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Microsoft Quietly Previews PC Advisor Repair Tool
notthatwillsmith writes "On Friday, Microsoft invited members of the Windows Feedback Program to try out a preview of a new application, the Microsoft PC Advisor. The new tool promises to 'continuously monitor your PC for problems and give you the solutions to fix them, in real time.' After testing on several Vista machines with a variety of problems, Maximum PC has written a full report on the Microsoft PC Advisor. The short version? Like every other 'PC Repair' tool they've tested, the new apps signal-to-noise ratio is quite bad, and it misses the obvious and important problems, like out-of-date videocard drivers."
Did it detect the problem that Windows was installed, and recommend replacing it?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Speaking of flushing spent turds out of a toilet, isn't Microsoft a little too late to the already-overdone "Windows diagnostic tools" arena?
also RTFA and you discover that you will have to fill out a "10-minute survey" just to get tools that others have been providing for free.
Microsoft:" Okay, we're fucked. keep pandering to the idiots and hope that none of them see compiz-fusion."
This tool seems to be made to improve user experience for non technical users and the whole review goes on and on that technical user could already do these things by himself.
That MS would surely get in trouble for this, but MS could very well use a repository, along with MD5 hashes of recommended programs.
They could provide what we Linux users have with Synaptic and dpkg. They could provide "MS Legit Software", "Driver Repository", "3rd party Software", and "GPL and derivatives". There's 6 branches of Windows to do right now (98, ME, 2k, XP, 03 server, Vista), and most of them are rather outdated.
But really, can we really say how bad this tool is by it not catching somewhat out of date drivers? Where exactly can a bot get the filename for the specific driver you need? nVidia, ATI, and Intels websites are rather hard to find drivers IF you screen-scrape.
You appear to be trying to install Firefox as your primary Web browser. I've deleted the downloaded installer and alerted the authorities. Is there anything else you'd like to do today?
If you have to use a whole bunch of programs that consume a whole chunk of the computer's processing power just so that the computer can function properly, then something is damn wrong with it, on the very basic level.
I mean, wouldn't it be easier to fix the reasons of those common problems if they're so common, than it is to make some bizarre problem-solving applications?
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
...is good at advising to upgrade out of date drivers if they cause problems.
I've had it diagnose a bunch of dodgy drivers with success before; I'm not quite sure what the angle on this tool is.
throw new NoSignatureException();
That reminds me I haven't burned my share of christians today. Only two more and I'll have enough points on my atheist card for a new black robe!
The tool did NOT find the problem that was causing their crashes. Which was that their video drivers were to versions behind.
What the tool DID "find" was mostly meaningless (empty IE's temp folder and such).
I think you might have told me more about yourself than about atheists.
Just what i'd expect from microsoft.
Take the most annoying, derided aspect out of every piece of software they've ever made, turn it into a stand-alone app, and make it apply to your whole computer.
"it looks like a virus has infected me, your helpful system-fix program! would you like some help with that?--Or WoUlD YoU LiKe To Go To HeLl"
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
...so it's time to add another. ;-)
The REAL problem is that these tools have a different agenda to the end user. The end user just wants the damn thing to work. The vendor wants to sell them more software, do a security theatre dance around the PC. The geek coding isn't able to step back and work out what the user will and won't understand (and none of these tools have really good help explaining the technical gibberish in plain English). So what these tools invariably do is just throw up technically correct but obscure messages that the user just clicks to get rid of. Half the time if the user does bother to take the suggested action, the outcome is bad because the software was never smart enough to make the decision, and the end user just never understood the problem in the first place.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Okay, I'm going to make a post here that falls into two parts.
Firstly, this is a pretty useful utility for those that aren't very computer savvy. Everyone knows that most "slowness" can be resolved by simply maintaining the computer every now and again. Clearing temp files, defragmenting, cleaning off viruses, trojans, and other malware. So for the people that are prone to these types of problems, this is a pretty useful utility.
Their alternative is either "the friend" whom has now grown up and gotten a real IT job and doesn't want to be bothered by them, or Best Buy's GeekSquad who will try and tell you your ram is broken and your hard drive died, all the while copying your personal album off of the PC to their internal servers.
