Microsoft deleting – not moving – old Internet Explorer documentation

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A disturbing report from @VulturEMaN: My RSS feeds for MS documentation updates is showing a lot of IE8/9 documentation updates, but when I click thos
[See the full post at: Microsoft deleting – not moving – old Internet Explorer documentation]

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Fred, Average-Jane, GreatAndPowerfulTech

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Really if they are declaring some older versions of IE(Pre IE11 versions) as legacy then they still need to keep any documentation in some archive and link the current documentation links to the archive.

Just cutting off anything without proper notice is going to backfire especially where there may be some governmental/other large institutional users that still have not migrated to any of the current standards/browsers  that support the latest standards.

MS’s burning platform approach is really what’s lost them any of the phone OS business market share and MS’s years of relying on legacy lock-in for growth is still in place on PCs/Laptops currently. But really any old documentation needs to be retained and be made accessible  for any legacy systems clients that really have little options until they can be transitioned(Cost $$$$) to the latest, programmers and web designers/etc do have to be paid.

Just don’t tell me that MS does not have any space available in Satya’s cloud for that documentation, or is something not very appealing going as planned in Redmond. I really hope that MS is not trying to monetize it’s documentation holdings in a similar manner to its security documentation/etc. My biggest fear is that the documentation may be there but just behind some paywall.

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lurks about, phaolo

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[warrenrumak]

To be more precise about it, they’re deleting old MSKB articles related to hotfixes that they no longer offer.

This really isn’t new for Microsoft. They have been deleting old hotfix KB articles for many years.  Try and find a Windows 2000 SP2 hotfix article on Microsoft’s web site…. you won’t find it because that stuff went away in 2010!

Here’s an example.  One of the articles is titled “An update is available to enable the Albany AMT and Thorndale AMT fonts to be displayed correctly in Internet Explorer 9”  (KB2591500)…. This was a bug with Windows 7 post-SP1, and it only happened if you tried to use these third-party fonts in italics in a WPF application, after IE9 has been installed.  It is NOT a bug with IE9 — the patch is for DirectWrite!

Here’s a copy of the article on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20140216193745/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2591500/es

Chances are really good that they looked at the number of times this article was accessed, and it was precisely “zero” for a very long time.  There’s really nothing of value here.

 

• This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by warrenrumak.

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b

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To be fair, the deletion is not limited to IE articles
lot of old Windows KB articles removed during the transition from /kb/ to /help/
and even some moved content got removed later

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b

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As long as they create an archive that’s internet accessible/searchable it’s fine but notices have to be given and that information retained for a good long while in some cases.

It’s just too bad that so many allowed their operations to become restricted to IE, and some required version number at that, and maybe that’s not wise to do for the future and having any web based dependency on any one single browser product.

It really looks like MS wants to get rid of its legacy support but that legacy responsibility comes with the majority market share status that MS has had for decades on PC/Laptop OSs for decades.

If MS is not careful they will push more folks outside of their ecosystem but looking at MS’s Linux/Linux-Android, Chromium, and other moves it looks like MS really does not appear concerned about the Personal Computing aspects of PCs/Laptops any longer.

In a very few more months and 7’s EOL let’s see what happens to anything MS and Documentation related over the next 6-12 months and later as things pretty much become a completely Windows 10 and no other option for some who value their control over their own PC/Laptop hardware unless that’s some open Linux OS distro that values the personal wishes of the end user.

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Deleting “old documentation” is a pet peeve of mine. In my opinion, they are trying to make it very difficult for people to continue to use “old” technology, in order to force them to move to the new stuff.

