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Where do you go to get answers to your technical questions.

  • 项目

One of the things I'm currently working on is analyzing our community efforts, so I'd like to turn the blog around and ask:

When you have a technical question about a product, where do you go to look for answers?

Places I know about (in no particular order):

  • My blog :).
  • Other Microsoft people's blogs :).
  • The MSDN Support forums.
  • The Microsoft Newsgroups.
  • Google/Live Search/Yahoo/pick your favorite search engine.
  • Paid Support.
  • Mailing lists (wdmauddev is a great example of this)

I'm not just looking for programming questions - even questions like "where do I get a driver for my <whatever> card" or "how do I do <blah>" count.

 

Any and all answers would be appreciated - I'm just trying  to understand the landscape right now.

Edit to add: Btw, for those of you proposing "Google" as the generic answer, what happens when the answer isn't on the search engines?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    Google Technet newsgroups

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    Easy answer:

  1. google MSDN blog search doesn't work well for me, and google picks up blog articles anyway, so I use google for a single, consolidated search of all Internet content.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    For general questions - Google. For tech questions - Google or other free forums like vbcity,codeguru. Previously the google answers was good one for general questions.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    Google, of course :)

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    That'd be Google. And forums.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    Generally, I use a search engine first. If that doesn't cut it, I use a site specific search of msdn.com, support.microsoft.com, or something like that. If those don't cut it, I try someone I know who I think may have the answer. If that doesn't work, I use free e-mail support options if they exist. Generally, issues aren't important enough to me to use pay support.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    I would say that Google is a valid answer.  If the answer to my question is on a blog or forum somewhere how am I supposed to  find it?  I've used forum search software and it's pretty bad compared to Google's site:forum.site.com feature. Of course there is always paid support, but I'm never sure my question is worth whatever they are charging these days...

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    Arrgh. Hit "submit" too fast.  What I mean to say is that if I don't find it on Google, the question goes unanswered.  Typically, I'm the guy people go to for technical questions they have.  I don't think "I'm the most knowledgeable person" (far from it) but the people who REALLY know can't be bothered with my trivial questions. Perhaps that's the problem.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    For the really hard questions, sometimes I ask reddit/digg/slashdot/usenet/etc people, but I do so indirectly. If you just try to ask a direct question, nobody will answer you. However, you can still get meaningful results if you are sneaky. If I know that the answer to a question 'A' is definitely NOT 'B,' I will try to say something like: "How do I (A)? I think the answer is (B)." If you do this people will trip over each other trying to correct you. Now that you know my secret, please don't ruin it for me.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    Pretty much the same answer as others - Google.    Where google falls down I'll go to more specialized places.   But that's typically only where the terms I'm searching for have overloaded meanings so I don't get a good hit on the first page. Like today - I saw the Zune mentioned on Penny Arcade.   I wanted a little more info on it, so I went to the what I thought was the zune website, comingzune.net, which I'd seen mentioned in the ads for the devices at gamestop.   This was basically useless, there's not a bit of useful info there.   Specifically I wanted to know 'what's the bitrate of the songs at zune marketplace'. So I hit google instead, and found the answer.  This led me to wonder what the DRM implementation was actually like, and a quick google found that as well.  (answer - it's not pretty and it's horribly thought out.  Someone should be fired over it).   The mentions of that led me to wonder if I'd be able to play my audiobooks on it, and a quick google on that determined that no, they don't support either bookmarks or content from audible.com. As long as google keeps answering my questions the vast majority of the time on the first page of results, I don't see why I'd ever switch.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    MSDN forums, then Google.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    I generally turn to Google first.  In fact, I rarely have to go outside of Google.  It searches web sites (even specific sites with the "site:www.microsoft.com" syntax), blogs, news groups, etc.  I keep trying to replace Google with Live, but it's just not there yet. I subscribe to loads of blogs, but that information is rarely searched for solutions to problems.  More frequently it alerts me to new ideas.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    Increasingly, I check wikipedia even before google, although this is less useful for technical stuff than for other questions.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    Google web search then Google Groups. If neither of those show up solutions I'll generally post a question to a relevant newsgroup