Now, the more "OMG anti M$" side of the argument is that Microsoft needs to do something to help improve its image with consumers. Right now, consumers just don't like Windows. In fact, quite the opposite is true. There is a growing movement of disdain for Windows. While every day normal Joe might not care either way, the people he or she asks for computer purchasing advice does care.
Microsoft, after years of keeping hands off on a lot of issues with Windows due to the whole "antitrust" thing, is finally taking charge and trying to improve their image with their software. A "We Care(tm)" approach to a person's computers. That not all Windows is good for is viruses and spyware and Microsoft is actively trying to help its users.
Doing the above, at least Microsoft hopes, may improve confidence and trust in the company.
Either of the above ways you wish to look at it, it's a free utility. It's useful, provides some recommendations about your computer, and provides some help to users who otherwise would just get frustrated.
It also has some sort of built in advertising tool that I'm not sure what exactly is there for since there are no "Offers" available yet.
It seems to be someone who's more "ATHI" than anybody else, but what's exactly an ATHI?
I'm getting a bit frustrated waiting for the industry to realize they need to make those applications a little more interactive.
For example, from the article, the tool suggested a number of IE fixes when the primary browser used on the system is Firefox. The tool detecting the default browser is easy, but IE may still be used while not being default.
The solution: just damn ask the user, does he use IE despite it's not the default browser. Just make the process more like a dialog, let the user add some input to the process.
When a collection of solutions is formed, don't just spit them to the user, but ask him what problems he has, what apps he uses, and dynamically trim/modify the proposed solutions according to that. It's still faster than waiting for an actual person to show up and fix the problems, and that person would still ask the user a lot of those questions.
The same tools that were being discussed before, called Vista Gurus, that wander around Best Buy stores and try to convince people how good Vista is?
Am I missing something?
We don't burn Christians. The lions don't like their food cooked.
It's free ... it's by Microsoft ... and anything which puts purveyors of useless "fix your PC" utilities out of business is OK by me.
No sig today...
The new tool promises to 'continuously monitor your PC for problems and give you the solutions to fix them, in real time.' After testing on several Vista machines with a variety of problems, Maximum PC has written a full report on the Microsoft PC Advisor.
PC Advisor: "I noticed you are running Vista. That is probably the reason for your variety of problems. Would you like to downgrade to Windows XP, for this limited time offer of $99.99? Cancel or Allow?
Windows Firewall: "PC Advisor Repair Tool is trying to reach the Internet. Block or Unblock?"
Windows Defender: "I noticed you are running a program called "PC Advisor", Windows Defender does not recognize this program. Would you like to remove or disable "PC Advisor"?
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
Clippy:
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
The thing that seems to not be addressed is that this tool is specifically targeted for a small number of people. The software itself is not "beta", however the issues and problems that it searches for and repairs should be considered beta. The whole point of releasing this to a small, specifically invited group of people is to fine tune and make the detection and repair database much more useful before it is ready for the general population. The following is taken directly from the invitation email:
"As part of this study, you would download and install the Microsoft PC Advisor application and provide feedback on the impact on your Windows Vista PC through 3 brief surveys over the next 6 months"
For a product that is at least 6 months away from being released to the general public, this article is no more than a misrepresentation of the goals of the software at this point in time. And as the "invited" users use the tool, they will have the chance to provide feedback to help improve the capabilities of the utility.
That being said, this tool will never be a useful tool for power users that already know how to tweak their systems and update software, and the final release database may not be much better in the end anyway. But if that is the case, write an article at that point Will Smith, not when a product has barely begun building a database and is on an invitation only basis. I like to bash Micro$oft as much as anyone else, but this article is FUD. I'm guessing that Will had this passed along to him from a third party with some missing information, at least I hope, it is the worst piece of "journalism" I have seen from the man.
Marcaen
Again, the article leaves out information provided in the original Microsoft invitation. The 10-minute survey has nothing to do with what will be the finished product at least 6 months from now, it is more like an informal beta-application. The users testing this will also be filling out additional surveys as Micro$oft makes more tweaks and fixes in order to gather feedback on what works and what doesn't. The key here is that this is not intended as a public project at this point in time. The finished product will not require a survey. And the users that the finished product will target are the users that have no clue what other free tools are out there ... it is for users that want to have Flash on their system to watch youtube, but have no idea what "Flash" is, to help them keep up to date on security fixes, etc. Unfortunately TFA excludes information from the original invitation that makes the entire story completely out of context.
