[internetworkers] Ever had one of those nightmares...

Simon Spero ses at unc.edu
Sat Nov 27 14:16:13 EST 2004


... where this happens to you? 
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/26/dwp_network_outage/


    DWP kills 60k+ PCs in Windows XP upgrade lash-up

By John Lettice 
<http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2004/11/26/dwp_network_outage/>
Published Friday 26th November 2004 09:30 GMT

*Updated* Most of the desktop computers in the UK's Department for Work 
and Pensions were paralysed for four days on Monday, when a failed 
upgrade took them offline. The outage, covering 75-80 per cent of the 
DWP's 80,000 PCs, is one of the largest in the UK Government's not 
entirely impressive IT history.

And possibly one of the most costly. According to staff reports the 
outage occurred on Monday afternoon, disconnecting staff email, benefits 
processing and Internet and intranet connectivity. According to one, a 
limited network upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP was taking 
place, but instead of this taking place on only a small number of the 
target machines, all the clients connected to the network received a 
partial, but fatal, 'upgrade.'

Another source says that the DWP was trialing Windows XP on a small 
number ("about seven") of machines. "EDS were going to apply a patch to 
these, unfortunately the request was made to apply it live and it was 
rolled out across the estate, which hit around 80 per cent of the Win2k 
desktops. This patch caused the desktops to BSOD and made recovery 
rather tricky as they couldn't boot to pick any further patches or 
recalls. I gather that MS consultants have been flown in from the US to 
clear up the mess." EDS is also thought to be flying in fire brigades.

If these claims are true the DWP could face grave difficulties in 
rolling all of its machines back to their previous, working state. Staff 
from Microsoft and EDS are reported to have been working around the 
clock to dig the Department out of the pit, while speaking on the Today 
programme this morning a spokeswoman amusingly insisted that the 
Department's systems had not in fact fallen over. They were working, it 
was merely the case that "80 per cent of desktop computers are not 
connecting through to the mainframe systems."

So that's cleared that up then. She added that the emergency payments 
system was "working perfectly." The emergency system appears to have 
kicked in on Wednesday, and the Department was preparing a press release 
on the matter yesterday. No sign of it this morning, yet.

Reports coming in this morning however suggest that at least some of the 
DWP's systems are coming back online.
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