Farm PC 'Maintained' by a 14-Year-Old Dumped Support Chap in a Steaming Pile of Tech Mess
The Register, Friday, October 30th, 2026
An On Call reader recounts fixing a Yorkshire farm's lone Windows XP PC, kept up to date by the farmer's 14-year-old grandson.
In The Register's On Call column, a reader called Jason recalls helping an agricultural equipment dealer support a Yorkshire farm whose computer system managed feeding, milk yield, breeding, and government data submissions for a few hundred cattle, after earlier support attempts had strained the dealer's relationship with the farmer.
Jason found everything ran on proprietary software on a single Windows XP PC with no backups, no spare machine, and no firewall, while the farmer's 14-year-old grandson handled security updates.
The PC also held explicit videos, causing a family uproar.
Jason installed a firewall, got the system working, and was paid promptly, but never heard from the farm again.