Dev error bricked 600 PCs, caused $1M CD-ROM write-off

Welcome to Monday, the day upon which The Register offers a new instalment of " Who, Me? " – our reader-contributed column that shares your stories of messing up, 'fessing up, and somehow finding redress.

This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Oriel" who told us he once worked for a vendor of small business accounting software.

This story comes from a time when software shipped on CD-ROMs and users bought it off the shelf in actual shops. The vendor released a new version each year and always shipped it before a major holiday that's celebrated with a giant meal.

Oriel was part of the team whose job it was to get the package ready on time.

In the previous year, they flubbed the job because the program didn't always install itself on some PCs running Windows 95 or Windows ME machines system due to registry corruption.

"We wanted to increase our successful installation metrics, so in conjunction with …