how do disable "X has stopped working" popups

One of the annoying/lame features of Vista is its propensity for popup
messages of the form "X has stopped working", where X is some
program/service. There's always an option to click to search for diagnosis,
and of course that always takes you to a web page that says "X has stopped
working" along with unbelievably stupid suggestions for how to fix it. The
old "Abort, Retry, Ignore?" was no less helpful. One of my favorites is how
I get the popup "Microsoft Word has stopped working" right after I shut down
Microsoft Word. Well gee, I know it stopped working because I asked it to
stop working. The engineers at MSFT sure are brainiacs....

I don't want to ever see one of these messages. If a service dies, fine,
I'll have to pick up the pieces of my life and trudge forward. I just don't
want to have to keep dismissing these inane popups.

Is there any way to disable these messages?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Yes, those lamebrains expect you to open help and support app and type:
'Stop reporting problems for a program'
to find where they hid that option
--
Use the "Ratings" system. It helps new users find answers.
http://www.microsoft.com/wn3/locales...help_en-us.htm

Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP
https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Mark.Ferguson


"x" wrote:

> One of the annoying/lame features of Vista is its propensity for popup
> messages of the form "X has stopped working", where X is some
> program/service. There's always an option to click to search for diagnosis,
> and of course that always takes you to a web page that says "X has stopped
> working" along with unbelievably stupid suggestions for how to fix it. The
> old "Abort, Retry, Ignore?" was no less helpful. One of my favorites is how
> I get the popup "Microsoft Word has stopped working" right after I shut down
> Microsoft Word. Well gee, I know it stopped working because I asked it to
> stop working. The engineers at MSFT sure are brainiacs....
>
> I don't want to ever see one of these messages. If a service dies, fine,
> I'll have to pick up the pieces of my life and trudge forward. I just don't
> want to have to keep dismissing these inane popups.
>
> Is there any way to disable these messages?
>
> Thanks in advance for your help.

Mark has sorted you out, but I'd be very concerned about all these errors
you're getting.

Are you running Vista-compatible software?

SteveT

Yes, that certainly is lamebrained.

First, there should be an option to stop these popups in the popup.
Microsoft has gotten more than enough feedback about the negative utility of
this Vista "feature" for many if not most users that they should have issued
an update to make it obvious how to disable it. The fact that they haven't
done so in Vista makes me fear Windows 7 will be equally flawed.

Second, the 'help and support' app proved, as is all too often the case, to
not be indexed for the way people search for answers. In looking for an
answer, I foolishly searched for phrases that were on my screen, like "has
stopped working". If you do that you don't see an answer. This is why there
are so many newsgroups devoted to helping users find answers that are already
in 'help and support'.

I'm glad however that you knew exactly what to type into 'help and support'
to find the answer. Problem solved. (Actually, I don't know that it's
solved, but I did select the option to turn off problem reporting, so hope
that will stop the popups. It isn't made clear anywhere what Microsoft means
by the words "report problems". Do they mean "report problems to Microsoft",
or "report problems to the user via popup"? If they mean the former, as is
implied but not spelled out in 'help and support', then is not safe to
conclude that setting problem reporting to "Off" will stop the popups. The
"good" news is that Vista was giving me one of these popups every day or so,
so I should know soon whether this fixed the problem.)

Thank you for the response.

"Mark L. Ferguson" wrote:

> Yes, those lamebrains expect you to open help and support app and type:
> 'Stop reporting problems for a program'
> to find where they hid that option
> --
> Use the "Ratings" system. It helps new users find answers.
> http://www.microsoft.com/wn3/locales...help_en-us.htm
>
> Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP
> https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Mark.Ferguson
>
>
> "x" wrote:
>
> > One of the annoying/lame features of Vista is its propensity for popup
> > messages of the form "X has stopped working", where X is some
> > program/service. There's always an option to click to search for diagnosis,
> > and of course that always takes you to a web page that says "X has stopped
> > working" along with unbelievably stupid suggestions for how to fix it. The
> > old "Abort, Retry, Ignore?" was no less helpful. One of my favorites is how
> > I get the popup "Microsoft Word has stopped working" right after I shut down
> > Microsoft Word. Well gee, I know it stopped working because I asked it to
> > stop working. The engineers at MSFT sure are brainiacs....
> >
> > I don't want to ever see one of these messages. If a service dies, fine,
> > I'll have to pick up the pieces of my life and trudge forward. I just don't
> > want to have to keep dismissing these inane popups.
> >
> > Is there any way to disable these messages?
> >
> > Thanks in advance for your help.

