IT Tales

Here is a collection of a few fails by our IT Department.

PC shutdown & Usage Monitoring

Even though we work from home, we still have some PC’s in our office that we remote onto. There’s certain systems that only seem to work when on the physical network so people often call this a “jump box”. Our IT was planning on temporarily moving our PCs whilst some electric work was being done in the office. I was invited into a Teams chat which was supposed to be for everyone affected. After skimming the list, I spotted 3 people that were missing, and other colleagues spotted others. 9 people were missing in total! How do they not know who owns the PCs? They have been citing “increased security” in recent times. Surely a security risk if they don’t know who uses PCs on the network.

More recently, I was contacted again via email asking “if you use this PC”. Again, why do they need to ask if we use them? Isn’t that a security concern if not? Surely they know, especially when they have installed extra network security tools recently. I thought they had said software monitors network traffic and alerts for anything suspicious.

Upgrading Software

I was contacted by IT saying my SQL Server version was no longer supported by Microsoft, so I need to urgently upgrade it by the end of the week due to being considered insecure. They said if I want an installer, please reply. I thought it would be easy enough locating the installer, but it seems Microsoft’s SQL Server pages are very confusing. So I replied asking for the installer. They ignore me. I reply again, they ignore me. Months have gone by. So not that urgent then.

IT then announced that they are taking increased security measures and are removing all admin rights from our PC’s. Now we can only install software with their permission. They also said it makes sure we can’t install unlicensed software, since it is easy for someone to install software that is free for personal use, but is paid software for commercial use, and then the business can be liable.

A week later, they then email us saying there is a known security vulnerability with our Visual Studio version so we need to update it. We can’t though, we need admin rights to keep our software updated and secure! So now we have to log tickets, then they remote on and type in the admin password to proceed. I bet they love that.

In a similar fashion, they are more fussy with USB devices. They sent one of my colleagues a new laptop but it rejects his smart-card reader which he needs for testing. Can’t be plugging in USB devices these days.

Saving Money

They also said they wanted to be more stringent when it comes to licence keys, as we seem notorious for purchasing more licence keys than we need, then we might stop using software then still pay. I was contacted in early July 2022, saying that I have had a Jira licence for the last year but have not being using it:

We currently purchase a licence for you to access Jira. We understand a lot of the users will have now migrated to Azure DevOps and as such, your access may no longer be required.

May I kindly ask you to respond to this email by 12pm Friday 8th July confirming whether or not you continue to require access?
IT Email

So I reply saying I wasn’t using it and I don’t think I have used it for 2 years. I then got contacted again in February 2023 saying the same thing. I confirm that I don’t need it. I then got contacted earlier this month asking me again. So I’ve had a licence for 3 years now for a product I don’t use at all.

Windows 11 Upgrade

At the end of May, our IT department began upgrading everyone to Windows 11. Around a month and a half later, in mid-July, they announced that the upgrade had been a success, and managers were congratulating them on a good job.

40% of clients have had a Windows 11 attempt.
IT Manager

40% seems very low. The thing is, if you actually think about their phrasing, they say “attempt” so it wasn’t necessarily successful. I’d like to know why 60% of computers didn’t even attempt to upgrade.

For me, it failed twice. After the first failure, I asked how much space was required because I was sure I had at least 10GB, and I was notified of the failure when Windows popped up an alert saying I was completely out of disk space.

“About 10GB should do it (this has been confirmed in the testing phase).”
IT Manager

So it is confirmed but they aren’t sure on the exact amount of space we need.

I cleared out 20GB for it, and it still wasn’t enough. Unless it failed for some other reason. I started browsing through my hard drive and found a secret folder. There was an ISO file for the upgrade which was 5.2GB but then there was also an extracted version of another 5.2GB. So the temporary files they are using is 10.4GB but yet they claim you only need “around 10GB”. No, you need 10.4GB for the installer, and another X amount to actually install it, but maybe 20GB wasn’t even enough. 🤷‍♂️

There was also a file with an interesting name “RunOnce_Do_NOT_Run.bat”. I wonder what that means. Was the file created with the contradictory name? Or did someone run it once, then rename it? 🤔

Over 2 months later, they instructed people to trigger the upgrade again. This time I had 40GB free and it upgraded fine. If it did fail again, only then would IT investigate what the problem was. Surely loads of failures are just down to low disc space, but their script never checked before attempting, nor did they publicly confirm how much space we even needed.

Absolute shambles.

Laptop Heat

We recently had a heatwave in the UK, and I think this was even experienced throughout the world. Even before that, one of my team member’s laptop battery bulged up due to excessive heat, which he noticed due to the raised keyboard. He ended up getting a brand new company laptop.

During the heatwave, another team member went into the office where it would be nice and cool, but I guess there’s a good chance it happened in transit (in his hot car) – he also noticed the raised keyboard, and so quickly disconnected the battery before it had a chance to explode.

“My new laptop is flipping awesome. I’m so happy we had this heatwave”
Colleague

I assume our IT department must have got many requests for new laptops, and then they sent out this very debatable advice.

"Your laptop may be struggling because it has to work harder to keep itself cool. Here are some tips to help get the best performance from the laptop until things cool down.

Move to the coolest part of your home, or work in one of our air-conditioned offices.
Run updates and give your computer a reboot
Limit the apps running to those you need
In Microsoft Teams, turn off incoming video (this allows you to share your camera but reduce the impact on your laptop’s display)”

So for point number 1, my first team member works in his conservatory. I normally associate conservatories with being cold but we often compare temperatures and his room is usually 6-8 degrees celsius warmer than my living room where I work. We are in those rooms because it’s the only space we have available for a desk and monitors. It’s not exactly easy to just “Move to the coolest part of your home”. I suppose you could try working on your laptop with no external monitors, but the advice should be just “to take the day off”. They also say to come into the office, but then the second colleague’s laptop battery presumably broke on the way there.

Point number 2: other than the rare circumstance that software is causing extra work for the processor (and they have fixed the issue in a new software update), running software updates probably isn’t going to make a difference. Maybe the update process will cause your laptop to run hotter whilst download/installing. Or what if the new update has a bug that causes extra processor issues?

Point number 3: That’s just good advice in general isn’t it? Don’t load up loads of programs when you don’t want them.

Point number 4: I found this a bit weird. If everyone turned off incoming feeds, then no one is watching the video feeds. Why not just say “do not use your webcams”?

Even Valve and Nintendo were putting out advice for their Steam Deck, and Switch. Those small devices just aren’t good in the heat.