind us that Windows is a worldwide operating system. So here's some borkage in Bucharest. Spotted by an eagle-eyed Register reader, today's BSOD is casting a baleful eye over commuters using the Bucharest Metro. "I was relieved," our reader told us, "to see that …

  1. cb7

    Tut tut. Perhaps it's my fault for expecting Reg journos to be more computer literate?

    The bug check code is actually 0x000000F4

    Which points at a hard disk error. Altogether a much more likely scenario given that hard drives are perhaps the most common point of failure in most machines.

    1. aki009

      Which is why signage should not use them...

      Yes. I keep wondering why these companies set up expensive Windows boxes when they could use inexpensive PoE pxebooted linux ones instead. No blue screens. No drive problems. I just recently had to reboot a debian ARM box that had been up for 5 years. I'm still glad to see a Windows system make 5 days without a reboot (not that I use many of them any more), and 5 weeks is bordering on awesome.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Which is why signage should not use them...

        Yes I think it's fair to say you haven't used Windows in a while. A quick check on my home machine shows the current uptime at 22 days, and that would have been when I switched it off due to someone trying to sleep in the same room. Normally it lives for months at a time due to laziness and reliance on low power modes.

        I'll be impressed if your inexpensive PoE pxebooted Linux device manages to survive local storage failure (just because it's network booted, doesn't mean it doesn't have some form of local storage that it uses, SD card probably). Blaming Windows for a core hardware failure seems a bit... zealous.

  2. da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709
    FAIL

    Depth of troubleshooting that ensued ...

    ... if you call Microsoft support, this is likely to stop at "what's the code, oh, reinstall windows and tell me if it fixes the problem". Really, I've had tons of this recently with Azure AD hybrid workstation joins and identity problems in Office 360 [beeeep] Microsoft 360 caused by broken AD Connect synchronisation between on-prem AD and Azure AD. One hapless support "Ambassador" gave me a link to paid Azure support, at $250/incident. I politely refused, as I've already paid for support in my Microsoft 360 licensing costs. I asked him to stop helping me and find someone else.

    It is a world of pain, with remarkably little help from the provider of the software. Maybe I just need to pay for Enterprise Support to get sensible help. YMMV.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Depth of troubleshooting that ensued ...

      reinstall windows

      They've been the first words that MS Support have been saying for decades. and the second, and the third... etc.

      One IT Manager I worked for was used to giving MS support a mouthful of Scouse verbals when they dared utter those words to us. In the end we declined to pay for any support from MS. Strangely the level of service we recieved remained the same. :)

      1. Someone Else Silver badge

        Re: Depth of troubleshooting that ensued ...

        Strangely the level of service we recieved remained the same.

        Less that 0 service is still 0 service.

        1. MiguelC Silver badge

          Re: Depth of troubleshooting that ensued ...

          Not really, you eliminated one step of (unnecessary) troubleshooting, so you actually gained something

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Depth of troubleshooting that ensued ...

      I'd love it if Bill Gates were to ring up a radio gardening show to ask what to do about greenfly on his roses and they told him to dig up the whole garden and start again.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Depth of troubleshooting that ensued ...

        nuke from orbit - it's the only way to be sure

  3. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    with all the resilience of a snowball lobbed at a blast furnace.

    That has to be the El Reg 'Quote of the Week'.

    It is a perfect way to describe Windows Systems. Oh for the days of Tandems when you could replace a CPU etc and the machine would just keep on chugging along.

    1. Paul Herber Silver badge

      Re: with all the resilience of a snowball lobbed at a blast furnace.

      ... and what us wrong with the standard whelk in a supernova?

  4. a_yank_lurker

    Snowball in a Blast Furnance

    I would be putting my money on the snowball lasting longer+

    1. A.P. Veening Silver badge

      Re: Snowball in a Blast Furnance

      I would too ... if it were a Microsoft furnace.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    its amazing how many embedded systems use Windows.

    its amazing how many embedded systems use Windows.

    when some type of unix could be had for free.

    1. A.P. Veening Silver badge

      Re: its amazing how many embedded systems use Windows.

      True, but that would have deprived us of both these stories and our chance to comment on them, so I am chalking this up as a win ... for us.

    2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: its amazing how many embedded systems use Windows.

      >when some type of unix could be had for free.

      Given the capabilities of BIOS these days - are there any which will display contents of a webpage ?

      1. twenex1978

        Re: its amazing how many embedded systems use Windows.

        Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

      2. aki009

        EFI isn't meant for that...

        You can do all kinds of things in EFI, but it's not intended for that and support stacks beyond the basics are non-existent. It's far safer and more productive to use a stripped down OS and have it manage all the things that need managing.

  6. logicalextreme

    Borkage on the streets of Bucharest

    Dublin, Dundee, Budapest

    Must be Windows must be Windows must be Windows

  7. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    opened its first line back in 1979. Stations were added during the 1980s

    Sounds like a train set I had when I was a kid. Just a circle going round and round, round and round.

    Then my parents bought me some platforms (Airfix kits I think), and some 4mm/ft people to populate them with.

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