I'm probably being very naive here, but aren't the Swanwick workstations powered by what are effectively PCs, which store their software on a hard disc drive?
Why not when doing these software changes put in a new HDD, and keep the old one safe, so if the new software doesn't work simply put in the original HDD and reboot?
The cost of this would be less then the cost of sending a first class letter to everyone in the company!
Cue the engineers to tell me why my perfect world won't work
