The acting manager of the FMB bar approached me shortly after closing. The Number One Special Happy terminal (i.e. the most important of the till terminals behind the bar from which he could do a Z reading) had locked up, and everything they tried wouldn't make it usable again.
Of course, these are just terminals to the system down in the cellar, so I advised him to see if he could do the needful from down there, or maybe get the terminal to reset itself.
When that failed, we tried various things like disconnecting and reconnecting Ethernet cables.
It transpires that somebody from FMB-Central-HQ turned up a couple of days ago and installed some AV thing on the local server (which is of course a client to the central system, but a server to the local terminals); said software is now consuming 100% CPU
Given that said installation was presumably a knee-jerk reaction to IE's recent woes, and that such a system should have no need for a web browser, it makes it very clear that MS's decision to make assorted components underlying IE a requirement for reliable operation of the OS was probably the most epic fail yet achieved.
In the end, the only thing I could do was to advise him to advise his taskmasters that running mission-critical systems on a Windows platform is a recipe for inevitable disaster.
All platforms can fail; it's just that Windows is better at it
Of course, these are just terminals to the system down in the cellar, so I advised him to see if he could do the needful from down there, or maybe get the terminal to reset itself.
When that failed, we tried various things like disconnecting and reconnecting Ethernet cables.
It transpires that somebody from FMB-Central-HQ turned up a couple of days ago and installed some AV thing on the local server (which is of course a client to the central system, but a server to the local terminals); said software is now consuming 100% CPU
Given that said installation was presumably a knee-jerk reaction to IE's recent woes, and that such a system should have no need for a web browser, it makes it very clear that MS's decision to make assorted components underlying IE a requirement for reliable operation of the OS was probably the most epic fail yet achieved.
In the end, the only thing I could do was to advise him to advise his taskmasters that running mission-critical systems on a Windows platform is a recipe for inevitable disaster.
All platforms can fail; it's just that Windows is better at it
(Actually, it is early evening for me.)
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