Our pal, Michael Gas, was hoping to withdraw money from this ATM but it was “temporarily out of service“, which paradoxically happens when you most desperately need cash… That’s Murphy’s Law for you… This time though, there was a twist – this ATM failed because it was running an unactivated Windows XP operating system!
This is a CIMB Bank ATM machine at the new KLIA2 airport. Because its Windows XP operating system was not activated, the machine would not log on, thus going out of service. We doubt CIMB is too poor to pay for a Windows licence, so this is most likely a “human error” by someone who was maintaining the machine.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, although it isn’t particularly common. Here is a Russian ATM with the same issue in June 2007. Believe it or not, Windows XP was already 5.5 years old at that time. It’s amazing that the CIMB ATM machine is still running on a 13.5 year old operating system…
Now that Windows 10 is out, perhaps it’s time for ATM machine manufacturers and owners to #UpgradeYourWorld? 😀
Temporary Solution To This Unactivated Windows Problem
Someone in the Facebook thread claimed (or joked?) that the ATM is a Chinese clone of the real German machine, and it was using a pirated installation of Windows XP. Well, on the off-chance that that is true, here is a temporary solution for CIMB…
- Boot up the computer and hit F8 before Windows loads.
- Select to boot in “Safe Mode with Command Prompt“.
- After the command prompt loads, type “explorer” (without the quote marks) and press Enter.
- Windows will load in Safe Mode.
- Click on the Start button, and type the following in the Run box and press Enter :
Rundll32.exe syssetup,SetupOobeBnk
This will reset the Windows activation to 30 days, which should give CIMB plenty of time to activate this Windows XP installation.