Marcaen
it misses the obvious and important problems, like out-of-date videocard drivers
Funny, my Linux install updates these!?!
You should have logged in. I'd have modded you up for brilliant insight.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I fail to see anything bad about this... I mean assuming the kid used a condom for the hooker anyway.
This problem has already been solved. The Sparkle library provides easy standardized self-updating functionality to OS X apps. How does it check for updates? It simply accesses an appcast, an RSS 2.0 feed that has one item per update with an <enclosure> tag pointing to the download. The technology is neither Sparkle-specific (although the particular format Sparkle uses is), nor is it complicated. People just have to use it.
Yeah, scraping ever-changing site layouts to determine software versions is bad but the problem is trivially solved through the use of a standardized (even if ad-hoc) interface. Microsoft could easily just add an appcast client to WU and have programs register their appcasts with WU on first launch. If the <enclosure> tag doesn't point to a Microsoft certificate for the file the update is marked as "uncertified" and if the tag points to a certificate that doesn't match the file after both have been downloaded the update failes with a security warning and the user is advised to wait a few days for news from the vendor and update manually if necessary. It's essentially a decentralized, limited version of a package manager requiring very little work from MS.
Then they just need to add querying capabilities to WU (available to Administrator-level accounts) and repair software can actually try to determine whether the drivers are up to date.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Something else to natter at me. Does Microsoft realize that, when we were talking about new popups that Windows could defecate onto the screen, we were just kidding?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Actually, this is how it would really be like if the majority of all people were atheists:
ATHEIST KID: I'm flying to planet Zebulon to fuck a hooker. Because we atheists can fly. Through space.
ATHEIST MOM: Okay, ATHEIST SON.
ATHEIST KID: Afterwards I'm going to smoke rolled up plastic foil with my friends because our super-lungs can handle any kind of toxic smoke and we want to rub it in the Christian guys' faces.
ATHEIST MOM: Okay, son. Don't accidentally kill too many innocent bystanders.
The atheist kid leaves the room. The father comes home from work several minutes later.
ATHEIST DAD: Hey!
ATHEIST MOM: Hi, ATHEIST DAD! I'm pregnant again becauce our super-gametes were too super for both the condom and the pill.
ATHEIST DAD: No problem; like always we'll abort by going back in time and zapping the ovum with the X-ray laser vision all us atheists have, which I'm pointing out for no reason at all.
ATHEIST MOM: Oh, and don't go into the bedroom.
ATHEIST DAD: Why not?
ATHEIST MOM: Superman and Batman are making out in there. Again.
ATHEIST DAD: You really should produce your movies elsewhere.
Suddenly, their neighbor runs into the house.
ATHEIST NEIGHBOR: Come quick, there's a Christian outside!
ATHEIST MOM: We'll be right there!
The atheists quickly put on a couple of black spandex outfits with an "A" logo. Then they exit the house and fly into the street where a twenty meter tall heavily armored combat Christian is tearing up the neighbourhood with its shoulder-mounted "Stigmatizer" nailgun. The atheists combine their powers to emit a deadly laser beam that vaporizes the Christian in a huge cross-shaped explosion.
RANDOM ATHEIST: Damn you, Christian! We claim to be tolerant of all religions. But we really hate yours! That's because we atheists really got the short end of the stick by only getting immortality, flight, time travel, X-ray laser vision, telepathy, telkinesis, super-charisma, untold riches, dashing good looks and the ability to understand British English while you got nailguns and dyslexia! Die, Christian!
THE END
Super-scary, isn't it?
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
We cry at funerals for the same reason that anyone else cries at funerals: the person has died and we will miss them. Even if we are sure they are also Christian and therefore we will see them in heaven someday doesn't mean we won't miss them now, similar to how you may very much miss a good friend who moves across the country, even if you know that sometime in the next couple years you'll be able to go visit them. Being Christian and being assured of eternal life doesn't change the fact that we are humans and do have emotions.
