Multimedia Device Does Not Work?

[mutz]

If your TV card or similar device stopped working after you updated its driver, better take a peek HERE.

MS arrogance on this one is really a PO.

[Gurm]

Umm... I must be missing something. Looks like every other knowledgebase article.

- Gurm

[Ribbit]

I think he's referring to the way they say "You need this patch. Contact us for information on getting it." rather than "You need this patch. Here's a link." The former almost sounds like they intend to charge for it.

I had this "problem" yesterday when an NT4 box decided to trash its NTLDR file. Fortunately a little googling turned up the utility I needed. It was only about 45K, so why couldn't they have just put a link up?

[mutz]

About three weeks ago, I updated the driver for my PCTV Pro, which included the latest version of the software. It stopped working in the sense that I got into an endless loop of "catrostrophic failures". I can usually sort these things out, but nothing, including thoroughly cleaning out everything Pinnacle, HD and registry helped at all. Pinnacle support, though competent and helpful enough couldn't get to the bottom of it either. I got the impression that Pinnacle was under raging siege from customers over the same problem.

Then I tripped over this MS Knowledge base tip in a forum.

The MS arrogance is "Ho-hum, put up a note somewhere for the peons who might happen upon it." If you dare to click on the support link for the fix, you get taken a denigrating route to how you are going to pay for THIER **** UP!

Microsoft "confirms this is a problem" as if it had nothing to do with them. This is the same attitude IBM had up to about 5-6 years ago that cost them so heavily. IBM suits used to sing odes to Tom Watson before starting work kind of crap.

Grrrrr!

[Gurm]

Whoa whoa. I don't see anything about paying.

Usually when this happens they make you call because it's a file downgrade or a dangerous system file.

Have you followed through and actually been charged for this?

- Gurm

[mutz]

I got XP Pro with a hard disk or some other component I bought, so it's an OEM version. In the getafix routine they check the XP S/N and if it is OEM they shove you off to the OEM manufacturer of your system, which in this case, that's me.

All the telephone options were in the US, so I chose the e-mail route for getafix. They then offered options of $35 home user, $99 for business user or a service contract. In special cases charges may be waived, blah blah. The time, the "press 2 if you..., level after level of idiots to go through who all handle you with suspicion, intimating you are the idiot and you obviously did something wrong. The FBI and IRS are more agreeable than MS.

The way I think it works is they get a statistic over the aoutomatic error reports. If there are "only" thousands of reports of a particular error, they make a note for the next SP. If it goes over a million with lots of noise, they might deign to put a hotfix in Windows Update.

Thankfully I don't have to deal with MS and their ilk very often, but when it does happen I ask myself where the hell is mankind headed...

[Gurm]

Yeah, I keep hearing about pay-as-you-go support.

But every time I call up MS, I end up with a friendly technician who fixes my problem.

- Gurm

[mutz]

Well most of my experiences with support online or on the phone with other companies have been very good and gotten to a solution quickly.

A call to MS in Switzerland, after six levels of "press 2 if you want", gets me shunted to Germany or Holland where I get some harried, super speedy impatient guy who barks up every tree other than the one I'm pointing at, and then starts pumping solutions at me before he has grasped the question.

With one exception two years ago and that was great. Somone I talked to at MS support admitted that they were under enormous pressure from MS, all calls were monitored, they got crap when they forgot to smile while talking. The girl told me she had just quit and was walking out the door at four o'clock and never coming back, was going to burn her PC and buy an iMac.

In desparation once I called the US 800 number. I got a guy who couldn't grasp why I was calling from Switzerland, couldn't believe that if I was calling from Switzerland I could possibly be speaking English, asked me if I knew where my keyboard was, was the computer turned on, etc., had a rolling deep black voice with a New York accent, would have been fun to otherwise chat with him, but I said skip it. I found the answer at TechIMO.

Pardon my rant, but three weeks of no PC TV, getting to the brink of format C: and reinstall everything (Pinnacle advice) which I'm going to do anyway, just to find out that it's MS, stream.sys and hundreds of affected .dlls, and then the MS labyrinth...

Then I found aphids all over the roses, mealy bugs in the oleander and bugs at MS. The aphids and mealy bugs are dead, MS is next. Besides, I wanted to watch the Canada F1 while doing some photo stuff on the machine this afternoon...

rant, rant... thanx Gurm, nice Dobhi.

[The PIT]

I think pay as you go is an attempt to discourage the dumb user. You know the type.
Dumb user:I can't print.
Techi: Have you turned your printer on.
Dumb user: How do I do that.

[mutz]

Dunno 'bout that. Depending on the price and sophistication of the product, there should be two levels of support.

One that improves the product and corrects problems with the product, plus basic dummy help. This should be free and will improve sales.

A second level that educates, guides and straightens out dummies beyond the first level for a fee. Dummies are usually willing to pay for this and some companies make good money on it.

Whatever, MS should make free, expedient and easy access to corrections of their errors through an extension of Windows Update or something along those lines.

When companies get too big, they tend to forget how to simplify.