The Register, Friday, February 14th, 2025
Techie Cleaned Up Criminally Bad Tech Support That Was Probably Also An Actual Crime
Outsourcing is not supposed to involve taking clients' hardware out of their building to your house
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237 articles · page 4 of 5
The Register, Saturday, February 8th, 2025
Does This Thing Run On A 220 V Power Supply? Oh. That Puff Of Smoke Suggests Not
That's not even the worst part of this story, which features a flood, broken promises, and plenty of panic
more → The Register, Monday, February 3rd, 2025
CompSci Teacher Sets Lab Task: Accidentally Breaking The University
At the start of working week, it can sometimes feel like you're just another brick in the wall and the next five days will require you to carry weight for others. To ease you into the mucky business of exchanging your labor for currency, The Register therefore uses each Monday to offer a fresh instalment of Who, Me? It's the column in which you admit to escaping your errors and emerging unscathed.
more → The Register, Thursday, February 6th, 2025
I Was Told To Make Backups, Not Test Them. Why Does That Make You Look So Worried?
Shabby admin invented 'transparent tape' - a terrible storage medium but a magic tool for unlocking IT budgets
more → The Register, Monday, January 27th, 2025
Tired Techie Botched Preventative Maintenance He Soon Learned Wasn't Needed
Epic late-night road trip would have been an awesome if not for a secret change of plans
more → The Register, Friday, January 24th, 2025
User Said He Did Nothing That Explained His Dead PC - Does A New Motherboard Count?
Then suggested a bloke down the pub might be able to help fix it
more → The Register, Monday, January 13th, 2025
Life Lesson: Don't Delete Millions Of Accounts On The Same Day You Go To The Dentist
Or ignore documentation that warns you are about to do something dangerous
more → The Register, Friday, December 27th, 2024
After a long lunch, user thought a cursor meant their computer was cactus
Reg-reading heroes snacked on their woes and solved problems with extreme speed
more → Sun Microsystems, Monday, December 23rd, 2024
Y2K Parody Video
As the 20th Anniversary of 'Y2K' (the 'Millennium Bug') approaches on December 31, here's a short music parody VIDEO (set to the music of 'YMCA' by the Village People, a hit song from 1978) produced in 1999 by a Silicon Valley tech giant at the time, Sun Microsystems. It was one way the company used to break the ice at Y2K planning meetings in the 6 months leading up to the event.
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The Register, Friday, December 20th, 2024
Techie Fluked A Fix And Found Himself The Abusive Boss's Best Friend
Digital technology remains frighteningly finickity, which is why good tech support people are always in demand - and also the reason The Register never tires of telling your support stories each Friday in On Call, the column your generosity makes possible.
more → The Register, Monday, December 16th, 2024
Coder Wrote A Bug So Bad Security Guards Wanted A Word When He Arrived At Work
Working for a startup is supposed to end with getting rich overnight, but not like this
more → The Register, Friday, December 13th, 2024
Backup Failed, But The Boss Didn't Slam IT - Because His Son Was To Blame
ISP deserves criticism too for falling over after script kiddie beefing
more → The Register, Monday, December 9th, 2024
Panic At The Cisco Tech, Thanks To Ancient Ios Syntax Helper That Outsmarted Itself
This week's hero is a network tech whom we will Regomize as "Sherlock." Back in the 1990s he was working as an IT manager for a business that had a number of regional hubs, each linked to HQ over a 128K link. Smaller regional offices were linked to their hubs with 64K connections.
more → The Register, Friday, December 6th, 2024
No, I Can't Help - You Called The Wrong Helpdesk, In The Wrong Place, For The Wrong Platform
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Warren" who worked for an US-based organization that operated several sites scattered across London, UK.
