Free Support at Microsoft

[boozin_late]

If you have questions on any of Microsoft's products, you can post your questions to Microsoft.

http://members.microsoft.com/partner/support/newsgroups.aspx

I recommend to sign up for the "Microsoft for Partners Newsgroups". You'll get better advice than the "public" forum.

[AbecX]

Be prepared to give information regarding yourself and your company first before seeing anything. I went through all the registration process which took about 10 minutes as I had to setup abecx.net as a company, luckily I was able to use my previous setup Passport account ( via hotmail ), now they have more information on me then the government :)

The interface isn't to bad, I actually like it which is rare for me to say regarding a MS GUI, it reminds me of the outlook express layout, hit the plus sign to see replies, very simple to maneuver.

As far as the replies go, they look like canned responses ( to be expected ) that came from the knowledge base, which is actually pretty useful tool, so this would be a good place to go after that. I would recommend their Knowledge database first and this as a second step for unfindable answers, the average response time seems to vary depending on when you submit the post and the amount of information you give, obviously the earlier in the day the better, but I have seen some late night replies ( 10pm and later ) as well. They also offer additional help if their reply doesn't satisfy you as needed.

Microsoft Knowledge Base (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx)

[MoonDog]

I signed up last summer through a company that I do IT work for and got XP Pro for $40. Of course that is $39.95 more then its worth.

[AbecX]

Thought I would go ahead and stick this at the top for a while, not only because its my first sticky thread, but because it might help some users.

Plus I did do a 45 minute review on a microsoft product lol