Microsoft Knowledgebase

[alifrog]

I really don't know where I should be posting this question, but can anybody tell me WFT has happened to the Microsoft Knowlegebase? I can go for months without needing outside help, apart from a generic wax doll on which to vent my frustration with sharp pins whenever I try (and generally fail) to find some function or property in the morass of irrelevant results returned by the application Help. However, I have just Googled a problem and found a potential solution, but also a link to a Knowlegebase article that I thought might verify if the suggested solution was indeed the best available.

The link is http://support.microsoft.com/support.../Q112/0/61.asp but every time I click it (or copy and paste it into the address bar, or even type it by hand) I am almost immediately redirected to http://support.microsoft.com/?ln=en-au, which proceeds to offer no useful help whatsoever. The Contact Us options have no topics telling us what has happened to the KB, and when I try the Virtual Assistant (bahahaha) I get a series of "related" topics that bear absolutely no relationship to anything that remotely references the KB. And yes, I ended up shouting - both on screen and, to the great amusement of my colleagues, IRL.

I realise that Microsoft can't possibly address all the queries they would receive if the service was free, which is why they want over $350 for the purpose of telling me what has happened to a perfectly (well, sometimes) useful tool that avoided people like me ever having to contact them directly. I also realise that, being some time since I last referred to the KB, it may well have disappeared ages ago and you're all amazed that anyone is still asking the question. I guess it shows that I usually find what I want here in the Lounge - I just tend to feel that I take more than I give in this forum, as most questions seem to have been answered by the time I even get to read them.

Sorry if this has turned into a rant, but if anyone can tell me how to get any use out of Microsoft Support, I'd be grateful. Then again, I still hanker back to the days when we received thick manuals with our software, which were rendered virtually unnecessary by the fact that they were duplicated in the Help files, which had succinct and useful Search results, plus Bookmark and Print options. Now I'm showing my age. Or I'd even be happy to get back to on-line Help that had reasonbly useful and succinct Search results. Backed up by a working Knowledge Base.

Cheers

Alison C

[macropod]

Hi Alison,

It may be that the original link you found was a dud ... or that the link no longer works because the MSKB as been re-structured (the article is close to a decade old). The MSKB is there there and as functional as ever. I suspect the article you may have been after is: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/112061