On-Call
A list of all On-Call articles from The Register, as they are a little hard to find via the search on the site.
2014/2015
- No, I won’t SNORKEL in your server room at STUPID-O’CLOCK
- A truly SHOCKING tale of electrified PCs
- At night, scary wildlife comes out to play in the chemical factory
- 3,500 servers go down – so my FIRST AID training kicks in
- Are you sure there are servers in this cold, dark basement?
- You’ll be the coolest guy in IT if you ain’t got your ID
- Who was downloading smut in the office while eating ice cream?
- What to do when the users are watching Nazi dwarf smut at work?
- Never trust a developer who says ‘I can fix this in a few minutes’
- Fire, fire! Just move your data centre onto my lawn … Oh rats!
- Two foreigners, a desert and a jeep full of bank statements
- ‘The server broke and so did my back on the flight to fix it’
- Surviving Hurricane Katrina: A sysadmin’s epic DR (as in Didn’t Realise) odyssey
- Reg reader casts call centre spell with a SECRET WORD
- Sun? In Blighty? Nah, just build that rooftop data centre, it’ll be fine
- Germans in ‘brains off, just follow orders’ hospital data centre gaff
- Boss hands dunce’s cap to chap who turned off disk monitor
- Sysadmin ignores 25 THOUSAND patches, among other sins
- In redneck heaven, internet outages are the American Way
- Pro tip: Servers belong in dry server rooms, not wet cloakrooms
- It’s alive! Farmer hides neglected, dust-clogged server between walls
- Will IT support please come to the ward immediately. Weeeee have a tricky problem
- Mysterious brown spots and a different kind of mouse support
- How long does it take an NHS doctor to turn on a computer?
- Reg reader escapes four-month lightning-struck Windows Vista farm nightmare
- Why was the modem down? Let us count the ways. And phone lines
- Stick a pin in a sales droid to avoid cable voodoo
- Your taxes at work: Three hours driving to turn on politician’s PC
- One-armed bandit steals four hours of engineer’s busy day
- Outsourcer didn’t press ON switch, so Reg reader flew 15 hours to do the job
- Sysadmin’s £100,000 revenge after sudden sacking
- Electrician cuts wrong wire and downs 25,000 square foot data centre
- T’was the night before Christmas, and an industrial control system needed an upgrade
- DEAD MAN’S SOCKS and other delightful gifts from clients
- There’s an epidemic of idiots who can’t find power switches
- Software engineer sobers up to deal with 2:00 AM trouble at mill
- The Police Chief’s photo library mixed business, pleasure and flesh
2016
- Late night server rebuild led to ‘nightmares about mutilated corpses’
- How to help a user who can’t find the Start button or the keyboard?
- The monitor didn’t work but the problem was between the user’s ears
- What’s it like to work for a genius and Olympic archer who’s mates with Richard Branson?
- When asked ‘What’s a .CNT file?’ there’s a polite way to answer
- Helpdesk? I have a software problem. And a GRIZZLY BEAR problem
- Toaster cooks network and burns ‘expert’ user’s credibility to a crisp
- Vendor rep ‘Stinky Sam’ told to wash and brush teeth or lose job
- I beg you, please don’t back up that secret directory full of photos!
- Telling your wife why you were fired is the only punishment
- Computers shouldn’t smoke. Cigarettes aren’t healthy for anyone
- You can’t dust-proof a PC with kitchen-grade plastic food wrap
- That naked picture on my PC? Not mine. The IT guy put it there
- Admin fishes dirty office chat from mistyped-email bin and then …?
- Sysadmin given Licence To Perve shows why you always get it in writing
- Switch survives three hours of beer spray, fails after twelve
- Database man flown to Hong Kong to install forgotten patch spends week in pub
- UK.gov pays four fellows £35k to do nothing for three months
- Microsoft phone support contractors told to hang up after 15 minutes
- Sysadmin paid a month’s salary for one day of nothing
- ‘Acts of war in a combat zone are not covered by your laptop warranty’
- HR botches redundancy so chap scores year-long paid holiday
- Mushroom farm PC left in the dark and fed … you know the rest
- Developer waits two years for management to define project
- Fly to Africa. Survive helicopter death flight to oil rig. Do no work for three weeks. Repeat
- Please stop working and abuse your expense account at the beach
- If we can’t find a working SCSI cable, the company will close tomorrow
- Forget your RTO*: Real world Disaster Recovery needs garbage bags and bubble wrap
- Server vendor has special help desk for lying, incompetent sysadmins
- The developer died 14 years ago, here’s a print out of his source code
- ‘I found the intern curled up on the data centre floor moaning’
- You shrunk the database into a .gz and the app won’t work? Sigh
- Sysadmin sticks finger in pipe, saves data centre from flood
- A plumber with a blowtorch is the enemy of the data centre
- Is there paper in the printer? Yes and it’s so neatly wrapped!
