Comments on: Microsoft offers to just 'Fix it'

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.

[bigschut]

It would be nice to see a button that would fix either "Anti Virus 2009 or 2008, Anti Virus 360" I sure hope they can create a script to fix that.

[why do i need a name?]

It's about time!

A while back when I ran a software business, I insisted that we do two things for our users

1: EVERY error message that the software could spit out was indexed into the help files so that if you were to search on the exact text of the error you would find something that told you what was going on and hopefully how to fix it. (try this with any error you get from Microsoft, you won't get any hits to this day)

2: The code was instrumented that when it hit an error, we got a series of codes. Then the software built a link to our web site that would look up the solution for that code. This did two things for us. First, our customers could find a quick solution to their problem, second we got to see how many people were having which problems so that we could prioritize our resources to fix the more common bugs first. This was also integrated with the call center so that when we encountered an error that was not cataloged, the user was asked to call, and the solution to their problem was then put back into the catalog so that others could take advantage of it.

I left that job in 2004 and we had implemented this in 2002-2003. I can tell you this, that implementing these two things cut our call center volume significantly and the satisfaction with the software went up considerably. Our customers were able to solve their own problems, we got a good priority for fixing stuff and our costs went down for support.

[johnsasia]

Why can't they put a FIX IT con on Outlook 2007? What miserable software. Actually I really like it's myriad of features (not boring interface) but it is so hopelessly problematic: constantly has to rebuild files, always slow, and too often hanging. Surely, it must waste 40% of my time when I'm using the program. I don't understand at all how businesses can afford it to use. Today, I had it running on both my laptop and desktop and both wouldn't work. On my laptop, it wouldn't even open in Safe Mode. So rather than throwing my laptop against the wall, I FINALLY just uninstalled the whole Office Suite. Sorry about this commenting. But why can't this computer Giant FIX IT!!!

[htcstech]

Ok I'll bite.
MS Update errors are pretty common, especially with .Net framework.
However what I find most are errors interacting with 3rd party apps, which I doubt MS can do much about.

[ArnoDick]

Nice article!
I actually got here from a referring article at http://www.zmogo.com/gear/microsoft-wants-to-just-fix-host-of-windows-flaws/

It wasn't as supportive of MS as this one is :P

[Maccess]

"The first fixes included a number of common issues, including restoring a missing Internet Explorer icon to the desktop,..." This is why I wouldn't use such a feature built-into Windows, since it will likely "repair" things like this you've remove and/or customize. Much of the Windows How-Tos on the Web have to do with removing stuff that came with Windows that you don't need in your particular install and are merely slowing things down.

[Phil_Blades]

I liked the concept when I read about it here last week. Last night one of our laptops had a strange problem - this morning (vista) volunteers a new solution for a problem - when I follow the link it has one of the "fix it" buttons. So I used it, an active-X downlad later it fixes the problem, offers a test option to check it is fixed (it is) and asks for feedback. Worked for me - so I still like the concept. Lets see some more.