more → The Register, Monday, December 2nd, 2024
NetAdmin Learns That Wooden Chocks, Unlike Swipe Cards, Open Doors When Networks Can't
Burglary skills are surprisingly important when building networks
more → The Register, Wednesday, November 27th, 2024
Techie Left 'For Support, Contact Me' Sign On A Server. Twenty Years Later, Someone Did
A certain very famous PC manufacturer may not be very good at documenting its legacy tech
more → The Register, Monday, November 25th, 2024
Network Engineer Chose Humiliation Over A Night On The Datacenter Floor
To avoid lock-in, it helps if you remember your keys
more → The Register, Friday, November 22nd, 2024
Workload Written By Student Made Millions, Ran On Unsupported Hardware, With Zero Maintenance
Nobody minded for 20 years or so, until another student took action
more → The Register, Monday, November 11th, 2024
The Sad Tale Of The Alpha Massacre
Welcome, once again, to Who, Me? in which Register readers share tales of tech support moments they might prefer to forget. But forgetting is not a way to learn from mistakes, is it?
more → The Register, Friday, November 8th, 2024
Tech Support World Record? 8.5 Seconds From Seeing To Fixing
Your very fastest resolution, delivered in a flash - even in The Time Before Google
more → The Register, Monday, November 4th, 2024
Relocation Is A Complete Success - Right Up Until The Last Minute
It may be a cliche to say 'Don't rest on your laurels' but you really shouldn't
more → The Register, Monday, October 28th, 2024
I Made This Network So Resilient Nothing Could Possibly Go Wrong
As you well know, each Monday (which is today) The Register (which you're reading) brings you an instalment of Who, Me? - our reader-contributed tales of tech gone wrong. This is that very column. To tell you again would surely be redundant.
more → The Register, Friday, October 25th, 2024
Your Computer's Not Working? Sure, I Can Fix That Problem - Which I Caused
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Bill" who told us about the time he wrote "a fairly simple stock control system for a hardware shop."
more → The Register, Monday, October 21st, 2024
Linux Admin Asked Savvy Scientist For IT Help And The Boffin Blew It
In science, every day is about testing hypotheses. Such as: 'plugging this thing in here is OK, right?'
more → The Register, Friday, October 18th, 2024
Yes, Your Network Is Down - You Annoyed Us So Much We Crashed It
By the end of a working week, it can be tempting to just blow up whatever tech you've toiled for days to tame. Which is why each Friday The Register offers a (hopefully) cathartic instalment of On Call, the reader-contributed column in which you share your tetchiest tech support tales.
more → The Register, Friday, October 11th, 2024
Techie Took Five Minutes To Fix Problem Adobe And Microsoft Couldn't Solve In Two Weeks
This is why every admin loves to hate Windows
more → The Register, Monday, October 7th, 2024
After We Fix That, How About We Also Accidentally Break Something Important?
You had one job - doing extra is nice, but dangerous
more → The Register, Friday, October 4th, 2024
Revenge For Being Fired Is Best Served Profitably
The exchange of labor for currency can be a grim business, which is why The Register ends each working week with a new installment of On Call - the reader contributed column in which you tell cathartic tales of Working For The Man.
more → The Register, Monday, September 23rd, 2024
Did You Hear The One About The Help Desk Chap Who Abused Privileges To Prank His Mate?
The result was no joke, thanks to a Microsoft glitch
more → The Register, Monday, September 16th, 2024
I Don't Know What Pressing Delete Will Do, But It Seems Safe Enough!
