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10/22/2006: "Software Support 101"
I think I have the ideal big company software support process figured out -
Step 1) Have user fill out form, with many detailed fields for software, version, OS, free disk space, etc.
Step 2) Ask user to reboot, ignore what was submitted from step 1, and ask for detailed information on the software in use, version info, OS details, free disk space, etc. Ask if that fixes the problem.
Step 3) Ask user to uninstall, reboot, reinstall, and reboot the first product that the company makes mentioned in the answers from step 2. Ask if that fixes the problem.
Step 4) Ask user to uninstall, reboot, reinstall, and reboot for every product that the company makes listed in the answers from step 2. Ask if that fixes the problem.
Step 5) Ask user to uninstall, reboot, manually delete files, clear all temporary files, manually delete registry keys, reboot, then reinstall and reboot for every product that the company makes listed in the answers from step 2. Ask if that fixes the problem.
Step 6) Inform the user that their system/registry must have gotten corrupted, and that they need to wipe their disk, and reinstall everything on their system. Ask if that fixes the problem.
Step 7) Inform the user that they have a really rare case (actually just very rare to persist to this step), and provide steps to disable the first product that the company makes that was listed in step 2. Ask if this fixes the problem.
Step 8) Tell the user that this really should take care of the problem. Provide steps to disable every product that the company makes.
So far I have seen this from HP (for their printer drivers - net result was to disable the services with the problem "HPZinw12.exe takes almost 100% of the CPU in a laptop"), Symantec (discussed below), and Diskeeper (which had the added bonus that the product would automatically wipe the disk for you, to make sure you didn't skip any steps).
Now maybe if I could patent this, we might get somewhere.....