This rant is a familiar one to a lot of desktop-facing IT professionals.
Today the person who handles our bank stuff came to me with a problem. The check-scanner wasn't working. I poked around but couldn't make it work, and advised her to talk to the bank since they provided the scanner, the scanner driver, the IE-plugins it worked with, and Windows didn't recognize it as a scanner.
So she did.
Their advice?
I gave her the look. Then I remembered myself and redirected the look to a harmless corner until I could speak again. Even getting a piece of that baleful stare caused her to cringe. Oops.
Like all right-thinking Windows admins, I'm a believer in leaving Windows Updates turned on if I'm not doing something else to manage that particular risk. Our fleet of Windows machines is not big enough for me to bother with WSUS (we have a LOT of Mac users), and we most definitely do not do anything like blocking browsing at the border. So, I want those updates thanks.
So I pulled a laptop out of the dead pile. That laptop will now be a dedicated machine for talking to the bank and nothing else. All because our freaking bank can't run secureable software. Makes you question your trust in them, it does.
Today the person who handles our bank stuff came to me with a problem. The check-scanner wasn't working. I poked around but couldn't make it work, and advised her to talk to the bank since they provided the scanner, the scanner driver, the IE-plugins it worked with, and Windows didn't recognize it as a scanner.
So she did.
Their advice?
You need to turn off Windows Update. Every time it runs it changes things in IE and you have to go through and do a bunch of things to make it work
I gave her the look. Then I remembered myself and redirected the look to a harmless corner until I could speak again. Even getting a piece of that baleful stare caused her to cringe. Oops.
Like all right-thinking Windows admins, I'm a believer in leaving Windows Updates turned on if I'm not doing something else to manage that particular risk. Our fleet of Windows machines is not big enough for me to bother with WSUS (we have a LOT of Mac users), and we most definitely do not do anything like blocking browsing at the border. So, I want those updates thanks.
So I pulled a laptop out of the dead pile. That laptop will now be a dedicated machine for talking to the bank and nothing else. All because our freaking bank can't run secureable software. Makes you question your trust in them, it does.
Didn't know you inherited the death glare.