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    search.live.com

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    It's funny, I was realizing that I do the same thing as Tim now-a-days too. The quality of search results--whether Google, Live, or whatever--has been going down for some time. If I know the manufacturer or SDK, I'll go there first. MSDN for Windows programming, nVidia, ATI.amd.com, or whatever the well-known site is.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    I always start with Google, first the web search and then the groups search. If it's not on there it depends and what I need to know. If there is a vendor site I can go to, I'll try to see if there are forums there. This also goes for programming questions, so I might try to search MSDN forums. Usually if it's not on Google I'll try ro figure it out myself or just work around it. I only dig further if it's really pressing. If neither Google or the vendor website helped me out, I might try another search engine like Live Search or All the Web, but these have never helped me (not more then Google that is. If it's not on Google it doesn't exist on the web ;-) ).

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    As a followup to answer the question 'what do you do when it's not on the search engines' - it really depends.   If it was something that I could reasonably query on and expect to find the answer if it exists on the net, and it doesn't show up it probably depends on the urgency with which I need the answer.  I'd probably hit the manufacturers forums, search there and maybe post a question if I don't need an immediate answer. Getting on the phone is going to be a last resort, and only if I need an immediate answer.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007

As recommended by Steve Riley at TechEd 2005, Google! ie.  'some microsoft problem' site:microsoft.com     or site:msdn.com 2. my peers, I work for a large global IT company.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    For most things Google is first.  This used to include MSDN searches, but two things happened a few months ago:  (1) Google suddenly couldn't find things that it used to find in MSDN, and (2) MSDN's own search engine got some half-improvements, though some results are still weird.  Anyway for Windows APIs and stuff like that it's now MSDN before Google. For drivers usually it's vendors' sites first and then Google. Sometimes Google results include MSDN blogs so I haven't felt any need to restrict a search to a blog site's own search engine. Sometimes Google results include Wikipedia pages, and forum postings, etc. Hmm, let's see...  Yes! http://www.missdewey.com/ is still operating, and it still crashes Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall.  But I got a good laugh out of it in a different environment.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    Google > MSDN(local copy) > Channel 9 > BBS > microsoft newgroups for Microsoft related ones Google > BBS > supporting newsgroups(if present)>  mailing lists for Linux or other technical problems I don't search for blog entries unless they are returned by search engines. :P (Actually, I found here because I found answer to one of the problem I met here, and then later I found myself enjoys other articles)

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    Step 1 - Google.  Google often searches a site better than their own "search" feature (including MS). Step 2 - Refine search terms, try other search possibilities. Step 4 - Specific site, search whatever local resources they have (e.g for Asus motherboard problems, I might search their site for support or forum links). Step 3 is missing to emphasise that step 4 is actually highly unlikely.  Even Microsoft's site search is terrible most of the time; Google site search does a better and quicker job in 99% of cases.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    Nobody's mentioned it yet, so I'll throw it out there. The http://www.arstechnica.com forums. Some very smart folks hang out there. Also, of course, The Old New Thing.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    I used to use Google a lot. But i got a lot of links to a site (can't remember the name) where i needed a payed subscription to view answers to questions posted by other users. So i started using Live Search. Mostly I end up at MSDN or Wikipedia though

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007

  • Google

  • Google groups

  • The MS Knowledge Base.

  • MSN Groups

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    Sometimes other people on codeproject.com's forums know more than I do about a topic.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    In order of preference:

  1. Google limited with site:microsoft.com
  2. MSDN Library or KB-articles depending on problem
  3. Microsoft blogs: google with site:blogs.msdn.com
  4. Google again, without site-limitation Often I need the correct and supported-by-Microsoft answer. Then I cannot rely on random forums, which I think often contain unsupported solutions. Therefore I often verify the answer i got from step 4 above with the following sources:

  • MSDN Library

  • KB-articles

  • Other parts of microsoft.com

  • Microsoft blogs (at least less chance of unsupported solutions)

