I have a love hate relationship with Microsoft at the moment. I have an issue with VisualStudio where the compiler keeps crashing. Great. Just what I need. Thankfully the IDE/GUI does not crash so I am not loosing any work. Just the compiler dies. Doing some searching I found a knowledge base article which described the problem. Microsoft allows you to put in a support call to get the fixed software.

I tried to do this online without success – in fact I kept going round in circles. I would say VisualStudio 2005, and then it did not have the VisualBasic on the list so I said display more items. Which displayed the original list again. Repeat this a few times. There was a link up the top saying that I could phone, but noted that maybe I would need to pay for this. Thankfully it does not look like I will need to do that they are going to email out a link – the guy on the phone is just arranging that right now.

I do not know why I could not get the patch in the first place by a straight download. Nor do I know why the online system is not working. All I know is that I am now being served by microsoft, it probably will not cost anything, and the call was answered very quickly. I cannot complain too badly I dont think.