A recent update from Microsoft for Windows has messed up some POS Software

As we get closer to the end of year season, retailers are now working harder than they have all year as now the sales are coming.

So what happened today, without warning many retailers discovered that their system went down while trying to finish a cash register transaction with a black window appearing where the POS screen used to display. It soon became clear that the cause was that their software supplier had ignored the Microsoft's customers annoucements, so they did nothing and this was the result. At first we all thought it was only older Windows 7 users that went down but now it appears that all Windows software versions were affected. Since the POS software is old and does not have automatic updates, it probably will be months before all these stores can be manually fixed until then these shops will have to get used to this plus it will cost them money because as sure as day follows night, their staff will muck up the change as a result.

This is not the first time it happened, an update to anti virus software, caused many of their sites to go down too. Unlike us, who can immediately correct such errors by releasing an automatic update, if their users go down, it stays down until it can be manually fixed.

Another example was a recent update from Microsoft for Windows 7, 8 and 10 mucked up the internet connectivity on 10 Dec 2016 so many could not get online.

Consider this an example of the problems running old out of date software.

A simple question is to ask yourself is how would happen if your point of sale system failed now, can automatic updates be sent? Now ask yourself what would happen if your POS system suddenly fails two weeks from now?

PS Microsoft have a habit of releasing problem patch after problem patch till they finally get it right. Generally I notice it takes them about day or 2, to produce the next patch so it can take awhile. Note the page I quoted from Microsoft's page above has a revision number of 62.

If you look at the update log of the automatic updates of our software, you will find references to fixes to Microsoft, Adobe, antivirus software, etc, etc, etc. What happens is as soon as its reported, we release an emergency patch and the rest of our users are not affected, in fact they do not know it even happened.

This is as it should be. This is as you want it to be and what we do.