Holdouts to Windows 7, 8.1, and 8.1 RT won't be able to ping Microsoft's own forums for tech support from the company anymore.
The Redmond software behemoth announced on Friday that, come next month, its staff will no longer be combing the official forums for 13 outdated products to offer support advice and assistance. Users will still be able to access the forums and get advice from each one, albeit without feedback from a Microsoft employee.
"There will be no proactive reviews, monitoring, answering or answer marking of questions," Microsoft said in announcing the move.
[...] Customers are still able to get paid support from Microsoft through to the end of the extended support periods.
In addition to the three outdated versions of Windows, Microsoft is pulling the plug on official forum support for the Office 2010 and 2013, IE 10, Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, Surface RT and Surface 2, and Security Essentials. As with Windows 7 and 8.1, those products are all past their official support lifecycle as well.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 13 2018, @07:35PM (3 children)
Every time someone posts anything to the Microsoft Support forums, some Indian guy named Rameesh Manmeat or some other very Indian-sounding name shows up with a Microsoft MVP badge and says "you need to try a 'clean boot'" and gives generic ass directions on how to make things even worse. They don't actually answer anything or attempt to give problem-specific responses 90% or more of the time. It is misleading trash at best and dangerous at worst. If they are support then the bridge they were holding up collapsed a long time ago.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday June 13 2018, @07:43PM (2 children)
It was the written version of Moss asking you if you had turned it off and on again.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 13 2018, @09:25PM (1 child)
More likely Roy than Moss. Moss was the hardware/coder geek of the pair. Roy tended to have more direct contact with the users.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:00AM
Yeah, lol, Moss was too busy trying to figure out what you did after you unplugged the soldering iron (or DID you unplug it??.....what's that emergency number again?????)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---