Correctness matters. Mercy matters more.
Seriously devote that time and those resources to making the target system more hardened more resilient instead of giving me another monitor that sucks up CPU and RAM to give me some flashy lights and blinky things to impress me that you're serious about my welfare. The best system is a dumb box that just works 100% every time all the time, forever.
Somebody who is "a"-typical is not typical. Somebody who is "a"-theistic is not theistic. Theistic people believe in the existence of one or more gods.
The global economy is undergoing a general meltdown, but you're actually sitting there rejoicing at the fall of MSFT (along with everything else) and using it as proof that they're finally dying?
GOOG is also down something fierce, should I start screaming to the four winds that they're a "stumbling zombie"? What about IBM, down to 4-year lows? Are they dying too?
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
They choose to spy user more (possibly asking for money later) instead of fixing their OS.
Even Apple with dedicated and trusting userbase can't dare to offer such thing. Apple has almost hidden from user "Send system information to Apple" in "System Profiler" (in Utilities). What it does is produce a XML file, bzip2 it and send that plain compressed file to Apple without and cryptic stuff. A complete opt-in thing promises nothing! That is the way to go. You can't promise user to "enhance".
If MS suspects third party stuff (devices) for Vista problems, they should travel to the building providing these:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winlogo/default.mspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHQL_Testing
I have seen 20% CPU using WHQL certified network drivers, programs certified by MS developed by people who doesn't really know how MS Installer arch works etc.
While spending my time writing this, MS already knows a lot about the users computer. They just make it official now. Also they have stolen concept of http://www.pcpitstop.com/ (lame looking but clean). PC Pitstop _does_ suggest really meaningful things in return.
The black robes are completely awesome, but be sure to get the Charles Darwin Limited Edition ones: they have extra pockets for incendiary devices and come with an evolution of man-popup.
I'd think someone would wear a seatbelt because it keeps you from dying needlessly and leaving your loved ones. I'd think anyone that cared about their loved ones would cry at their funeral because they will really miss having them around for the rest of their lives.
Doesn't matter what you see the after life like - as a human you'll miss your loved ones here and now if you care about them. It's part of being human.
...Next week should be nastier than last week for the soft, ring the bell and watch them go to zero. No product, no value, game over.
That is a very cool tool, thank you for posting it!
It was cool to slide the bar in the chart and look at how a particular stock did during specific days during our current financial crisis.
For M$ specifically I was surprised that their stock had not been higher then it was over the last year to year and a half. I mistakenly thought it had gotten pretty high per share but not in 2007 or 2008. Very cool tool, thank you very much.
Is your Internet Throttled? Install DD-Wrt, OpenWRT or Tomato to learn the truth! Google: 1Gbps/1Gbps: 5 Communities
Going through your posts, and its surprising you have been so under the radar with this one twitter. But alas you yet again made a mistake of using the under the radar accounts to shill yourself and of course recently exposing yourself with "M$" twitter identifiers both in this and the other post you made on this article
Twitter sockpupet shilling again people
Proceed to karma hell!
Please GPL your OS, then people will fashion fully functional tools.
You would still be able to charge tons in support (who will people prefer to support Windows?...)
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Are you seriously telling us that MS could not develop a protocol to validate drivers?
It would be as simple as asking a copy of a given driver in order for your product to obtain MS seal of approval, then MS would keep a database of all drivers and compare that against whatevere it is in your own computer.
With companies like Intel, Nvidia, HP, Asus and other big manufacturers this should be an smooth, automatic process.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So here we have another piece of software that will eat up my CPU cycles and run innoculously in the background (ha ha). Doesn't Vista run bloody slow enough?
My web domain.
If my drivers are working, why would I want to update them? If the new driver has a bug fix I need or a new feature I need, then fine.
I've been working in a computer shop for a while now, and believe me when I say that most of the click-happy people out there that download every new version of every driver in their system end up with broken systems.
Those who have been in the "consumer" software space for a while might remember CyberMedia First Aid, a total piece of shit program for Windows 95 that actually launched Telnet when prompting the user to grab a file via FTP. First Aid 98 improved on things a bit, but not much.
