This article shows you how to find the help you need to use Windows Vista most effectively. Windows Vista includes a wide range of help resources, both online and off, that you can access through the built-in Windows Help and Support program. This article describes how to use Help and Support and the various areas it offers, including access to the Knowledge Base on Microsoft Support Services. It also mentions other resources that you may need to turn to when you run into less tractable problems. You may also want to use Windows’ Remote Assistance feature to get help. Article 21 explains how to use Remote Assistance both to receive help from others and to provide help to others.

Using Help and Support

Windows Vista’s Help and Support program is the latest in Microsoft’s efforts to provide computerbased help resources powerful enough to silence the ringing of the phones on its costly support lines. Help and Support lets you use a single window to search for help both on your computer and on the Internet. Better yet, many hardware manufacturers are now providing product-support information that’s accessible through Help and Support.

Help and Support Is Much Different than Windows XP’s Help and Support Center

If you’ve used Help and Support Center in Windows XP, you’ll notice a huge difference in Windows Vista. Where Windows XP’s Help and Support Center had a busy window loaded with options too many for most people, perhaps, Windows Vista’s Help and Support keeps its interface as simple as possible. But the help information is still there, and you can access it in several ways. One disappointment in Help and Support is that you can open only a single window at a time. By contrast, Help and Support Center in Windows XP let you open two or more windows. You could then pursue a different line of inquiry in each window, which gave you a better chance of finding useful information without running into a dead end and having to retrace your steps using the Back button.

Starting Help and Support

Choose Start   Help and Support to open Help and Support at the home page. Your hardware manufacturer may also have customized Help and Support by adding content to it or by adapting its interface. For example, if you have a Dell PC, you may see some Dell support resources; if you have a Lenovo PC, you may see resources for accessing Lenovo support; and if you have an HP PC, you may see resources for shifting your troubles onto HP.

Configuring Help and Support

Before you start plowing through help in Help and Support, you may need to change the text to a comfortable size, choose whether to use online help or offline help, and choose Help settings.

Changing the Text Size

If you find the text size Help and Support is using too small or too large, click the Options button in the upper-right corner and choose a different size Largest, Larger, Medium, Smaller, or Smallest from the Text Size menu, as shown here.

Choosing Whether to Use Online Help

Help and Support lets you choose whether to use offline help or online help. If you have an Internet connection, online help gives you a wider range of help information, including the latest help available. The easiest way to choose whether to get online help is to click the Offline Help drop-down list in the lower-right corner of the Help and Support window. The drop-down list’s name changes depending on whether you’re currently using online help or offline help. Choose Get Online Help or Get Offline Help from the shortcut menu, as shown here. You can also use the Help Settings dialog box to specify whether to use online help. The Help Settings dialog box also lets you choose to participate anonymously in the Help Experience Improvement Program, which gradually improves Microsoft’s help mechanisms by collecting details of user searches. To open the Help Settings dialog box, click the Options button and choose Settings from the drop-down list. Select or clear the Include Windows Online Help and Support When You Search for Help check box, and then click the OK button.

Finding Your Way around Help and Support

Help and Support has access to a large amount of information in Help files that Windows installs on your hard drive, together with troubleshooters for stepping you through the process of finding solutions to common problems and links for running Windows programs such as Remote Assis- tance and the System Configuration Utility that may help you solve or eliminate problems. But Help and Support’s strongest feature is that it also provides a gateway to information resources on the Web and Internet. Because of the amount of information and resources that Help and Support offers, you may find that it takes you a while to get the hang of navigating around Help and Support. This section high- lights the main ways of finding the information you need.

Searching for Help

If the Help and Support home page shows a link that seems to be related to the topic on which you need help, click the link and see whether it takes you to useful information. If you see no related link on the home page, the easiest way to find information on a particular topic is to search for it. To search, type the search term or terms in the Search text box and click the Search Online Help button. Help and Support displays a list of results, with a brief description of each; click a result to display the full topic.

