Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Other / Unknown
ATC Issue All Types
General None Reported / Taken
Procedure; Human Factors
The Center went to DARC that evening against the recommendations of the West Area workers since there was a line of weather moving towards the center during the course of the late night shift. Because of the location of this weather; I believe that some of the aircraft were off their original routes after deviating. There was a lack of flight plan information being given out to the controllers from ETMS strips during the busiest time of the shift. All the info on aircraft was being manually coordinated through the D-Side from ZMP and ZKC to us. There was also a computer glitch that showed two aircraft coming from ZMP whom we started tracks on swapping beacon codes. Therefore we had to cancel tracks and start them on new beacon codes. This happened twice. When controllers tell the supervisors that they would not recommend going to DARC during weather moving into range; they should seriously consider rescheduling the computer going down.
ZAU Controller described a supervisory decision to change to DARC operations with weather moving coupled with other computer anomalies; the reporter suggesting supervisors heed controllers recommendations regarding DARC scheduling.