Hi Richard;
Lots of questions, I'll attempt to answer what I know, but perhaps a MVP
would be better at giving you all the details or referring you to a site
with the answers to your Ms forum questions like how they got named.
There is a link to these peer to peer support forums in the help files of
Windows Defender, actually a re-direction I think. It's the last line of
Help > About Windows Defender:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=55403
In order to post a new question to the web browser newsgroups you must sign
in with a Windows Live ID which is explained when you try signing in.
Starting a new question is more likely to get noticed, and certainly more
polite than what's referred to as hijacking someone else's question by
opening a new question under their already opened topic. There's a video
link on the above page explaining much of the detail of newsgroup usage.
What I meant by 7 bug reporting forums is that while there are 7 individual
forums related to WD, nobody is here policing the posts so often topics get
posted where they don't really belong. That doesn't really matter all that
much, except that it is easier for others to find things if they are in the
appropriate forum. For instance a bug report of a WD false positive would
probably logically be opened under "Spyware signatures", but could be
posted anywhere and it still will probably get read by people that follow
these forums. The main idea is you want your posting to be noticed and
then hopefully get a response back. It's also considered impolite if not
worse to post the same question to multiple forums because the forum
readers will then have read it multiple times, so yes, choosing the one
appropriate forum is a good idea. Above all use the search function to see
if your question has already been asked and perhaps answered already. It's
amazing how many people fail to type a simple search keyword like an error
code, preferring apparently to wait for an individual response. There are
very few things left in Windows Defender that are seen by only one
individual.
Here's a Ms guide on to how to ask a newsgroup question:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375
--
Regards, Dave
This is great, I think I have found the bug reporting forums too. But I
found
it by accident and I don't know how to raise my own bug report yet.
I'm still trying to work out the process, there is this discussion group
called microsoft.private.security.spyware.onlinecommunity
and you "report bugs to all 7 WD bug reporting forums" at
privatenews.microsoft.com - sorry I don't get the connection between
privatenews and private in this context - and one has microsoft near the
beginning and the other has it backwards at the end.
Seriously dumb questions coming ... Why would you want to report bugs to
all
7 WD bug reporting forums? Wouldn't it be better to just choose the most
appropriate one? How do you do that?
If I came across something called Microsoft.private I wouldn't use it
because I would think it is private to Microsoft, shouldn't it be called
Microsoft.public or Microsoft.partner?
Would Microsoft be wllling to put a link to this bug reporting site on
the
Help Menu of it's beta products so everyone who has a bug can report it
easily?
Is there a web page that explains what forums there are and what they are
for and help us decide which one to use to post to Microsoft when we have
a
bug (as opposed to those you post to other developers when you have a bit
of
C# code that doesn't work)?
Dave M said:
Eureka! You have found the bug reporting forums... actually all 7 WD
bug
reporting forums, right here in privatenews.microsoft.com. All these
newsgroups are monitored and occasionally responded to by someone with
[MSFT] after the username.
Please confirm you're referring to a Full scan when you say Complete. A
quick scan usually just takes a few minutes, while a full scan could
last
from around 30 minutes to an hour or two. I'm not seeing the behavior
you're reporting on my system, so it would be good to know your
Operating
System and the WD version levels from Help > About WD
Like this on my XP sp2/MCE system:
Windows Defender Version: 1.1.1347.0
Engine Version: 1.1.1440.0
Definition Version: 1.14.1464.7
As a side note, the recommendation is to run a scheduled quick scan and
then a full scan only if a problem is found during the quick scan,
although
it would be prudent to also run a full scan occasionally (perhaps
monthly).
The only strange behavior that I see in this regard, is that following a
Custom Scan my home page of WD shows the last scan as a FULL system scan
at
the scan time that I did the Custom Scan even if I Custom Scan only one
folder. So we're almost noticing completely opposite behavior... very
strange indeed.
--
Regards, Dave
No matter what sort of Scan I use--Complete or Quick--it always gets
logged
and dated on the Windows Defender Home page strictly as a "Quick Scan"
(which
makes it hard to keep track of the actual kind of scans I've made)! I
have
tried in vain to find a Forum which is designed to report "bugs" like
this to
the Windows Defender development team, but there doesn't seem to be
any!
This "newsgroup" seems to be the closest thing I've found to a
bug-reporting
forum, but I'm not sure if I'm actually accomplishing anything
productive
by
noting the bug here. Am I? Thanks!
