A problematic self-checkout...

Post by **missingno** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 10:33 pm

At the local Wal-Mart here in town I've come across a weird anomaly with their self-checkout machines.

One night, back in July (July 10th to be exact), all four of the machines were at varying states of failure - one of them being an "Operating system not found" error, another at the desktop, another one trying to start the checkout software with a "Please be patient..." box, and so on.

I took pictures of all of them with my camphone at the time.
These machines (called FastLanes by NCR) run Windows XP Professional.

The "Operating system not found" FastLane

Over time I watched one machine's struggle to actually run. It's sat at XP desktops. It's sat at screensavers. It's never worked properly.

I came back today to...

I calculated out the time from my first photo to todays' photo. 94 days. That's just sad that nobody can get it working.

Anyone else have public computer crashes like this?

Here's a link to my small (7 pictures, because I often forgot my cameraphone) flickr photostream.

Post by **inxsfan92** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 11:53 pm

I was at borders bookstore one evening, and I was in the music section, I happened to walk by a music sampler station thingy that was malfunctioning. It was running Linux, which I though was very cool

Post by **stitch** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 11:59 pm

Self checkouts are dank. Go into a store when its really busy, have a credit/debit card, scan liqour, it prompts for assitance but really you can just swipe your card and pay and go on your way with illegal liquor!

Post by **zn3t** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 12:18 am

Post by **}W{** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 2:24 am

Kroger's self-checkouts aren't that any better. Last one I saw crash had FATAL_EXCEPTION_ERROR in a CMD window.

Post by **win98** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 9:00 am

Ive seen an atm which had a inacessabile boot volume problem it was XP or 2000 Pro for the OS.

Post by **Hrimfaxi** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 8:39 pm

i sure hope those things aren't connected to the internet...

Post by **missingno** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 10:41 pm

Hrimfaxi wrote:i sure hope those things aren't connected to the internet...

They sort of are connected online.

They communicate over the LAN to both the server and the attendant station. And stores could have Wi-Fi, encrypted with WEP, WPA/WPA2, or even unsecured.

With the right software (which I've never seen out there for download, because it's all different software for different machines/configurations), you could theoretically run the attendant software on a laptop/tablet, but even then it requires a user ID logon.

That's a page from the manual for the NCR FastLane "Remote Approval Station" guide. Essentially what the station is is an NCR kiosk-type touch screen + computer along with this store software on it.

If you really wanted to get into the nitty-gritty of these machines, NCR's got a boatload of manuals on it - the Store Managers' Guide, the Remote Approval Station Operators' Guide, Installation and Configuration Guide, and ACS/SCOT Installation and Configuration Guides are interesting reading.

Post by **WinPC** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 10:44 pm

One time, at a house (someone in the family) I saw on TV some kind of channel with music playing in the background, but instead of displaying what it was supposed to display (I don't know, maybe some information about local events), it displayed some kind of Windows 2000 or XP error message about a missing system file. At first when I saw this topic I didn't remember anything like that, but just now I remembered that I must have seen something like that somewhere, and then I remembered the TV Channel problem with the missing system file. Either they placed a camera in front of a Monitor or they connected the system to whatever broadcasts the cable signal, possibly using a TV Tuner.

I know it doesn't have to do with "Fastlanes", but it's the same kind of problem.

Post by **James** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 12:29 pm

lol, imagine opening up RickRoll or Goatse on there. These people come up to the check-out and they tap the screen, OMG GOATSE !

Post by **Beta Freak** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 4:06 pm

Now it has been mentioned, I feel its my duty to tell everyone who does not know what Goatse is to tell them to DO NOT GOOGLE IT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE.

Post by **RichardG867** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 6:02 pm

My friend was going to the bank, but the ATMs were restarting in loops. According to him, the ATMs ran Debian.

Post by **Jeff** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 9:18 pm

They have those (and a while back they had super annoying ones that didn't work) at my local supermarket. However, they seem to almost always be working, but that doesn't prevent the occassional XP screensaver from showing itsefl.

