"Have you ever wondered what really happens to those Windows error reports you can send to Microsoft whenever a Windows app crashes? How many reports it must receive before taking action? Or whether it's worth your time and effort to send duplicate reports if the error occurs repeatedly? I did, and I asked Microsoft. Unfortunately, after a week and a handful of assurances that they were working on responses, the software giant refused to speak with me."
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Member since:2005-04-01
Nonsense. He doesn't want specifics.... he just wants to know if he should resubmit bugs and how many reports it takes for action. That is not sensitive information any way you cut it unless they are discarding the information outright. It sounds to me like they simply aren't using it, which is why they are hiding behind a mask of "no comment."
Member since:2005-07-06
And he received the answer - yes, the more a bug is submitted, the more attention it will receive. To ask a goofy question like "And how many does it take before it is acted on?" is ridiculous. Did he really want to hear "Well, when we receive 137 reports we act."?? Obviously there is no cutoff, just a general rule (repeated here again) - the more a bug is submitted, the more attention it will receive.
A non-article, IMHO
Member since:2005-07-08
(Yes, he should resubmit, at worst the system will take care of it automagically.) I would suspect the reason for not releasing the numbers is that they vary per product/team, so it's not something that could be measured. Also bugs are of many different kinds. Debugging a crash that happens in a race condition could take quite a few reports to be helpful for the developer. On the other hand there are other bugs which could be fixed in 5 minutes (except for the rigorous testing process of course) with just one crash report in hand.
(Also being a developer forced to respond to support requests sometimes I could very well understand the pain for the MS people to answer such questions. You have to keep in mind that the people working with the WER system are developers and they consider other metrics important than a basic user. I often find myself unwanting to explain the technical details to "basic users" because the technical barrier between my thinking and theirs is relatively high and it would take a lot of time for both of us.)
Member since:2005-07-06
"It sounds to me like they simply aren't using it, which is why they are hiding behind a mask of "no comment."
Adam, I'm surprised by this statement. Why would MS go through all the trouble of allocating hardware resources (machines, bandwidth, etc), code to run it, etc for something as complex as this, and then simply not use it?
Anything that software developers can use to make their products more robust is a godsend, and I know for a fact from my many MS developer friends that WER is one of the 'heart and soul' apps that MS uses to make bugfixes. They get an enormous amount of data on a daily basis, and they also have a very complex routing system in place so that reports go to the correct teams/get triaged/etc.
Another reason they are probably reluctant to give out specifics is that then gives all the naysayers another moving target to hone in on, i.e. "well, MS said they get 10,000,000 bug reports a month, so why did they only release 5 patches last Tuesday?"
Member since:
2005-07-06
The title of the article is misleading. They did speak to Al Sacco several times. What he is forgetting is that Microsoft is not at liberty to disclose how the information is being used but if the ultimate end goal makes Windows better than I'm all for it. It was more of a bunch of "curiosity killed the cat" questions that Microsoft doesn't have time for. I wonder which email address he tried to contact Microsoft at, and if he even got the right team or just the general PR people. He'd be better off asking the developers if they use the information and how they use it.