

Microsoft launches "Fix It" - jaxc
http://fixitcenter.support.microsoft.com/Portal

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teamonkey
Can someone explain in simple terms what this actually is? The page is so
vague and markety I'm really confused.

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harshpotatoes
From what I can grok. You go around browsing some help documents on the MS
website. On some of the documents, there is a "Fix it" button. You click it,
and it basically automates what's in the help document.

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jimbokun
You just did a better job than Microsoft's copy writers, and they didn't even
pay you.

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skip
This has been a part of the MS knowledge base for at least one year. Why is
this "news" now?

[http://blogs.technet.com/fixit4me/archive/2008/11/19/welcome...](http://blogs.technet.com/fixit4me/archive/2008/11/19/welcome-
to-the-fix-it-for-me-blog.aspx)

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emanuer
No magic at all... I had my "monthly bluescreen of death" but the "Fixit tool"
did not recognize the error. It just told me about a crashing Internet
Explorer. This is interesting because I never used my Internet explorer.

Unfortunately my system is running smoothly for the rest, so I can't evaluate
the ability of the Automated troubleshooters. 2 hours of usage and not
impressed so far.

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chadgeidel
FWIW - many programs use IE's layout engine for their display functionality. I
don't know if it does any more, but Quickbooks used to. The only way I found
this out is when I turned off images in IE Quickbooks failed to display about
half of its UI.

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mistermann
Honestly, this is a great _idea_ for most users, although how MS hopes to pull
it off is a mystery, their cryptic error messages are rarely covered at all on
their official sites...wouldn't it seem reasonable that the developer that
raised the error would be responsible for at least making some somewhat
informational note about it? And now, they are intending to actually fix it,
automatically???? lol

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zeugma
executing binary from a non-secured page seems like a no brainer.

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meroliph
If it was a secure page it would be a-okay, right?

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sp332
At least you would know who it's from. Otherwise anyone could phish you or
MITM and send you any executable they want.

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ben_straub
You still know who it's from, just look at the signature:
<http://i.imgur.com/Icz56.png>

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mapleoin
what sort of magic is this?

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acg
It seems terrible to me that users should even need tools like this. Why
should they have to care about this stuff? Gone are the days when every
computer user is a hobbyist.

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harshpotatoes
I think those days ended a long time ago. When did computers become
mainstream? the 90's? 80s? Gone are also the days of grunge and being able to
perform your own car maintenance. Also gone are the days of subsistence
farming. oh well. Adapt or die.

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icey
This has to be at least an incremental improvement. MSDN's knowledge base has
the worst case of linkrot I can think of on the internet.

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riffic
I'm glad I'll never have to run this.

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Roridge
Is it "install Linux"?

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fuxx0r
a good start for users who dont know anything and wont spend hours of
searching on technical blogs.

simplifying is always the best way to handle with a large front of customer's.

