Tech worker testifies of 'blue screen of death' on oil rig's computer

[enzo1]

Tech worker testifies of 'blue screen of death' on oil rig's computer - Computerworld

[Joeaksa]

Wonderful... forking wonderful.

~~~~~

In his testimony Friday, Michael Williams, the chief electronics technician aboard the Transocean-owned Deepwater Horizon, said that the rig's safety alarm had been habitually switched to a bypass mode to avoid waking up the crew with middle-of-the-night warnings.

Williams said that a computer control system in the drill shack would still record high gas levels or a fire, but it would not trigger warning sirens, according to numerous reports, including stories published by the New York Times and New Orleans' largest daily, the Times-Picayune.

Williams, who has filed a multi-million dollar federal lawsuit against Transocean, also said that five weeks before the April 20 explosion, he had been called to check a computer system that monitored and controlled drilling.

The machine had been locking up for months, Williams said, producing what he and others on the crew called a "blue screen of death." "It would just turn blue. You'd have no data coming through," Williams said today, according to the New York Times' story.

With the computer frozen, the driller would not have access to crucial data about what was going on in the well.

[stomachmonkey]

While I'd love to take the opportunity to toss it out there I'm not gonna hijack.

Realistically a properly functioning OS/PC should not be throwing BSOD's or kernal panics.

If it is then it needs to be addressed correctly or replaced completely.

For such a mission critical monitoring device there should have been active redundant systems online and even a spare sitting in inventory.

Simply no excuse for that.

MSFT has no culpability here as far as I'm concerned and deserved no mention in the article at all.

And we all know what OS camp I'm in.