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Department of Work & Pensions: accidental XP upgrade rollout knackers 60,000 PC's

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Another triumph for EDS.

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

By John Lettice
Published Friday 26th November 2004 09:30 GMT

Most of the desktop computers in the UK's Department for Work and Pensions have been paralysed since 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 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. ®
 
I know!!!! :D :D It's been great fun all week.

Best thing though is the pressure our e-mail system faces in normal daily use :eek: So how do we keep peep's updated with whats happening with the IT prob - we send them each about half a dozen e-mails per day on it :D

Fantastic!!!

But I'm not complaining - coz my PC's working just fine and dandy - now ;)
 
:eek:

This might be the worst IT F*ckup a govenment department has ever suffered :D Nice to see that Fujitsu Siemens was not involved for a change :D

I Think EDS deserve a banana point :) :bannana:
 
DWNP Dept of Work but NO Pension
 
peterchurch said:
:eek:

This might be the worst IT F*ckup a govenment department has ever suffered :D Nice to see that Fujitsu Siemens was not involved for a change :D

I Think EDS deserve a banana point :) :bannana:

Please tell me that you don't ! :eek: :D lol
 
LOL @ EDS I guess that was an SMS push screwing up again :)

I got an letter from the DWP the other day claiming I had been overpaid some benefits in May 1994 and they wanted it back. 1994 WTF????

I wrote and asked them what this was about and they said they couldnt give me the details as they didnt have the information. They went on to say if I didnt pay up they would take me to court... I suggested that may well be in *my* best interest and politely asked that they dont write to me again unless it contains the details of a court date.

Bunch of crooks I recon, working on the premis that a small percentage might just cough up.

So much for the 6 year spent law!
 
fuzzer said:
Please tell me that you don't ! :eek: :D lol
Not anymore :D But I did about 10 years ago :) Chots was my second Real IT job :D Those were the days :)
 

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