Making the Most of the Microsoft Knowledge Base

The Microsoft Knowledge Base is an online repository of knowledge and wisdom accumulated by Microsoft about its products. Given that the Knowledge Base is one of the main tools that Microsoft’s support engineers use for troubleshooting customer problems with Windows, it’s a great resource for searching for solutions to problems that Vista’s local help resources don’t know about. The disadvantage to the Knowledge Base, and the reason perhaps why it’s not more heavily emphasized in Microsoft’s battery of help solutions, is the way it’s arranged and the necessarily scattershot nature of its coverage. The Knowledge Base consists of a large number of answers that Microsoft’s support engineers and other experts have written to questions that frustrated users and developers have submitted. The answers vary greatly in length, depending on the complexity of the problem and user level, ranging from beginner to super-advanced developer-level topics. Coverage is patchy, because the questions tend to be answered only when they’re not covered in the Help files and other more accessible resources.

Each article in the Knowledge Base is identified by a six-digit Article ID number. Each article has a title that describes the problem it covers, information on which products and versions it covers, a summary that you can scan to get an idea of the contents, and the full text of the article. Beyond this, each article is tagged with keywords describing the main areas of its content. By searching for keywords, you can avoid passing references to words you might have included in the search, thus producing a more focused set of results.

To reach the Knowledge Base from Help and Support, click the More Support Options link on the home page, and then click the Knowledge Base link in the Other Resources section. Windows opens a browser window to the Knowledge Base. Click in the Search Support box, type your search terms, and then press Enter to start searching.

For power use, you’ll probably find it easier to access the Knowledge Base directly from Internet Explorer or your favorite browser rather than go through Help and Support. To go to the Knowledge Base directly, point your browser at http://support.microsoft.com. Click in the Search Support KB text box, type your search term, and then press Enter.

If you know the number of a particular article, enter it in the Search Support KB text box. For example, if you read newsgroups on Microsoft-related subjects, you’ll often see references to particular articles mentioned as the place to find a fix for a given problem.

Browsing for Help

To browse for help, click the Options drop-down button and choose Browse Help from the menu. Help and Support displays a list of its contents, showing major topics - such as Getting Started, Security and Privacy, Maintenance and Performance. Click one of the major topics to display the topics available for it  and then click the topic you want to open. Some of the Help topics provide only information, but most provide links that enable you to open the tools you need or connect to other help resources. For example, the screen includes a link you can click to open the Performance Rating and Tools screen. To search for a particular word or phrase within the Help page that’s currently open, click the Options button, and then choose Find on This Page from the drop-down menu. Windows displays the Find dialog box, as shown here. Type the word or phrase in the Find text box, and then click the Next button to find the next instance or the Previous button to find the previous instance. You can select the Match Whole Word Only check box to restrict matches to whole words rather than partial words so that you find only “print” rather than “printer” or “printing,” for example. You can select the Match Case check box to find only matches for the capitalization you use. When you’ve finished searching, click the Close button the button. Windows closes the Find dialog box.

Navigating with Help History

You can navigate backward and forward in the chain of pages you’ve browsed by using the Back button and Forward button on the toolbar. Unlike in earlier versions of Windows Help, you can’t click and hold one of these buttons to display a list of pages in the Back list or Forward list. There’s also no Help history for finding pages you’ve visited in the past.

Printing Out Help Information

You may want to print out Help information so that you can refer to it more easily - for example, when the steps for solving a problem require you to restart Windows and thus close Help and Support. To print the current topic, click the Print button. Help and Support displays the Print dialog box. The General page offers standard printing options:

You can choose which printer to use, decide whether to print all the pages or just some of them, print a single copy or multiple copies, or even “print to file,” creating a file that you can then print from another computer. You won’t usually need to use the “print to file” capability when printing Help information.

The Options page of the Print dialog box lets you print a whole section of help by selecting the Print All Linked Documents check box. You can also select the Print Table of Links check box if you want to print a table of linked pages.

Using the “Ask Someone” Options

The Ask Someone section of the Help and Support home page directs you to Remote Assistance, the Windows Communities, Microsoft Customer Support, and further support options. You can also access this information at any time by clicking the Ask button on the navigation bar.

