This article was published on May 16, 2014

Emory University server accidentally sends reformat request to all Windows PCs, including itself


Emory University server accidentally sends reformat request to all Windows PCs, including itself

Have you ever reformatted a computer and then immediately realized you shouldn’t have? Well, an “accident” at Emory University this week will make your mistake look like a brilliant, carefully considered decision.

Here’s the crux of what happened:

A Windows 7 deployment image was accidently sent to all Windows machines, including laptops, desktops, and even servers. This image started with a repartition/reformat set of tasks. As soon as the accident was discovered, the SCCM server was powered off – however, by that time, the SCCM server itself had been repartitioned and reformatted.

What did we learn today? Always backup. Backup everything. Everything always.

Windows 7 incident

See also – This is the funniest Windows error message you’ve ever seen and Facebook Engineer accidentally blocks photosharing site imgur, apologises in true Reddit fashion

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