  • EULA of the product

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    i try live search first. if i don't find an answer, i try on msdn forums and msdn newsgroups. however, i never got a useful answer in the newsgroups and only got a useful answer on msdn forums once. as a last resort, i try to contact someone from the product team (incase i know someone from that team) or some other person at ms that i know and hope he can connect me to someone who can help. i tried to use paid support twice, and that was a nightmare (i'm located in germany), so i'm not doing this anymore. basically, i think that if a solution isn't already available via search, you're stuck.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2007
    Working with .net my favorite place for information is Refelctor. Google is a close second :)

  • Anonymous
    January 04, 2007
    One thing I do that I haven't seen mentioned is to look through the sscli project and also use Reflector to look through .net assemblies to see how microsoft solved a similar problem related to my question.

  • Anonymous
    January 04, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 04, 2007
    Google Then Google with the site: microsoft.com keyword.

  • Anonymous
    January 04, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 04, 2007

  1. Google/MSN search/MSDN/Microsoft.com
  2. 3-rd party forums
  • Anonymous
    January 04, 2007
    In order:
  1. Google (general search)
  2. Google Groups (general search)
  3. Google Groups (search within an appropriate newsgroup) (Sometimes, I'll have to play some more with search criteria, or narrow the search to support.microsoft.com or something, but that's rare.)
  4. If its a particular area that I've identified a knowledgeable forum, post a question in that forum. Why a general search engine? Because it should return results from Blogs, support.microsoft.com, discussion groups, online forums, or whatever is the most relevant. Why Google? In my experience, much more relavant results than MSN search. On several occasions, I've dug through 4 pages of MSN results without finding what I was looking for, and the same query in Google returns 3 "on-target" results on the first page. Haven't tried Live search much, so I can't speak to that.
  • Anonymous
    January 05, 2007
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    January 05, 2007
    I guess it depends on the question but in no particular order
  • MS Support / Technet / MSDN Search
  • MS Premier Support Search
  • Live Search
  • Google Groups search
  • Blog search trough the above engines or the ones I have subscribed in FeedDemon
  • Real books (actually overlooked these days)
  • Anonymous
    January 07, 2007
    In no particular order:
  1.  Mark Minasi's forum (www.minasi.com/forum)
  2.  Live Search
  3.  Google
  4.  Event ID (www.eventid.net)
  5.  My TechNet Subscription DVD's
  6.  Expert's Exchange
  7.  Microsoft PSS
  8.  The MSDN blogs
  9.  The TechNet blogs
  10.  My own personal bookshelf and library JamesNT

  • Anonymous
    January 08, 2007
    Not in order. Google Google Groups Blogs, especially the Exchange Team Blog Vendor's website/KB/forums Microsoft KB Books Microsoft PSS

  • Anonymous
    January 08, 2007
    This is an interesting thread that shows the search habits of folks on C9. What stuck out to me was that

  • Anonymous
    January 08, 2007

  1. Google (includes Google Groups, codeproject/guru, etc.)
  2. MS Blogs (Raymond Chen, primarily)
  3. MSDN
  4. MS support forums
  5. My bookshelf "On MSDN I always feel like I'm missing out on something because I haven't found it yet. I always leave thinking "If only I knew where the proper place to find these things were". We all love Raymond, but am I really supposed to have to go to a private blog to find out how the Win32 API works?" I'm wondering if this isn't a context problem  For the record, this has been a major complaint of mine about the MSDN.  There's almost too much information to grok the right answer.  Especially for simple, "How do I..." type questions.  In the VS 2005, heaven forbid I need to do a search for Win32 information.  The MSDN has become so .Net oriented, it's difficult to find "The Old New Thing".  
  • Anonymous
    January 12, 2007
  1. Documentation on hand.
  2. Google for leads...
  3. Wikipedia for leads...
  4. Get the original source documents.
  5. Contemplate navel...
  6. Vendor forum (to gripe about documentation). "If it is not documented then it is not supportable."
  • Anonymous
    January 15, 2007
  1. Google
  2. Google Groups
  3. MSDN Library
  4. CodeProject/CodeGuru