Chocolate Caterpillar or Chocolate Teapot? Top up the disk space for Windows 10 to find out
Today's bit of signage silage is either Windows 10 protesting that it is not part of London's Oxford Street pedestrianization, or someone failing to heed an alert before the public is made all too aware that things aren't going well...
Eagle-eyed Register reader Aaron Colwill spotted the sign outside the food hall entrance of a Marks & Spencer store on London's Oxford Street. It usually entices passersby through the doors with promises of treats inside, but today it appears to require a different kind of feeding. Disk space is running low.
Marks and Spencer (also known as M&S and Marks and Sparks) is no stranger to cyber whoopsies, having been the victim of an attack in 2025 in which crooks made off with customer data. Later that year, it reckoned cleanup costs would be about 136 million.
That's quite a lot, but not enough to buy a bigger hard disk for Windows 10, it seems. Storage prices have increased over the years, but surely not that much?
Colwill reckoned that Windows 10 21H2 LTSC was behind the problems. It could well be. While support for 21H2 ended for many users in 2023, Windows 10 LTSC 2021 will carry on until Jan 12, 2027, meaning engineers might have an exciting festive period ahead of them. Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 will receive extended support until Jan 13, 2032.
Either way, using Windows to advertise the Food Hall's wares seems slightly overkill. Simple posters, for example, never run out of disk space or attract the bork fairy's attention.
Perhaps they might use something that lacks the voracious appetite for storage that Microsoft's finest demands. According to the Windows biz, installing Windows 10 requires at least 32 GB of disk space, ideally more. It all seems a bit excessive for a cake-based caterpillar advert. Then again, when your operating system tends to have the resilience of a chocolate teapot, using it to advertise a chocolate insect might not be such a bad idea after all. (R)