Windows XP crash analyst needs analyzing
So my laptop OS has crashed a number of times in its brief lifetime, and each time I have let the recovery program send the data back to Microsoft. Usually, this is no big deal, and I’m happy to be a good beta tester – even though I’m using Windows XP Pro, a product that shouldn’t be this buggy after service packing. However, I had an episode that shows that the user experience guys didn’t look very hard at the crash analysis/data gathering program.
I was riding BART and my machine died. I was heading through the usual screens (why does this first one default to Don’t Send? How many users will just press Enter and not care which option is used? As a software guy, at least try and increase the odds of submission…)
Since I wasn’t online, I got the Connect First screen. No problem, I’ll send it when I get home. (again, Cancel is default?)
I’ll just sleep the computer until I’m done with my evening event and get to an internet line……
Nope.
So I have to leave my computer powered on in the car for hours, hoping the battery holds out, because I’m too stubborn to not report the error. Why should I have this problem? I’m pretty sure the first window lets me Standby when it is active, but if I agree to report then I am in one of those little-used-lightly-tested scenarios that should never have to happen. Really, you should never even get the second screen.
How to fix this? Easy… take a page from Mozilla or Apple. They’ve had crash reporting for quite a while that summarizes the data and queues it in the background, and I’ve never had an issue with it sending later. Nothing should be so critical to communicate in this application that it can’t wait until I connect to a network.