- Two Sundays wrecked by boss who couldn’t use a calendar
- If we can’t fix this printer tonight, the bank’s core app will stop working
- The server’s down. At 3AM. On Christmas. You’re drunk. So you put a disk in the freezer
- User couldn’t open documents or turn on PC, still asked for reference as IT expert
- ‘Please label things so I can tell the difference between a mouse and a microphone’
- Casino cops are coming if we can’t move all this cash in a hurry
- Sysadmin flees asbestos scare with disk drive, blank pay cheques, angry builders in pursuit
- Hell desk thought PC fire report was a first-day-on-the-job prank
- Hell Desk’s 800 number was perfect for horrible heavy-breathing harassment calls
- Angry user demands three site visits to fix email address typos
- User needed 40-minute lesson in turning it off and turning it on again
- Sysadmin denies boss’s request to whitelist smut talk site of which he was a very happy member
- Sysadmin figures out dating agency worker lied in his profile
- Sysadmin told to spend 20+ hours changing user names, for no reason
- Sysadmin ‘fixed’ PC by hiding it on a bookshelf for a few weeks
- It’s round and wobbles, but madam, it’s a mouse pad, not a floppy disk
- Why does Skype only show me from the chin down?
- Did webcam ‘performer’ offer support chap payment in kind?
- Support chap’s Sonic Screwdriver fixes PC as user fumes in disbelief
- Christmas Eve ERP migration derailed by silly spreadsheet sort
2017
- IT team sent dirt file to Police as they all bailed from abusive workplace
- Naughty sysadmins use dark magic to fix PCs for clueless users
- Super-cool sysadmin fixes PCs with gravity, or his fists
- IT guy checks to see if PC is virus-free, with virus-ridden USB stick
- Installing disks is basically LEGO, right? This admin failed LEGO
- Sysadmin’s sole client was his wife – and she queried his bill
- User rats out IT team for playing games at work, gets them all fired
- User lubed PC with butter, because pressing a button didn’t work
- User jams up PC. Literally. No, we don’t know which flavour
- Squirrel sinks teeth into SAN cabling, drives Netadmin nuts
- PC survived lightning strike thanks to a good kicking
- Printer blown to bits by compressed air
- Boss swore by ‘For Dummies’ book about an OS his org didn’t run
- Drunk user blow-dried laptop after dog lifted its leg over the keyboard
- Waiter? There’s a mouse in my motherboard and this server is greasy!
- User loses half of a CD-ROM in his boss’s PC
- PC repair chap lets tech support scammer log on to his PC. His Linux PC
- Faking incontinence and other ways to scare off tech support scammers
- Sysadmin finds insecure printer, remotely prints ‘Fix Me!’ notice
- ‘My PC needs to lose weight’ says user with FAT filesystem
- Please do not scare the pigeons – they’ll crash the network
- Fighter pilot shot down laptops with a flick of his copper-plated wrist
- PC rebooted every time user flushed the toilet
- Fresh cotton underpants fix series of mysterious mainframe crashes
- Sysadmin bloodied by icicle that overheated airport data centre
- User left unable to type passwords after ‘tropical island stress therapy’
- User filed fake trouble tickets to take helpful sysadmin to lunches
- Sysadmin jeered in staff cafeteria as he climbed ladder to fix PC
- Four techies flummoxed for hours by flickering ‘E’ on monitor
- Hell desk to user: ‘I know you’re wrong. I wrote the software. And the protocol it runs on’
- Linux-loving lecturer ‘lost’ email, was actually confused by Outlook
- Bombastic boss gave insane instructions to sensible sysadmin, with client on speakerphone
- User thanked IT department for fast new server, but it had never left its box
- User demanded PC be moved to move to a sunny desk – because it needed Windows
- User worked with wrong app for two weeks, then complained to IT that data had gone missing
- Sysadmin tells user CSI-style password guessing never w– wait WTF?! It’s ‘PASSWORD1’!
- Vibrating walls shafted servers at a time the SUN couldn’t shine
- Support team discovers ‘official’ vendor paper doesn’t rob you blind
- Software update turned my display and mouse upside-down, says user
- Boss visited the night shift and found a car in the data centre
- Boss put chocolate cake on aircon controller, to stop people using it
- Official Secrets Act alert went off after embassy hired local tech support
- User asked help desk to debug a Post-it Note that survived a reboot
- Help desk declared code PEBCAK and therefore refused to help!