Post by **Hrimfaxi** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 11:25 pm

WildEye001 wrote:lol, imagine opening up RickRoll or Goatse on there. These people come up to the check-out and they tap the screen, OMG GOATSE !

which is exactly why I hope those things aren't internet capable..

think about it, if the wrong person saw that XP desktop as shown in OP's flickr link, installed a malicious program which pretty much catches everything being put into the machine (credit cards, etc.), thats pretty much identity theft-made-easy

Post by **missingno** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 12:16 am

Hrimfaxi wrote:
WildEye001 wrote:lol, imagine opening up RickRoll or Goatse on there. These people come up to the check-out and they tap the screen, OMG GOATSE !
which is exactly why I hope those things aren't internet capable..

think about it, if the wrong person saw that XP desktop as shown in OP's flickr link, installed a malicious program which pretty much catches everything being put into the machine (credit cards, etc.), thats pretty much identity theft-made-easy

Even if that machine was kept in that state, it's still secure.
You have the attendant at their station about 5-6 feet away. You have a camera peering over you at the machine itself. The machines' only interfaces are the cash inputs/outputs, the PIN pad, the barcode scanner, and the touchscreen, really. I think security'd see something was up with someone standing in front of a self-check without any items, constantly poking the screen

The only way to actually exit the software is via the supervisor's keys being physically placed into the machine, unless it's crashed/starting up. Even then, not only does it log on the remote attendant station, you've got all that security above looking at you.

Getting at it from the outside may happen, but I'd doubt that with store security.

Unless they're using WEP.

Then they deserve it.

Post by **Tootles** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:26 am

[quote="missingno]Even if that machine was kept in that state, it's still secure.
You have the attendant at their station about 5-6 feet away. You have a camera peering over you at the machine itself. The machines' only interfaces are the cash inputs/outputs, the PIN pad, the barcode scanner, and the touchscreen, really. I think security'd see something was up with someone standing in front of a self-check without any items, constantly poking the screen [/quote]

Write a trojan-horse program, and put it on a smart-card to auto-run?

Post by **missingno** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 12:10 am

marktuson wrote:[

If you can get a Trojan like that to fit onto something that holds less than a half a meg, I'd be impressed.

Post by **Tootles** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 9:03 am

Heh.

Sidenote: I had a cool idea, the other day. Flash storage in a SMART-style card, embedded in the High Impact Polystyrene as those cards are, but which snaps out (like a SIM card) and uses a USB interface. Bet they'd be cheap .

Post by **RichardG867** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 4:41 pm

Beta Freak wrote:Now it has been mentioned, I feel its my duty to tell everyone who does not know what Goatse is to tell them to DO NOT GOOGLE IT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE.

NSFW? browser crash? virii? (edited 26/Nov/2009)

Post by **Tilka** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 5:18 pm

RichardGatinho wrote:NSFW? heart attack? browser crash? virus?

Let's say it this way: if you just care about your computer you should google it

Post by **Beta Freak** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 5:50 pm

RichardGatinho wrote:
Beta Freak wrote:Now it has been mentioned, I feel its my duty to tell everyone who does not know what Goatse is to tell them to DO NOT GOOGLE IT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE.
NSFW? heart attack? browser crash? virus?

nsfw and will probably make you be sick

Post by **Chicago** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 1:18 am

Hahah, those are soo funny!!!!
I've got some pics of Cinema computers displaying "Please wait while Windows attempts to boot", and then they re-re-re-re-reboot again.
It's truly funny!
I've also got some from Kodak Kiosks with a BSOD. It's soo funny.
hahaha
Also one, (that day i didn't had my cam with me) with an ATM with "windows NT can't find ... file" blah blah
Soo cool ones!

Post by **ajdesign419** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 10:23 pm

At this DVD self-checkout kiosk a while ago (I think it's called dvd-play)

It had the windows xp professional boot screen on.