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Admin
inb4 unlisted [image]
Edit: :hanzo:, dammit
Admin
Wait, haven't we heard this story before?
Admin
Link or it didn't happen? I agree it does sound familiar, but not so precisely familiar that I can name the instance...
Filed under: What kind of calendar would need a 5 Mb configuration file?!
Admin
Found it!
https://what.thedailywtf.com/t/how-i-ended-up-accidentally-importing-a-customers-entire-windows-registry/50222
Admin
Awarded :badger:: Bloodhound
Admin
I love that .reg was anonomised to .res. Keeping that would have made more sense instead of thinking that .res was some internal format used by clockaburra. (Nice name BTW.)
Admin
The neat thing is that you can see the origins of all the pieces of the story in that article, and what has been added.
It was also a good WTF then.
Admin
What was added and what was removed. To be honest, the editing was unneeded (well written and well anonymized "Hogwarts Group of High Schools") and we lost some bits that were part of the story (why and what she wouldn't say if he didn't?)
Admin
I get the impression this part is designed to annoy me.
Admin
Admin
The real WTF here, I'm afraid, is a program that makes it possible for a computer noob to completely hose the machine through unfamiliarilty with what it is doing. Either certain operations should be made admin-only, or everything that the user needs access to in order to do their job should be via a simple and straightforward user interface.
Mrs. Harriet (or whoever it was who got the machine into a mess) has absolutely no reason for shame -- apart from the above point being the most important, the culprit here is of course Tim C. for being careless.
Admin
I'm usually not one to complain about TDWTF, but this is some of the weakest sauce I've ever seen on here. "Tech is in too much of a hurry to check reg file, blindly imports it, can't figure out what went wrong despite it staring him right in the face." Well, at least it's not hard to find TRWTF this time.
I've actually tried this a couple of times in the hope that it could save time after reinstalling XP, back in the day, and it never worked at all. If anything, there would be dozens of error popups, broken services, networking would break, and on and on. At least someone was ready to fix it all.
Admin
There's a reason you can quickly set up a virtual machine: to test something without ruining the day of someone. This case clearly belongs to that reason.
Admin
I can't help but think there was a picnic missing from this story. Something along the lines of "And then we went out for tea and crumpets".
Admin
Like importing a .reg file is?
Admin
What I'm wondering is why they don't have
a) a log file and b) an automatic export tool for the correct registry tree
if they actually need that to diagnose problems on the client's end.
Admin
Maybe they have those tools now that they have learned why they need them. :D
Admin
TRWTF: Why was this system storing all of its data in the registry? That's a really quick way in Windows-land to turn a single-application problem into a system-wide problem.
Admin
I agree, IMHO the registry is a very poor design to start with, then putting app info in it only compounds the problem.
Admin
Amen, brother and/or sister! Every, and I mean every application for which there's some sort of tech support should have a button that reads, "Click here to automatically gather all the system information that tech support is going to ask you for anyway."
Admin
<You know someone will
Admin
Of course that's possible, but ideally such a system will let the user inspect the diag bundle before sending it to avoid such an event. (Why I said "automatically gather", not "automatically submit".)
Admin
Err.. How about a little WTF to a tech support guy that import a 5MB Registry file on his work computer without taking a peek at it first? Especially if he's used to a much smaller file? And i'm with everyone who mentionned the data stored in the registry thingy : Ever heard of database before? :smile:
Admin
What you should have is very different from what you can afford to have. Welcome to the real world.
Admin
Admin
It's complicated.
Admin
Of course TRWTF is the registry in the first place. If it were a reasonable system, the configuration would be in a nice location and in text form. It would be specific to the ONE application and easily transferred for analysis.
I understand that there are some systems where this is actually done.
Admin
Check out gconf from the GNOME project. From what I've seen, it's the registry done right. Well, more right. Less wrong? Something. Check it out.
Admin
I've heard a lot of moaning from people where it's gone wrong in mysterious ways…
Admin
You are talking about .ini files, am I right? :grinning:
Oh well, the story was better the first timeout heard it. Same number of WTFs too.
Admin
Well, you did award it "8/10 would read again".
Admin
Agreed. Applications should not be using the Registry for more than (maybe) stashing the location where it stores all of its files. Everything else should be stored as files in the user's AppData directory or (if data must be shared by multiple users) in the "All Users" directory.
Sadly, there are a lot of applications that continue to store data in the Registry. But it's insane that this application is storing ALL of its data there.
Admin
The only :wtf: here is Tim.
Anyone who loads an unknown .reg into their system deserves what they get.
Admin
Importing an unknown reg-File into the reg of your production machine... that's not only "having a moment", that's a complete fuck up.
Admin
I'm the submitter. The data is stored on the school's file server. The registry only stores a user's display options. Who started the rumour that all our data is in the registry? The .reg file was 5Mb because of all the 100's of other apps and device drivers storing stuff, not our stuff.
Admin
I have briefly stopped reading the article at this point, to put on record a confident bet that the last thing anyone did to the schedule before all the maths classes disappeared was delete all the maths classes.
Yes, I am a school netadmin; why do you ask?
Post-read edit:
Close but no cigar.
But in any case Tim is TRWTF for not casting an eye over a .reg file before importing it, especially when it was unexpectedly large. You cannot rely on end users to complete unfamiliar procedures correctly.
Admin
Just got a thought: what if Mrs. Harriet fucked up the application by blindly applying some random .reg file to her computer?