- Boss made dirt list of minions’ mistakes, kept his own rampage off it
- User dialled his PC into a permanent state of ‘Brown Alert’
- Disk drive fired ‘Frisbees of death’ across data centre after storage admin crossed his wires
- Hot chips crashed servers, but were still delicious
- Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the data centre temp’s delightful
- ‘Please store the internet on this floppy disk’
- Beyond code PEBCAK lies KMACYOYO, PENCIL and PAFO
- ‘Twas the night before Y2K and a grinch stole the IT department’s overtime payout
2018
- PC lab in remote leper colony had wrong cables, no licences, and not much hope
- User had no webcam or mic, complained vid conference didn’t work
- User stepped on mouse, complained pedal wasn’t making PC go faster
- Shopper f-bombed PC shop staff, so they mocked her with too-polite tech tutorial
- Secret weekend office bonk came within inch of killing sysadmin
- If this laptop is so portable, where’s the keyboard, huh? HUH?
- Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?
- My PC is broken, said user typing in white on a white background
- Your mouse can’t reach that Excel cell? Buy a ‘desk extender’ said help desk bluffer
- Office junior had one job: Tearing perforated bits off tractor-feed dot matrix printer paper
- User asked why CTRL-ALT-DEL restarted PC instead of opening apps
- User fired IT support company for a ‘typo’ that was actually a real word
- The Register Opera Company presents: The Pirates of Penzance, Sysadmin edition
- My PC makes ‘negative energy waves’, said user, then demanded fix
- Sysadmin’s worst client was … his mother! Until his sister called for help
- CEO insisted his email was on server that had been offline for years
- Boss sent overpaid IT know-nothings home – until an ON switch proved elusive
- My PC is on fire! Can you back it up really, really fast?
- Fixing a printer ended with a dozen fire engines in the car park
- Tech support made the news after bomb squad and police showed up to ‘defuse’ leaky UPS
- Police block roads to stop tech support chap ‘robbing a bank’
- Send printer ink, please. More again please, and fast. Now send it faster
- Don’t talk to the ATM, young man, it’s just a machine and there’s nobody inside
- User spent 20 minutes trying to move mouse cursor, without success
- Trainee techie ran away and hid after screwing up a job, literally
- Drug cops stopped techie’s upgrade to question him for hours. About everything
- Sysadmin cracked military PC’s security by reading the manual
- Tech support chap given no training or briefing before jobs, which is why he was arrested
- Boss helped sysadmin take down horrible client with swift kick to the nether regions
- Sysadmin trained his offshore replacements, sat back, watched ex-employer’s world burn
- Grad sends warning to manager: Be nice to our kit and it’ll be nice to you
- Phased out: IT architect plugs hole in clean-freak admin’s wiring design
- Boss regrets pointing finger at chilled out techie who finished upgrade early
- Abracadabra! Tales of unexpected sysadmagic and dabbling in dark arts
- Fast food, slow user – techie tears hair out over crashed drive-thru till
- A flash of inspiration sees techie get dirty to fix hospital’s woes
- A basement of broken kit, zero budget – now get the team running
- Spent your week box-ticking? It can’t be as bad as the folk at this firm
- Attempt to clean up tech area has shocking effect on kit
- Convenient switch hides an inconvenient truth
- Powerful forces, bodily fluids – it’s all in a day’s work
- Haunted disk-drive? This story will give you the chills…
- The best way to screw the competition? Do what they can’t, in a fraction of the time
- Clunk, bang, rattle: Is that a ghost inside your machine?
- Can your rival fix it as fast? turns out to be ten-million-dollar question for plucky support guy
- Bright spark dev irons out light interference
- Pasta-covered cat leads to kid night operator taking apart the mainframe
- Support whizz ‘fixes’ screeching laptop with a single click… by closing ‘malware-y’ browser tab
- Tech support discovers users who buy the ‘sh*ttest PCs known to Man’ struggle with basics
- Time for a cracker joke: What’s got one ball and buttons in the wrong place?
- Error pop-up? Don’t worry, let’s just get this migration done… BTW it’s my day off tomorrow
- Racing at the speed of light, Sage superhero bursts through the door…
- Heard the one where the boss calls in an Oracle consultant who couldn’t fix the database?
2019
- I’m just not sure the computer works here – the energy is all wrong
- If I could turn back time, I’d tell you to keep that old Radarange at home
- Are you sure your disc drive has stopped rotating, or are you just ignoring the messages?
- Users fail to squeak through basic computer skills test. Well, it was the ’90s
- Techie finds himself telling caller there is no safe depth of water for operating computers
- Reliable system was so reliable, no one noticed its licence had expired… until it was too late
- Crash, bang, wallop: What a power-down. But what hit the kill switch?