I did desktop support for a few years at a company. While in that role, I painstakingly compiled many help files, documenting processes, as well as usernames/passwords and contact information for getting help with the various systems and products that were used by the company. In some cases, we may have called tech support maybe once every year or two on a particular product; but it took some time and effort to find out how to access our account with that company, so I documented it. In one case, the geologists used an old printer to print out geological findings (e.g. geological data on a well). The printer took 8-1/2 x 11 fanfold paper, which they considered perfect for showing well data. A well is a very deep, narrow item which will fit very well on a stack of letter-size, fanfold paper – it can be unfolded and then laid out on the floor in a long hallway or room, and then folded up and filed away when not in use. There were only two printers that could be used for these printouts – an Epson 1550 and an Epson 3000. Those two printers were the only ones which both worked with the software that they used and used the 8-1/2 x 11 fanfold paper. And they were no longer being produced and sold by Epson; you had to buy them used and then get them repaired as needed. I documented the reason they needed these two old printers, and also how they could get these printers repaired if needed (there was a repair shop just a couple of miles from our office).

My boss was fired from the company, and they hired a replacement who brought his tech support staff with him. They were all good people, but they hated “old” technology – for them, everything had to be the latest and greatest. I left the company about a year later, and I found out through a former coworker that one of the new tech support staff had deleted my entire document library “to save space on the network”! I knew that it wouldn’t be long before the geology dept would need a repair on one of the old printers; but no one would know why they had those two particular old printers, because all of my docs had been deleted! There was already talk in my last year there of replacing the old printers with plotters (big massive printers which print huge printouts). It would have been a major hassle for the geologists to use plotters to print well drawings; but I fear that’s what they were stuck with soon after I left, because the new IT dept had to have the “latest and greatest tech” for everything, even if that wasn’t a good solution in all cases.

While at that company, I did the ordering of new PCs for users. I made sure that all new PCs had PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, and that the new PCs came with PS/2 mice and keyboards. My reason? PS/2 ALWAYS WORKS, if you simply power the PC down before plugging or unplugging it. USB can fail (it’s happened twice with me), but PS/2 never fails. My job was to provide a trouble-free experience for the user; and the user wouldn’t even know the difference under normal circumstances. However, if USB failed, his PC would be unusable until the problem was fixed. I have no doubt that after I left the company, they no longer bought computers with PS/2 ports on them. They likely thought I was stupid for deploying what they considered “old” technology, but what I saw as “reliable” technology.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Steve, TaskForce141, SueW, wavy

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They aren’t deleting “old documentation”.  They’re deleting old knowledge base articles for hotfixes that they no longer offer because they’re rolled into more modern Cumulative Updates for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2.

You’d have to be using Windows 7 RTM or SP1 with absolutely no patches applied, whatsoever, for any of the issues described in these knowledge base articles to be applicable to you.  Nobody in their right mind is doing that in 2019.

Do you really care that Microsoft is no longer offering for download the Compatibility View list that they published in mid-2009?  It’s just a list of web sites that weren’t IE9 compatible at the time. It’s totally irrelevant today.

 

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b

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They removed the updates that add support for NVMe KB2990941 / KB3087873, and it’s not “rolled” into Monthly Rollup

what do you think of that?

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Those were taken offline at least two years ago. Why are you bringing it up here?

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They’re deleting old knowledge base articles for hotfixes that they no longer offer because they’re rolled into more modern Cumulative Updates

will, those two are still supported and not rolled in 🙂

luckily, CRU KB3125574 got most hotfixes

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Thank You! https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/19/11/10/1831258/bring-back-the-replaceable-laptop-battery

HTML removal – Please use the ‘Text’ tab in the post entry box when you copy/paste

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TaskForce141

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I agree with the author – planned obsolescence is the only possible reason that a laptop manufacturer would solder in the battery. The only reason I would ever purchase a laptop with a soldered-in battery was if there was absolutely nothing else available.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Cybertooth, TaskForce141

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Soldering a battery in place is a cost saver – less plastic, fewer connectors, easier packaging…
Replacement is easy if you remove the covers.

cheers, Paul

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Paul T wrote:

Soldering a battery in place …
Replacement is easy if you remove the covers.

Say what now?

Soldering is a hot process. As in molten metal. Doing that on modern laptop mainboards as a non-factory procedure is NOT safe for the hardware, or easy.

Connector attachment under screw-mounted covers is a completely different thing, and still not a supported end-user procedure anywhere recent that I can remember…

Also what does this have to do with old Internet Explorer documentation? Thread error?

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