Batch file automated a clean-up job, then fouled itself by deleting the wrong directory
Simon Sharwood Simon Sharwood APAC Editor APAC Editor Published mon 24 Aug 2026 // 07:31 UTC WHO, ME? Hardly anything would run, and the services for Exchange had stopped," he confessed to The Register. MORE CONTEXT Part didn't fit so techie got out his screwdriver.
- ▪Simon Sharwood Simon Sharwood APAC Editor APAC Editor Published mon 24 Aug 2026 // 07:31 UTC WHO, ME?
- ▪Hardly anything would run, and the services for Exchange had stopped," he confessed to The Register.
- ▪MORE CONTEXT Part didn't fit so techie got out his screwdriver.
The Register publishes from United Kingdom and files mainly under tech. We currently carry 497 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | theregister |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/08/24/batch-file-automated-a-clean-up-job-then-fouled-itself-by-deleting-the-wrong-directory/5290873 |
| Publication time | Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:31:00 +0200 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-24T07:23:27.528Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-24T07:23:27.528Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | None |
| Cluster logic | Not yet clustered, or no peer story found in the clustering window. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(function() { let windowUrl = window.location.href; windowUrl = windowUrl.substring(windowUrl.indexOf('?') + 1); let messageElement = document.querySelector('.shareableMessage'); if (windowUrl && windowUrl.includes('code') && windowUrl.includes('expires')) { messageElement.style.display = 'block'; } })(); SOFTWARE Batch file automated a clean-up job, then fouled itself by deleting the wrong directory It survived testing and the boss signed off, so who was really to blame? Simon Sharwood Simon Sharwood APAC Editor APAC Editor Published mon 24 Aug 2026 // 07:31 UTC WHO, ME? Welcome to another installment of "Who, Me?" – the reader-contributed column in which The Register opens the working week with your tales of IT woe.This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Pascal," who once worked for…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at theregister.