Feedback & Feature Issues

[Joe Jackson]

1. I realize you encourage people to use the Feedback Hub App but what if someone is not able to access this app due to an issue with Windows.  After further investigation, I located this Insider Program forum. Wouldn't it be ideal if the following broken links 301 redirected to this forum site or a similar site?
   
   https://www.microsoft.com/resources/howtotell/reports/report.aspx?displaylang=en
   https://windows.uservoice.com/
   https://insider.windows.com/en-us/fb/
   
   And retired sites like this.  Shouldn't they 301 redirect to a new home? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/collaborate/connect-redirect
   
   The reason I ask is because of the public-facing impression that can occur...
   
   
2. I would think that you would want to offer cash bounties not just for security issues but for usability issues within Windows where specific Microsoft features do not function for advanced users let alone the average user of Microsoft Windows.  For example, the spellcheck within this forum highlights the word 'reseller' and 'piracy' as incorrectly spelled words.  I routinely encounter issues with Windows that have need for improvement.  I would think there would be a public-facing forum where someone could look up the issue at hand to see if it had already been reported and if a resolution was in progress, etc.  This forum post is also being marked as spam when it clearly is not spam.
   
   
3. Wouldn't it be important for Microsoft products to utilize error capture meaning an expected error occurred therefore I am going to communicate to the user what they need to enable or disable or modify in order for this feature to work properly.  Presently, Windows error messages typically tell you next to nothing and then you spend an extended period of time Googling various resources to isolate/identify what might be the issue.  You then proceed to try anything and everything in order to discover just what Windows wants in order for the product or feature to work properly.  These error messages often come up when performing initial setup and therefore would be expected.  So the conclusion would be why didn't the program just tell me what it wanted?
   
   
4. A year or more ago I was the victim of software piracy by a major reseller in the United States. I called multiple phone numbers at Microsoft to no avail. No one expressed an interested in learning about this major reseller that was intentionally or inadvertently selling pirated Microsoft software.  I was able to follow the process with the Better Business Bureau and they did in fact remove and ban them from membership but Microsoft never returned my calls to learn about the issue at hand.  I would think an issue like this would be of great importance to Microsoft.
   
   
5. Homegroup has a number of issues in setup and functionality. After some time, I discovered that I had to grant Local Service permission to a MachineKeys folder and then Homegroup initial setup started working correctly. As typical, the Windows error message did little to communicate the actual issue and nothing was being logged in Event Viewer.  By default, Homegroup initial setup would likely not work for the average user.
   
   
6. Using Windows Explorer with the preview pane enabled while browsing a shared folder on a network drive or network share results in HTML files that become locked so then when you open the HTML file you cannot save it because the Preview Pane has locked the file.  Once you disable the Preview Pane HTML files are no longer locked and you can open, edit and save HTML files on a network share without issue.  Shouldn't this issue be resolved?

[#2]

Joe, I think you will have a better chance of getting some of these issues resolved, or at least seen by the appropriate people, if you just post them individually, i.e. one specific question to start each conversation.

If you have feature requests then a good forum is UserVoice itself, rather than this forum. 

For advice on using this forum, see the "Info Center" link in the menu bar, or go straight to the 'Getting Started' forum for more info.

[#3]

As described at the very beginning of the post UserVoice is not online: https://windows.uservoice.com/

[#4]

Ah, yes. I'm still using wpdev.uservoice.com but they retired the non-developer windows.uservoice.com to the Windows Feedback Hub app. 

I agree, there should be a redirect from the first link but I think that is just link rot and probably people Bingle for it anyway.

Windows Insider link seems to work: https://insider.windows.com/

Not much they can do about the windows.uservoice.com link since Microsoft don't own the site.

The docs.microsoft.com page is actually hosted in GitHub.  You can follow the "Edit" link to the GitHub page and raise an issue there (or even do it yourself and submit a pull request!)