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e-mailing Microsoft, with attachment

SusanB-M1

Incurable Optimist
SusanB-M1
Joined
Jul 17, 2006
Messages
3,766
My computer is quite comfortable with this site again thank goodness, but it has now decided to be very awkward about another! Dolphin Tech Support sent instructions about how to find a 'Dr Watson' report, which is apparently created whenever Internet Explorer comes up with a window which says 'Internet Explorer has encountered a problem ..' My computer teacher tracked it down and put it into 'My Documents'. I intend to send it to Microsoft, but they send you round in circles, don't they? 'To get in touch, contact the website/ phone us...' I phoned, was told to write via website, e-mail comes back saying ....
I intend to get this information to Microsoft, even if I have to deliver it by hand!! But I wondered if anyone knows how I could send them an e-mail with the document attached, or can I simply copy and paste it onto the website - bearing in mind that, even condensed, it seems to be about 30 pages of stuff. And of course if it did arrive in their offices, would anyone look at it?

I do not like to be defeated!
 
Forget about emailing. It would be much easier for you to go to Microsoft's Knowledge Base and enter the main part of the error message into their "Error Message Wizard". This will take you to a page - or several pages - of not-too-technical help. This page (or pages) is almost certainly what MS tech help will send you to anyway.

Or, you could stop using Internet Explorer and switch to Opera or Firefox.
 
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Sophia8

Many thanks for the info - I'll have a look at that this evening.
 
I'm just curious. I remember Dr. Watson from Win 3.1. As I'm sure everyone is aware, Win 3.1 crashed with considerable frequency, often clobbering great chunks of other programs and drivers on the way out. Its only virtue was that it was easy to fix. So anyway, in the 5 years or so that I ran Win 3.1, never once did Dr. Watson detect anything wrong. The screen be rolling, strange sounds coming out of the speakers and warning boxes flashing dire messages, and Dr. Watson, if it ran at all, would say "no problem detected" or whatever it used to say. Of course, since there really isn't anything wrong with my XP system, I get the same message. So anyway, my question is, is the doctor still homeopathic, or has he learned to do something useful?
 
Interesting- I had a hunt round my system (running Windows XP) for Dr Watson as I hadn't seen any sign of it since I got this PC (2 years ago) and found the Dr Watson folder- a sub-folder of a hidden folder naturally. I also found a large log-file in it detailing some of the errors that my PC has encountered- I recently had a problem with BSODs happening on a daily basis. Unfortunately Dr Watson hadn't informed me that any log-file had been generated nor does it seem to have picked up on program crashes. I also noticed that there are two versions on my PC- the original drwatson.exe and drwtsn32.exe. Microsoft's site had this to say on the matter, "Drwatson.exe is an older program error debugger that was included with earlier versions of Windows NT. Microsoft recommends that you use Drwtsn32.exe instead of Drwatson.exe in Windows XP." This is possibly quite helpful advice except for the fact that it takes some finding to discover it and also makes me wonder why they didn't just remove the older version when they put the newer one in the OS.

SusanB-M1: To access the log-file directly, firstly you will need to go to a desktop view, click on "My Computer," select Tools from the menu bar at the top, then "Folder Options" from the drop-down menu, select the "View" tab on the next box that appears and check "Show hidden files and folders." Click OK and then the log-file for Dr Watson can be found via this path:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Dr Watson
At least that's how it works on my PC. The file will be called "Drwtsn32.log" If you want to send a copy to Microsoft then you should be able to attach that as a regular email attachment.
Hope that helps.
 
thanks, Irish Pete, I hadn't even know that "drwtsn32" existed. You can run it from the start/run menu. drwtsn32 comes up with a screen that actually shows a little information, including where its log is kept, and gives you an option to change the path. It even has a help file.
 
All above information much appreciated. This morning I followed the link to the Microsoft Wizard and put in a number which I think is a sort of reference number and it came up with suggestions but I'm afraid it's all quite beyond me! I think I'll have to wait for my computer teacher, Richard, to return from holidayng in Australia. Maybe by then the problem will have just gone away, and the computer will have learned how to allow the Supernova auto virtual focus to work without interference.

Looking again at the Dr Watson report, I see that when Richard transferred it to a document it takes up 83 pages because he had to make it fit the width of the page or something. Just in case any of it means anything, here is the first section:

Application exception occurred:
App: C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE (pid=3692)
When: 18/02/2007 @ 18:48:50.718
Exception number

*----> System Information <----*
Computer Name: S-BUCKINGHAM
User Name: Susan Buckingham
Terminal Session Id: 0
Number of Processors: 1
Processor Type: x86 Family 15 Model 47 Stepping 2
Windows Version: 5.1
Current Build: 2600
Service Pack: 2
Current Type: Multiprocessor Free
Registered Organization:
Registered Owner: Susan Buckingham
 
from the OP --

I intend to get this information to Microsoft, even if I have to deliver it by hand!!
Click to expand...

AFAIK, the United States Postal Serivice is still in business, and has professional couriers whose job is to deliver stacks of envelopes to Microsoft headquarters daily, and Microsoft employs professional staff whose job is to read the contents:

One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399

(indicate the appropriate department on the envelope)


By the way, anyone want to venture an opinion why the debugger logger was called "Dr Watson"? I guess it was a reference to Sherlock Holmes' constant companion --- "Elementary, my dear Watson"
 
don't expect mailing things through the mail to microsoft to work. Even if it does you're looking at months to getting a reply. Pretty sure it's standard practice at microsoft not insert random thumbdrives or cds that show in the mail into their computer.

Of course that assumes you guess the correct dept to begin with.

Dr Watson has been part of Windows since the 3.0 beta. The name has carried forward for the error reporting systems in all the OSs. If you see a pop-up after you get an error that asks if you want to report the error to Microsoft and a send button, that is Dr. Watson. And using that automated error reporting is the same as the error wizard on the help pages. If an explanation of the error is available it will pop-up after the report is sent. I've only had a helpful suggestion pop-up once in many, many uses.

Some history on Dr. Watson:
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/08/10/449866.aspx
 
Webfusionand Kevin.
Thank you for the info.
Dr Watson has been part of Windows since the 3.0 beta. The name has carried forward for the error reporting systems in all the OSs. If you see a pop-up after you get an error that asks if you want to report the error to Microsoft and a send button, that is Dr. Watson. And using that automated error reporting is the same as the error wizard on the help pages. If an explanation of the error is available it will pop-up after the report is sent. I've only had a helpful suggestion pop-up once in many, many uses.
Click to expand...
Do you think that a real live person ever looks at these reports? Now that you have explained this, I will in future click on the 'send' button and see if something turns up. Well, until I get fed up anyway!
 
SusanB-M1 said:
Webfusionand Kevin.
Thank you for the info.

Do you think that a real live person ever looks at these reports? Now that you have explained this, I will in future click on the 'send' button and see if something turns up. Well, until I get fed up anyway!
Click to expand...

Not at each individual report as they come in, but if common crashes show up then developers will probably see quite a few of them reported for a particular incident.

The only time I wouldn't hit send is if you're working on a document that contains private information. Part of what is sent back is a memory dump and that dump probably contains at least part of the document you were working on.
 
I had times where I tried working with microsoft. It's very hard. At one point I was in direct discussions with a microsoft VP in order to resolve an annoying situation.

It took 6 months and personal involvement (by the VP) to get the problem resolved.

As a programmer, I reported quite a few confirmed bugs to microsoft. Even with them acknowledging the bugs, they haven't been fixed 2 years later (a new OS later).

Goodluck.
 
Kevin and Blight

Thank you. Fortunately, if I am typing letters or something the internet is unlikely to be running at the same time and, fingers crossed, it has not happened for nearly a week. It is almost certainly something to do with the auto virtual focus too, but that is a Dolphin problem. When I go to the Google (home) page, the AVF sits in the top RH corner, but when I want it to read the Favourites menu, it tries to read the Google page at the same time. Perhaps I'm giving it too much stressful work to do! I tried the Dolphin Users' group, but I don't think there are amy MB fans there.
 
Tech Support at Dolphin rang me today and corrected a 'Map file' in Supernova, so that the voice is now behaving itself!

I tried the difficult MB again the other day and managed to make the 'InternetExplorer has encountered a problem...' panel come up, so this time I pressed Enter for 'Send report' and a panel came up with a set of little blue squares going across from left to right. How does the Microsoft automatic suggested action report arrive - via e-mail?

By the way, Dolphin also say that for the moment Firefox does not work with its software unfortunately.
 
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Basically what the reporting does is send microsoft a batch of information about the crash (which module, what address, etc...)

Then they have a program that scans this data and looks for similar matches which may indicate a consistant instability in a specific code location.

There is no person looking into the actual crash case by case (it's impracticle to do due the nature of why things crash).
 
Blight said:
Basically what the reporting does is send microsoft a batch of information about the crash (which module, what address, etc...)

Then they have a program that scans this data and looks for similar matches which may indicate a consistant instability in a specific code location.

There is no person looking into the actual crash case by case (it's impractical to do due the nature of why things crash).
Click to expand...

Eh ? What is that meant to mean ?

P.s. as part of my real job, I do crash dump analysis (VMS, Tru64), and the last time I looked, I think I'm a person.
 
Blue Bubble:
Microsoft gets litrerally millions of these crash reports. Quite a few of them are due to bad system setup, bad hardware, non-microsoft software, etc...

So much so that microsoft doesn't manually go over each one, but rather tries to identify repeat crashes in the same components (and then they go over it manually).
 
Do Microsoft have an automatic system of acknowledging certain kinds of reports in the way that the BBC automatically sends an e-mail receipt? Probably not, I suppose, as it would take up too much computer space.
I was talking to Dolphin Tech Support the other day about anti-virus because they put Norton 2005 on with this new computer last year. I was asking about 2007, but that is not compatible at all, so I've renewed the 2005...better the devil you know!
I tend to assume that things I have bought will work perfectly!! I must look up Zoom Text+Jaws to see what that does, but I shall not change from Supernova, even though that means I can only use the JStG site with difficulty, because they are based here in England - and you get to talk to the same person every time!
 
How would they even acknowledge you? The error reporting doesn't contain any contact detail (at least not on my system).

Windows VISTA sorta has an improved system where it would identify the crash and contact microsoft servers to check for possible updates that may fix it, although I have yet to see any fix for various crashes I had (even vista crashes in microsoft components).

As for anti-virus. Anti-Virus software is getting worse and worse, I don't even use one anymore. You may think it's silly, but for 99.9% of Virii/Trojan, you must take active action in order to activate the virus/trojan on your computer, so if you're calculated and careful, your computer wont get infected (and having a decent firewall installed guards you from about 0.05 of the remaining security risks).

If you insist on running anti-virus software, I would ditch norton and switch to NOD32, norton is bloated and might degrade your PC experience. NOD32 is not nearly as bloated.

The sad thing is that after installing norton, it can be quite difficult to uninstall, even if you use their uninstaller, it may leave remnants on your computer which can cause weird issues.
 
How would they even acknowledge you? The error reporting doesn't contain any contact detail (at least not on my system).
Click to expand...

Oh, I see. thank you.
Next time I talk to Dolphin, I'll ask them about the various points you make re anti-virus.
 
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