Is it worth sending Microsoft information when your computer or application crashes?
You are working away on a very important document and all of a sudden the program you are using crashes. You may have lost all your work and all that remains is a dialog box asking if you would like to send information to Microsoft. Like me your first thought might be to click the “Don’t Send” button. But what would happen if we clicked the send button and would it be worth a try.
Before we make up our minds let’s have a look at how this all works. When windows detects that a program on your computer has crashed it collects information on what your computer was doing at the time. This information includes what version of windows you are using and what drivers where loaded and what hardware is in your computer. No personal or information t6hat could identify you is sent, the service is anonymous. Windows then displays the send to Microsoft dialog box. If you click send and are on internet windows will pass this info on to the Microsoft Online Crash Analysis site. If a solution to your problem is already available then it will display the solution for you to follow and hopefully fix the problem. If you are not on internet at the time windows will store the info till you connect to internet again.
But what if there is not a solution to your crash? Well the information you have sent in will be collected together with any other crashes that seem to have the same cause and will be prioritised so that Microsoft technicians can have a closer look and see if they can find out what caused the problem. So it all sounds like the perfect answer to all you computer troubles, maybe not.
If the problem you are having is quite common and is caused by a windows fault or driver fault it is quite likely you will get a solution. But if you are suffering from something like a hardware incompatibility or fault may never get a response from Microsoft.
So is it worth it? I would have to say yes but if I did not get a solution from Microsoft straight away I would start looking elsewhere for help. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
