That's interesting. Maybe I'll start submitting those now that there's a chance an actual fix will be listed.

I have seen stats come out of MS's PR department that came from these crash reports. I have also seen similar fixes from IBM, Intel, HP, and others when I clicked 'Yes'. I started clicking Yes when various MS apps started crashing on me because I wanted to be sure that somebody somewhere had to deal with my crash report. I at least wanted to be a part of a statistic about how often IE crashes or something like that. Who knows, it might be effective. But as a tool to find fixes, it has proven useful.

Ah, optimism, so that is why I send those crash reports. The results can be helpful though after a good few years of the same crashes many still seem to have no resolution. I would be interested in the behind-the-scenes action of those MS crash-reports, a bit of transparency in a deal we are part of.

My old computer used to BSOD every couple of weeks, and each time I'd report it to MS. Then, one day, it told me there was a fix, in the form of an update to my modem drivers. The computer never BSODed again.

Ditto!

Random crashes used to frustrate me. On occasion I'd send a report but more often I wouldn't bother (apathy always prevails over optimism at 2.30am!). So imagine my surprise when I do send one and it tells me to grab some new drivers for my cable modem.

Not had a crash since. Well done Microsoft!

In saying that I don't buy in to the 'bashing' of large corporations. I've chatted, on a professional basis, with a few MS employees and they do care but have the worst/best problem to handle - large numbers of users. Good for money, bad for testing!

The only thing that's frustrating to me is that Microsoft seems to only link to "legitimate" fixes to the problems (e.g., major manufacturers' driver updates and the like); it'd be awesome if the keeper of the crash resolution database also allowed in links to weblogs, forum posts, and the like (or, as an alternative, forced techies to write MS Knowledge Base entries about them and then posted those).

For example, for about a year, I would see a BSOD every few times that I synced my Clie T665C to my machine. In thinking it through, it only started after I installed a new video card; I always assumed that it was the video card drivers, and was neurotic about updating those drivers every time a new set came out hoping that they'd solve the problem. I'd also report the crash to Microsoft, and every time, it would just tell me that "a device driver" caused the problem, but nothing more.

After loosening up my search terms and being more willing to trawl into the 20th and 30th pages of Google hits, I finally found the solution -- it isn't the video card device driver alone, it's the combination of three things: those drivers, the USB driver for the Clie (and a few other Palm-powered devices, it seems), and the fact that my machine is dual-processor (well, HyperThreaded). And that forum post found a simple, elegant solution: tell WinXP that it should emulate Win98 when running the Hotsync application. That's it, and I haven't seen a crash since.

Wouldn't it be nice if MS could incorporate pointers to fixes like that into its database?

I have to admit I'm a little surprised by this information. I'm of the group that doesn't let anything phone home for any reason, and ended up getting a big processor/high RAM machine so as to circumvent BSOD problems.

But seeing the results you've all gotten, I just may change my thinking.

I just saw a reference to my post here, and realized that I hadn't noted your Clippy comment. Well, then I'll admit that I like Clippy too. Heck, the world being what it is, why not take a little delight in something meant to help and to please?

I'm of the group that doesn't let anything phone home for any reason, and ended up getting a big processor/high RAM machine so as to circumvent BSOD problems.