There was also Symantec's short-lived PC Handyman that did the same thing as the Microsoft PC Advisor but also included instructional videos, an NLP interface sitting on top of an inference case base, and limited functionality tie-ins of Norton AntiVirus and Utilities.
Obviously, neither caught long term fire with the public. I'm not sure why Microsoft thinks PC Advisor will be any different.
PC Repair Advisory Tool
SURELY NOT!!!!!
I wonder if it also uninstalls itself then?
I've found to have your pc run most quickly and efficiently simply delete or disable all the Microsoft craplets like this.
A sticker applied to the front that says "wwww.linux.org". Problem solved.
Have gnu, will travel.
It seems "the soft" are doing quite well today. But I'm sure you'll blame that on the markets recovering, of course.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
So why don't you cry every time a family member leaves somewhere? Is it because you don't miss them? Also, why did you only answer one of my questions and avoid the others?
Also, why did you only answer one of my questions and avoid the others?
Sorry, because I was busy and overlooked the other one. I realized after the fact that I had not answered the other one, but decided I would not unless someone showed interest in an answer. Now that you have, here we go.
So why don't you cry every time a family member leaves somewhere?
Because it's only a short amount of time.
Is it because you don't miss them?
Again, it's because it's only a short amount of time. When I had my first college girlfriend I discovered the capacity to miss someone five minutes after we parted ways. That kind of passion does not usually last long, though. As time went on, things mellowed out some. Nevertheless, I didn't cry. I didn't even cry when she went out of the country for a semester. You can't make blanket statements about crying or not crying proving something about our religion because people are different, even if they all believe the same things. One person may have little emotions when a loved one leaves for half-a-year and not show anything, another may have little emotions and be brought to tears, another may have intense emotions and still not show anything, while another may have intense emotions and start bawling.
Conversely (to the question of why don't we cry, because in this case I did cry), when my parents dropped me off at uni my freshman year, I shed, I believe, a single tear. It wasn't so much that I missed them (a big part of me didn't as I had been ready to get out of the house since my last two years of high school), but that life was inexorably changing, which is something into which emotions come to play. As time went on, I began to appreciate them more, and now I do actually miss them.
It seems like you're trying to apply logic to emotions, which is not something that is usually successful (see xkcd #55).
Why do Christians wear seat belts in states where it's optional?
For me, because:
-I don't want to get in a car crash and be injured or die. Why don't I want to be injured or die?:
-If I don't die in the crash, chances are a seatbelt will nonetheless lessen the amount of injury I undergo. If I'm not going to be taken to heaven as a result of the accident I'd still like to avoid being disabled or in intense pain while still living here on earth.
-I do actually like my life.
-There are people on this earth I love.
-I think God still has plans for me on this earth and I will not tempt fate by doing reckless things. I will not be paralyzed by fear of danger, but where there are opportunities to mitigate risks, I will do so.
Shouldn't they be happy to die?
The people crying at funerals are not the ones dying. The dead person is not crying. I think what you meant was "shouldn't they be happy that their friend has died and gone to heaven?" Assuming that's what you meant, my answer is that they probably are happy, but sad at the same time. They are happy their friend has gone to a better place, but sad that they no longer get to be with them. This is similar to parents who cry when their child leaves for college or gets married. They are happy for the great things in life the child is moving on to, but sad because they will miss them. Experiencing two (or more) contrasting emotions at once is not an uncommon thing.
Correctness matters. Mercy matters more.
Not everybody who puts a dollar sign in Microsoft is a twitter sockpuppet.
Read this post before you decide. Personally, I think if twitter typed this...
...his keyboard would spontaneously combust.
MSFT up 18.6% for the day. How are you going to explain that to your sponsors?
Erris? I thought you always replied to dedazo with deadzero. I guess you're not getting that fastball through the strikezone tonight, are ya?
I'm sure that will become reality, just like all your other "M$" predictions.
But we'll revisit this later, for the lulz.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Haha that would never happen in an all-Atheist society.
MSFT closed at 23 for the week, with a high of 27 or so. Any comments? When is this collapse going to start?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
So trollboy, any comments? Probably not, eh?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo