Who needs ghost train scares when Windows is such a fright?

Things that go bork in the night

Bork!Bork!Bork! What frightens you? What, as an IT professional, would make you shriek like a small child? What tech horrors are lurking under your bed?

For Register reader Andy Bailey, it's Windows showing its face in the gift shop of an Alton Towers ghost train. Yes, the image might be a bit wobble-inducing, but that Windows Explorer error? Truly horrifying. And that taskbar – it's probably Windows 10 or perhaps Windows 8. Certainly, the stuff of nightmares as far as Microsoft is concerned.

Alton Towers is a UK theme park, notable for the introduction of the Corkscrew steel roller coaster in 1980. Bailey told us the ride he was on had originally been known as Duel, but "is now more of a standard ghost train."

For the uninitiated, a ghost train in this context is a relatively tame dark ride in which animatronic ghoulies wave at passengers and spooky stuff happens.

"No need to shoot anything these days," Bailey went on. "Just your stereotypical haunted house cliches, including giant spiders, freaky dolls, and claps of thunder.

"Until, that is, you reach the gift shop, where the walls are adorned with spooky portraits, and …"

Well, you can see for yourself. Not content with the ghostly image, Windows has added to the horror with a "Memory could not be read" error in explorer.exe. The cause could be anything. Some failing hardware. A driver having a bad day (the memory address might mean drivers are involved). Or just some shoddy code somewhere. Whatever the cause, it's likely more frightening for an IT professional, having to deal with the inevitable helpdesk request, than anything that might jump from the shadows on a ghost train.

All of this got us thinking. What would a scary ride for an IT professional look like? Windows' Clippy lumbering out of the shadows like an undead AI assistant? A vampire in an Oracle hoodie explaining licensing minutiae? Or a Windows Update appearing unbidden and unexpectedly derailing the carriage, leaving the rider trapped in a never-ending reboot cycle?

We're sure the ever-creative Register readership can add to this list of tech industry terrors.

In the meantime, don't have nightmares. ®