- OK, team, we’ve got the big demo tomorrow and we’re feeling confident. Let’s reboot the servers
- Customer: We fancy changing a 25-year-old installation. C’mon, it’s just one extra valve… Only wafer thin…
- Sure, we’ve got a problem but we don’t really want to spend any money on the tech guy you’re sending to fix it
- All good, leave it with you…? Chap is roped into tech support role for clueless customer
- Chap joins elite support team, solves what no one else can. Is he invited back? Is he f**k
- Are you sure you’ve got a floppy disk stuck in the drive? Or is it 100 lodged in the chassis?
- Hello, tech support? Yes, I’ve run out of desk… Yes, DESK… space
- User secures floppies to a filing cabinet with a magnet, but at least they backed up daily… right?
- Strong-willed field support op holds it together during painful customer call
- Is that a stiffy disk in your drive… or something else entirely?
- A real head-scratcher: Tech support called in because emails 'aren't showing timestamps'
- Techie with outdated documentation gets his step count in searching for non-existent cabinet
- Dedicated techie risks life and limb to locate office conference phone hiding under newspaper
- Never let something so flimsy as a locked door to the computer room stand in the way of an auditor on the warpath
- Planes, fails and automobiles: Overseas callout saved by gentle thrust of server CD tray
- Could you just pop into the network room and check- hello? The Away Team. They're... gone
- When customers see red, sometimes the obvious solution will only fan the flames
- Comms room, comms room, comms room is on fire – we don't need no water, let the engineer burn
- The dread sound of the squeaking caster in the humming data centre
- Let's talk about April Fools' Day jokes. Are they ever really harmless?
- I don't have to save my work, it's in The Cloud. But Microsoft really must fix this files issue
- Operation Desert Sh!tstorm: Routine test shoots down military's top-secret internets
- Rise of the Machines hair-raiser: The day IBM's Dot Matrix turned
- Our hero returns home £500 richer thanks to senior dev's appalling security hygiene
- Here's to beer, without which we'd never have the audacity to Google an error message at 3am
- Security? We've heard of it! But why be a party pooper when there's printing to be done
- I couldn't possibly tell you the computer's ID over the phone, I've been on A Course™
- I just love your accent – please, have a new password
- The time a Commodore CDTV disc proved its worth as something other than a coaster
- Right-click opens up terrifying vistas of reality and Windows 95 user's frightful position therein
- That time Windows got blindsided by a ball of plasma, 150 million kilometres away
- Behold the perils of trying to turn the family and friends support line into a sideline
- When the satellite network has literally gone glacial, it's vital you snow your enemy
- The safest place to save your files is somewhere nobody will ever look
- A History of (Computer) Violence: Wait. Before you whack it again, try caressing the mouse
- Remember the 1980s? Oversized shoulder pads, Metal Mickey and... sticky keyboards?
- IT protip: Never try to be too helpful lest someone puts your contact details next to unruly boxen
- When the IT department speaks, users listen. Or face the consequences
- The silence of the racks is deafening, production gear has gone dark – so which wire do we cut?
- That code that could never run? Well, guess what. Now Windows thinks it's Batman
- We've found it... the last shred of human decency in an IT director – all for a poxy Unix engineer
- Whoooooa, this node is on fire! Forget Ceph, try the forgotten OpenStack storage release 'Crispy'
- Why is the printer spouting nonsense... and who on earth tried to wire this plug?
- El Reg presents: Your one-step guide on where not to store electronic mail
- Beware the three-finger-salute, or 'How I Got The Keys To The Kingdom'
- A user's magnetic charm makes for a special call-out for our hapless hero
2020
- It's always DNS, especially when you're on holiday with nothing but a phone on GPRS
- Sometimes shining a light on a nuclear problem just makes things worse
- The time that Sales braved the white hot heat of the data centre to save the day
- Beware the Friday afternoon 'Could you just..?' from the muppet who wants to come between you and your beer
- So you locked your backups away for years, huh? Allow me to introduce my colleagues, Brute, Force and Ignorance
- Tech can endure the most inhospitable environments: Space, underwater, down t'pit... even hairdressers
- You'll never select all and mark as read again after this tale of peril... Oh, who are we kidding? Of course you will
- The self-disconnecting switch: Ghost in the machine or just a desire to save some cash?
- I heard somebody say: Burn baby, burn – server inferno!
- Disk stuck in the drive? Don't dilly-Dali – get IT on the case!
- Not exactly the kind of housekeeping you want when it means the hotel's server uptime is scrubbed clean