For the Paranoid
I was listening to streaming audio on a Windows 98 machine the other day [perish
the thought] when Internet Explorer 6.0 crashed on me. As usual, an error
reporting dialog popped up. Now, I always thought that this "feature" for bugs
was useless. Lo and behold, there was something new in the dialog: what appeared
to be a hyperlink. And what are we trained to do whenever we see blue underlined
text? Click it! And, out of curiosity, that's what I did. I was whisked away to
a MSKB page explaining what the problem was and what I could do to fix it.
Apparently, there was an update available for the Windows Media Player that I
didn't know about before. I thought: "How nifty!" Perhaps all of this error
reporting will lead to quicker fixes? One can only hope. Now, if you're
ultra-paranoid about your data, then perhaps you'll want to make sure this
"feature" is turned off in Windows XP. Tap WIN+Pause or right-click on My
Computer to open the System Properties dialog. Flip to the Advanced tab, click
the Error Reporting button, then disable it. Furthermore, you can customize how
error reporting takes place - for whatever program(s) you want.