Remote Assistance

The most direct way in which you can get help is by using Windows’ Remote Assistance feature to let someone else connect to your computer from a remote computer so that they can see what’s happening and offer advice via text-based chat. If you trust your helper enough, you can even let them take control of your computer so that they can take actions to fix the problem. Article 21 discusses how to configure and use Remote Assistance, both for getting help and for providing help to others.

Windows Communities

The Windows Communities are an assortment of Windows Vista–related online newsgroups that you can access through Internet Explorer or another web browser. Microsoft organizes the Windows Communities, but most of the content is written by Windows users rather than by people who work for Microsoft. You’ll find a lot of useful information in the Windows Communities, but the quality of information and advice is variable.

You Need a Windows Live ID to Sign In to the Windows Communities

Anyone can browse the Microsoft Communities freely, but to ask questions, post replies, or request notifications of replies on a topic, you must sign in with a Windows Live ID. “Windows Live ID” is Microsoft’s new name for what it formerly called “Microsoft Passport.” If you have a Hotmail account or an MSN account, you already have a Windows Live ID that you can use; likewise if you’ve signed up for a Microsoft Passport separately without getting a Hotmail account or MSN account.

If you don’t have a Windows Live ID, you can get one easily by going to the Windows Live website http://www.live.com or the Hotmail website http://www.hotmail.com, clicking the Sign Up link, and then filling in a form.

Once you’ve signed in to Windows Communities or another site, such as Microsoft Customer Support using your Windows Live ID, any searches you run and any questions or replies you post are associated with your ID. The ID helps Microsoft deliver information to you for example, by notifying you of new posts on a topic, but it does mean that your actions are monitored. If you’re sensitive to privacy issues, you may sometimes prefer to search for information without signing in. To use the Windows Communities, follow these steps:

1.  Click the Windows Communities link in the Ask Someone section of the Help and Support home page. Windows opens Internet Explorer or your default web browser, if you’re not using Internet Explorer to the Microsoft Windows Vista Newsgroups page

2.  To search for information, type your search terms in the Search For box, choose the newsgroups to search in the In drop-down list for example, choose Windows Vista Newsgroups, and then click the Go button. Your browser displays a list of results 3.  To browse the topics available, use the navigation links on the left side of the window.

Evaluate Windows Newsgroups Advice Carefully before Following It

You’re probably familiar with the disclaimer “this information comes without guarantee” - in other words, you try whatever is described at your own risk. The advice you encounter on the Windows newsgroups should probably have this disclaimer attached. While some of the postings contain high-quality advice from people who know what they’re talking about, other postings are wrong or dangerous, and following the advice supplied with whatever good intent can threaten or damage your data or your computer. Proceed with caution.

Microsoft Customer Support

Click the Microsoft Customer Support link in the Ask Someone area of the home page to open a browser window to a page on Microsoft Support that explains the support options available for Windows Vista. This page includes links to pages where you can learn about contacting Microsoft via e-mail or telephone and the cost of support.

Finding Help on the Internet and Web

Help and Support provides many links to the Microsoft website and related websites such as the Windows Communities. But if you don’t find the help you need on these sites, search for help on the Web or look in newsgroups:

•    General searches For a general search, take your web browser to a search engine such as Google http://www.google.com or Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com. Use advanced search options to specify exactly what you’re looking for and limit the number of results you get.

•    Hardware and software manufacturers’ sites If you’re having problems with a particular hardware device, check the manufacturer’s website for solutions. Similarly, if you’re having trouble with software, see if the manufacturer’s website contains the answer.

•    Newsgroups The many computer-related public newsgroups such as the comp.sys hierarchy and the Microsoft public newsgroups in the microsoft.public hierarchy can be a great source of specific information.

Using Help and Support to find the help information you need    Choose Start   Help and Support to open the Help and Support window, and then use the links and controls inside it to find the information you need. You can search for information by entering keywords and click- ing the Search button or browse through major topics to specific topics. The Ask Someone links let you launch Remote Assistance, open a browser window to the Windows Communities news- groups, or find contact information for Microsoft Customer Support.

Finding help on the Internet and Web    If Help and Support doesn’t provide the information to solve a problem, search for a solution by using an Internet search engine such as Google or Yahoo! or by visiting a hardware or software manufacturer’s website. You may also want to search through computer-related public newsgroups.