Users looking through Microsoft's help forums are finding a new option. Instead of being offered a long list of steps to fix some technical issue, Microsoft is adding a single button that will just solve the issue.
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Beyond Binary is a look at how technology is changing our lives and the people behind all that life-changing stuff, with an extra emphasis on that which emanates from Redmond, Wash.
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Why?
I own an NEC TabletPC that shipped with XP. It includes an ATI video card. When Windows XP Service Pack 3 was released, it changed the version info provided by the OS to the driver such that it broke the ATI driver. Note that this is not a substantive incompatibility - it's just that the driver refuses to cooperate with a now unrecognized version of Windows.
Because of this, my TabletPC will now no longer rotate the screen. This machine was purchased new in 2005, and was rendered useless for its primary function in 2008. ATI said that it no longer supported this card with driver updates, only 3 years after being brand new, and that in any event, the driver was the responsibility of the PC OEM. Microsoft knows about the problem, which has been reported widely on the web, but has done nothing. And a completely core function of my PC has been utterly wrecked - MS's "updates" have seriously and irreversibly damaged my PC.
Why irreversibly, you ask? The SP3 uninstall function is broken - the uninstall fails in a way which gives no indication of cause or cure. And as a result, the only thing I could do would be to format my drive and reinstall the OS. Unfortunately, MS never sold or provided retail copies of the TabletPC OS, so I can't even legally get discs to do that! MS has DELIBERATELY left people in my position completely screwed.
The only way I could recover my PC's functionality would be to subscribe to MSDN at a cost which exceeds the cost of a new PC to get a copy of the OS, reinstall the OS from scratch, and then disable MS updates to prevent SP3 from being installed, and live with the security holes which were patched by SP3 and later dependencies. (There is one possible alternative solution as well, to install third party hacked video drivers which might or might not work and have never been tested on this machine - a road I have not been willing to go down.)
So what will I do? I will finally, after nearly 20 years supporting the MS ecosystem, completely abandon the Microsoft world. I'll buy a Mac, and format and install Linux on my tablet. Apple may be costlier and may reduce my performance options in some respects, but at least they won't ship OS updates that permanently disable still relatively new hardware and leave me to deal with finger pointing between the PC OEM, graphics hardware OEM, and OS vendor, and no solution at all.
No, Microsoft, at long last, after 20 years of not only solving my own PC problems but those of countless others, I have given up on you for deliberately and as a matter of conscious policy leaving me and thousands of other tablet users completely out of luck with machines that are only a few years old. For shame.
After years of trying to use their "help" files and ever more sophisticated tools to increase my productivity, I have come to the conclusion that they are on a dead end road to hell. The harder they try the more pathetic they fail in helping.
By making it all so "super easy" they have managed to ad so much complexity to their OS that people like myself, who at one point in the earlier windows tragedy where able to fix most everything, are now giving up in light of the mountains of learning curves ahead. In other words, it would be a full time job to really understand windows to the bone - at which point I might as well work as a IT consultant and forget about my real job.
Another step forward on the road to hell...
2. It.
3. Fix it!
It appears that clicking the "Fix It" button on the BSoD will open the browser to the Apple store website so you can order a Mac.
And I am supposed to trust Microsoft to "just fix it" when they can't even identify the problem most of the time (case in point: errors while trying to use Windows Update or Microsoft Update generate error codes which, about 87% of the time, generate no results on the "search for solutions" page at Microsoft, but bring up the simple, easy answer on Google every single time, usually in one of the first 3 non-sponsored results).
Sorry, MS, but your inability to even find the error codes on your own servers makes me suspect you won't provide me with safe scripts, much less working scripts.
Troll much?
Can Microsoft please fix the Fix-IT running on my computer.
What shall a ?Fix It? button do for the Blue Screen of Death?
It shall open the Apple store website so the Windows user can order a Mac.
"After clicking "Fix It" I still find found Vista x64 installed on my computer, I guess I'm stuck wit this problem!
- by cjflatbush February 6, 2009 6:43 PM PST
- I got hacked last Oct. I still have problems The biggist problem is when you get a new computer It does not come with cd windows. If you have any kindia virus or major trouble you cannot fix it. I would more like to have that back than a fix it button for some one else to get in & control my computer.
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