How do I report a bug in Windows 10?
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So it's not at all uncommon for us to run
into problems with Windows 10, be it misbehavior, be it crashes,
be an out and out bugs that we can identify as such.
No software is perfect in Windows 10 is certainly no exception.
The real question is, what do you do with that knowledge?
How do you report a bug to Windows Ten?
There is an official mechanism, but I want to caution you first.
This is going to annoy some people and I apologize for that.
But a lot of what I hear people
complaining about as bugs in Windows 10 are fact, not bugs at all.
They are Windows 10 behaving exactly as it is designed.
The bug that they feel they've encountered
is, in fact, something they simply don't like or something that changed that they
didn't expect or any of a number of different situations.
The person experiencing the bug is perhaps unfamiliar with how
the software is supposed to work and in fact is using it improperly.
I often refer to this as operator malfunction, and I've done that myself.
I have certainly misused software only
to find out that what I encountered wasn't a bug in the software.
It was a bug in my own way of using that software.
And once I understood what was supposed to happen, it all made sense.
I may not have liked it,
but I understood how it was supposed to work.
So there are definitely scenarios where a bug is not a bug, it's simply an opinion.
Now, the good news is that the reporting
tool I'm about to show you is in fact for both.
But please understand that a bug,
an actual failure to operate as expected as it was intended to crashes and lost
data and any number of those kinds of scenarios,
those are very, very different from things simply not being to your liking.
Microsoft needs to hear about both,
but it's the bugs that are more likely to get acted on.
I also need to point out that not all bug reports are created equal.
If you submit a report that is nothing more than your ranting about something you
don't like, they're not going to listen to it.
They just aren't. They shouldn't.
On the other hand,
if you take the time to provide a bug report that has useful information,
what you expected, what actually happened, the details of your configuration,
the same kind of information that I might ask for when you ask me a question.
Those are reports that are significantly more appreciated and more importantly,
significantly more likely to actually get someone's attention.
You may never hear about it.
In fact, it's very likely you will never hear a response to your bug report.
But by providing a complete, concise,
well written, well thought out and researched bug
report, you've increased the probability that somebody will read it and that,
in fact, somebody will take action on it. So how do you do the bug report?
Let me show you over and Windows 10 home,
the Windows 10 feedback hub is what we're looking for.
So I'm just going to click on the Start menu and start typing "feedback".
And there it is, the feedback hub app.
When you fire that up,
you get an opportunity to give feedback to make Windows better.
Now they say report a problem or suggest a feature for what I've been able to tell.
They both basically give you the same thing, so what they're really doing here
is a quick top level sorting of things that you think are truly a problem.
Crashes, bug reports, that kind of thing or things you want to suggest as a feature.
It's up to you which one you want to use.
Obviously, you have the opportunity to enter whatever you want in these fields.
So when you summarize your feedback,
again, a one sentence, very short summary that clearly identifies
what it is you're talking about, what it is.
The problem is it's not windows is broken.
No, it's something like file explorer
displays the wrong file size in some cases.
That's a great summary, right.
That's a great topic.
And then you can go into more detail about exactly how you got that to happen,
what you expected, what your system is like and so forth.
How to write good feedback is a good
primer on exactly what they're looking for in the feedback that they want.
You'll have an opportunity to choose
a category for this and you'll be able to find similar feedback.
This is one of those search functions that basically will tell you if there are
others who have already reported similar issues.
And at that point, you'll also have the opportunity to simply
say, yep, yep, this is what I've been experiencing.
I don't need to do anything more.
On the other hand, if what you're experiencing is unique or
the similar feedback doesn't include the information that you really think is
important to include, you'll have the opportunity to add more details.
Now, it will be suggested that you sign in with your Microsoft account fact.
You can see it here at the top of the screen.
If you ever expect to hear back about
the feedback you provide, I actually recommend you do this.
They will acknowledge receipt.
I believe they'll actually automatically
acknowledge the fact that they've received your feedback.
And if there's anything happening
with that feedback, that's the account that they're going
to send the feedback to that they're going to let you know about.
I recommend you do sign in with your
Microsoft account whenever you submit feedback so that you have an opportunity
to hear back later about how things turned out, not guaranteeing you're going to.
But if you do this, you at least have the opportunity now to more issues.
I mentioned before that not all bug reports are created equal.
I want to point out also that not all bugs are created equal.
It's very interesting.
There are individuals who feel
passionately that something is seriously broken,
whatever feature that might be, they feel very strongly that it's horrible
and that it never should have been this way.
And yet when you or I or Microsoft looks at the report of what's actually going on.
It's just not that big a deal.
I want to prepare you for understanding that not everything is important.
Microsoft has to draw the line somewhere.
Every software vendor has to draw a line somewhere.
They can't fix everything because
otherwise they would never release a product.
So they're going to prioritize what comes in.
Not only are they going to prioritize the bug reports for being well written
and complete and accurate, but they're also going to prioritize
the bugs themselves based on their severity, their impact to other users,
how likely they are to actually happen, those kinds of things.
Data loss is one of those things that is
prioritized higher than well, this just doesn't display properly.
You get the idea.
That's not to say that they're ignoring all of these bugs.
They may very well be looking at each
and every one of them, but they are going to triage them.
They are going to prioritize them.
And not every bug report is going to get addressed
finally.
Should you do this, should you bother?
My take on it is probably not
surprisingly, I really don't think that this is worth
your time and effort unless you're absolutely certain that what
you've discovered is something that is incredibly unique or incredibly common or
something that only you can provide value to Microsoft on.
And it's so important that they're going to pay attention to it.
I honestly don't think it's worth the time.
Here's why I say that.
One is I don't want you to have an unrealistic expectation that because
you submitted something, it's going to get addressed.
That's unlikely to happen for reasons that I've already mentioned.
But more importantly,
there are already programs in place that you're probably not a member
of for people to submit their feedback on all sorts of issues earlier.
The bugs that are reported by these so-called Windows Insider program are,
I would expect, prioritized higher than the bugs coming in from the field.
The Insider program is where you get access to early versions of Windows before
they're actually released to the general public.
For exactly this reason, insiders are encouraged to provide all
sorts of feedback about the operating system.
Even not everything they report is going to get paid attention to.
But they're the early adopters.
They're the ones who are doing a certain amount of early testing.
They get higher priority.
If you want to be one of those, then sure,
go join the Insiders program and everything that that involves.
But if you're just a user and you just happen to run across something that you
don't like or it's misbehaving or whatever,
you're probably better off realizing that somebody is probably already reported
it, probably even somebody in the Insiders program.
It's in a queue somewhere.
It may or may not get fixed.
And if it does get fixed, it's going to take a while.
You would be better off
understanding how best to live with whatever it is you found.
Be that just accept it or work around it
or learn to use the product differently or use a different product.
You get the idea.
Focus on those things that are in your control.
Once you've released a bug report or
feedback to Microsoft, it's out of your control.
Don't get me wrong, if you want to provide feedback, by all means, please do.
It's an important aspect of how Microsoft learns about their products.
But if you're looking to get something fixed and you expect that fix to happen
quickly, it's unlikely and unrealistic to think that it will.
For the article on which this video is
based, for related links, for updates, for comments, visit.
askleo.com/4385
I'm Leo Notoenboom.
This is askleo.com. Thanks for watching.