[TeMPOraL]

Ever search for an issue with Microsoft product, found every answer leading to MS tech support forums, where countless "certified MS MVP professional supporters" ask ridiculously clueless questions "for clarification", and never deliver anything even approaching a problem analysis, much less an actual answer? Personally, I no longer click on links going to answers.microsoft.com or technet.microsoft.com. It's a complete waste of time.

[SturgeonsLaw]

Oh yes, those sites are infuriating. Every first answer is a copied and pasted generic response asking to run "sfc /scannow" or some other borderline useless incantation.

I also skip right past it and usually find better results on Serverfault, Spiceworks, or even Reddit. The gold standard seems to be blog posts by some random dude where they actually spend a couple of paragraphs describing how the fault occurs, and how the fix works, instead of just providing a command prompt one-liner and sending you on your way.

[prepend]

I skip them too and Microsoft forums are particularly infuriating. If you so get past the insane dipshits asking you to reinstall, you get pointed to a feedback form where you can report the bug and upvote it. And the posts are years old.

What’s worse is that there are frequently problems that have solutions but the moderators aren’t aware of them.

One of the reasons I don’t like using Microsoft products (looking at you PowerBI) is because there’s not as active a developer community to help answer my questions.

It really makes me appreciate stack overflow and how it is so much better than the alternatives.