There doesn't seem to be a way to report a bug against the Windows OS (no such category in Microsoft Connect). 2 years ago, I tried to report a bug against Vista - TreeView Indent in Vista causes HitTest to fail. The closest way would be to report it against VisualStudio. Surprise surprise, the VS product team closed it as external and did absolutely *nothing* after that. Sure, they redirected me to a non-existent website, which was supposed to be the MSDN forums, but that was where I was redirected to MS Connect in the first place! Talk about going around in circles... This really reminds me of Telstra (the ex-government owned now privatized biggest telco in Australia).
With regards to the bug that I've just reported, I'd expect them to do the same, and close it as external, not knowing which department they need to talk to. Microsoft is so big, dumb and slow that its right hand really have no idea what the left hand is doing! Sad really...
* Edit: Looks like I'm not the only one complaining:
Reporting a bug in Vista 64 WOW64
How do you file a bug report for Windows?
Problems with comdlg32.ocx, Windows Vista and long file names/extension´s
8 comments:
/Disclaimer: I'm working at Microsoft/
I agree that it is not easy to report a bug to Microsoft so that it landed to the proper product team in the proper time (both things are really important). It is coming from the size of the company, not from aggorance.
On the other hand it is a little bit insulting that every bug report like this starts with a passage about arrogance, dumbness, etc. of Microsoft and hence the people over there. Quite often (not in this case though) such a passage is not followed by an explanation what the bug is.
Do you think starting this way makes them more willing to fix the bug? I doubt that.
Talking about this specific bug, I believe it was already reported to Wow64 team. I have no information if it is going to be fixed. It is rather a hard fix to make. On other hand it is really easy to break existing applications and on the other hand there is not that many GC engines comparing to the number applications affected.
You reach me at alexeypa@gmail.com.
@Alexey: I meant reporting a but against *Windows OS*. I know how to report a bug against VisualStudio etc. There's just no way to report a bug against the OS itself.
Microsoft is an entity of size beyond imagination. It's inherently slow and more often than not its right hand doesn't know what its left hand is doing. The same applies for a lot of other big corporations out there - so really there's no need to take offence for something that's just implicit side effect of being big.
@Alexey:
Note that this bug doesn't only affect GC engines (Boehm GC *is* widely used and all Mono apps would be affected the same way). Debuggers and exception stack tracers would be affected similarly as well.
So I totally disagree that there are not many affected applications.
> There's just no way to report a bug against the OS itself.
I know at least four ways:
1. Send a crash dump automatically. This works very well for bugs that reproduce often.
2. Find a friend working in Microsoft.
3. Go via the support line. You will have to pay for the support call. You will have to be convincing enough to go though the first line of defense. :-)
4. Go via the Premier support (if your employer has it). The people will be more knowledgeable.
There are business reasons why Microsoft (and any other company producing commercial software) is not trying to fix all bugs in released products. It is just not affordable.
> I totally disagree that there are not many affected applications
I didn't say that there are not many GC or other applications doing thread hijacking. I've said the number of applications affected by the change in Wow64 will be much higher (all 32bit apps running on 64bit Windows) than the number of applications doing thread hijacking.
> 1. Send a crash dump automatically. This works very well for bugs that reproduce often.
That won't work for any bugs that don't crash.
> 2. Find a friend working in Microsoft.
I have friends working in MSFT, but none in the OS team. Again, if MSFT is a backyard business, I'd agree this would have to do.
> 3. Go via the support line. You will have to pay for the support call.
Hang on, we just spent so much time hunting down /your/ bug and now you're asking us to /pay/ to get... support? It may be costly for MSFT to fix a bug, but you'd think it's just as costly for us to hunt down these bugs.
> 4. Go via the Premier support
We don't have that. I wouldn't think a lot of small / medium firms would have that. MSFT isn't the only software provider we use - it wouldn't make any sense economically to subscribe for premier support for all our vendors (you of all people should know since you've been preaching about affordability of a software firm).
Again, all those favour big firms over small / medium ones. I'm sure in a lot of countries, that would violate some form of antitrust / anticompetition laws.
> That won't work for any bugs that don't crash.
It also works for hangs. But surely it does not work for all bugs.
> to /pay/ to get... support?
I'm sorry that the reality is turned this way. Next time I am creating the Universe I'll fix it. :-)
On a serious note, it sounds outrageous if the goal is to get as many bug reports as possible. But it is actually OK if your goal is to filter out only the most important ones.
Again. It is my opinion only. Please don't repost with a remark "Microsoft's official opinion is ..." :-)
> On a serious note, it sounds outrageous if the goal is to get as many bug reports as possible. But it is actually OK if your goal is to filter out only the most important ones
I've always believed the user pays for support the (software) company provides to the user. Paying for providing support to the company is just ridiculous.
Does having Connect category for the core OS cost so much? MSFT can always ignore submitted bugs at last resort.
> Please don't repost with a remark "Microsoft's official opinion is ..."
But it certainly shows what "Microsoft's culture is...", which I take to be no different to Microsoft's opinion.
Post a Comment