You've got mail . actually no, you've got nothing
more → The Register, Friday, September 13th, 2024
Muppet Broke The Datacenter Every Day, In Its Own Weighty Way
Mr Snuffleupagus turned out to be all too real and bad at database resilience
more → The Register, Saturday, September 7th, 2024
To Patch This Server, We Need To Get Someone Drunk
When maintenance windows are hard to open, a little lubrication helps
more → The Register, Monday, September 2nd, 2024
Techie Made A Biblical Boo-Boo When Trying To Spread The Word
The technology was willing, but the cache was weak
more → The Register, Thursday, August 29th, 2024
Sweet 16 And Making Mistakes: More Of The Computing Industry's Biggest Fails
As the hardware got more capable, the messes got more expensive
more → The Register, Wednesday, August 28th, 2024
Where The Computer Industry Went Wrong - The Early Hits
A personal collection of the memorable missteps and fumbles
more → The Register, Monday, August 26th, 2024
Bargain-Hunting Boss Saw His Bonus Go Up In A Puff Of Self-Inflicted Smoke
Buying PCs off the gray market can (literally) blow up in your face
more → The Register, Friday, August 23rd, 2024
Tech Support Chap Solved Knotty Disk Failure Problem By Staring At The Floor
A tale of retro tech - have you heard of Trivector computers? - and a very troubled tech support journey
more → The Register, Friday, August 16th, 2024
Client Tells Techie: You're Not Leaving The Country Until This Printer Is Working
A long and strange tech support story that starts in Africa and ends in a Presidential Suite
more → The Register, Friday, August 9th, 2024
Techie Told 'Bill Gates' Excel Is Rubbish - And The Microsoft Boss Had It Fixed In 48 Hours
The Register knows that tech support is a vocation that induces frustration, which is why each Friday we offer a new edition of On Call - the reader-contributed column that details real-life support stories so you can at least enjoy misery in company.
more → The Register, Friday, August 2nd, 2024
Yes, I Am Being Intolerably Smug - Because I Ignored You And Saved The Project
The minutes before a maintenance window closes are maybe not the best time to re-learn obscure router syntax
more → The Register, Monday, July 22nd, 2024
Facebook Prank Sent Techie Straight To Excel Hell
When someone kicks a chair across the room out of fear they'll be fired it's stopped being funny
more → The Register, Friday, July 19th, 2024
Dangerous Sandwiches Delayed Hardware Installation
Welcome again to On Call, The Register's weekly reader-contributed tale of being asked to hold in your rage while dealing with the effluent of tech support. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Brian" who told us about the time he was called into central London to install some audio-visual hardware at a government agency.
more → The Register, Friday, July 12th, 2024
Stop Installing That Software - You May Have Just Died
Life on the frontlines of tech support can be tough, which is why each Friday The Register brings you a fresh instalment of On Call, our reader-contributed column in which you tell your peers what you've endured in the name of work.
more → The Register, Wednesday, July 3rd, 2024
Innocent Techie Jailed For Taking Hours To Fix Storage
Hello, hello . what have we here? One very dangerous storage admin, if I'm not mistaken
more → The Register, Thursday, June 27th, 2024
For The Record: You Just Ordered Me To Cause A Very Expensive Outage
And ordered so rudely this techie had little interest in sticking around to fix the subsequent chaos
more → The Register, Friday, June 14th, 2024
We Need A Volunteer To Literally Crawl Over Broken Glass To Fix This Network
The Register knows that readers often put themselves in harm's way to ensure tech keeps ticking over, which is why each Friday we salute those efforts with a fresh installment of On Call - the reader-contributed column that details true tales of tech support.
more → The Register, Monday, May 27th, 2024
A Thump With The Pointy End Of A Screwdriver Will Fix This Server! What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
No, nothing's broken. I'm just working under this desk for . reasons
more → The Register, Monday, May 20th, 2024
Techie Invented Bits Of The Box He Was Fixing, Still Botched The Job
Greetings and salutations, dear readers, and welcome to the sunny spot on the interwebs we like to call Who, Me? in which Reg readers share their tales of tech tasks gone awry.
more → The Register, Friday, May 3rd, 2024
I Can Fix This PC, Boss, But I'll Need To Play Games For Hours To Do It
Loyal Wingman has fond memories of memory register exceptions
more → The Register, Friday, April 26th, 2024
Help! My Mouse Climbed A Wall And Now It Doesn't Work Right
Support chap learns users will try to solve problems in non-obvious ways
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