> Microsoft has gotten more than enough feedback about the negative utility
> of
> this Vista "feature" for many if not most users that they should have
> issued
> an update to make it obvious how to disable it.

Really? How do you know? I like to keep tabs on developments at Redmond,
and I'm not aware of it being recognised as an issue. UAC prompts, yes.
But appcrash prompts?

> The fact that they haven't
> done so in Vista makes me fear Windows 7 will be equally flawed.

I'm not convinced it's a flaw. The flaw is with the dodgy software you're
running that keeps crashing. Or maybe you've got a dodgy memory stick chip
or something.

Every version of Windows from the very beginning has had these warnings when
an application crashes (don't you remember the famous "Unrecoverable
Application Error" from Windows 3.1. days?).

Macs tell you when an app has crashed, as does Linux. For Vista to not do
that would be a very unusual design decision.

I think you are making a big fuss about entirely the wrong thing. If I were
you, I'd be cursing the applications that keep crashing, not Vista for
telling you about it.

SteveT

You have some good points, Steve, thanks. I appreciate your response, and
have added some clarifications/perspectives below.

Yes, the bigger problem is the apps that crash. There's a lot of
ill-behaved software out there and most of it isn't written by Microsoft.

My complaint is that these popups and error reports have no ameliorative
effect, so are worse than no popups at all. If you're going to disrupt the
user and offer resolution, you better be able to resolve a problem every once
in a while. If you don't, then you're just ****ing the user off. That's the
point I've gotten to with this feature of Vista.

By the way, not once has one of these app crashes been detrimental to the
operation of my PC. I dismiss the popup, and everything seems to keep
working, no problem. That's another reason to be annoyed, not thankful,
about the popups.

"Steve Thackery" wrote:

> > Microsoft has gotten more than enough feedback about the negative utility
> > of
> > this Vista "feature" for many if not most users that they should have
> > issued
> > an update to make it obvious how to disable it.
>
> Really? How do you know? I like to keep tabs on developments at Redmond,
> and I'm not aware of it being recognised as an issue. UAC prompts, yes.
> But appcrash prompts?

My Googling sure found a lot of references to the problem, so I assumed
Microsoft has gotten the message. Perhaps I'm mistaken.

A feature that points out a problem but doesn't help the user resolve it
becomes annoying and accrues negative value. That's the problem with UAC
(which I turned off after getting scores of popups, not one of which warned
me from an action that was anything other than one I initiated and wanted to
happen). Same with the application crash messages. There's an old fable
about the boy who cried wolf that applies here.

I know Microsoft meant well with UAC and the app crash reporting, but the
implementations are fundamentally flawed: (1) Huge numbers of false
positives. Too many of those, and people ignore them (or beg newsgroups to
tell them how to turn them off). (2) No useful remedies when there is a real
problem. If you aren't going to fix the problem, but are only going to give
me useless suggestions like "reboot" or "check the vendor's website for
updates" that don't do anything to improve the situation, maybe you shouldn't
have offered to "look for a solution" and gotten my hopes up.

> > The fact that they haven't
> > done so in Vista makes me fear Windows 7 will be equally flawed.
>
> I'm not convinced it's a flaw. The flaw is with the dodgy software you're
> running that keeps crashing. Or maybe you've got a dodgy memory stick chip
> or something.

No memory stick. No peripherals at all, actually. Brand new stock Lenovo
laptop.

Dodgy software? No doubt. As I mentioned, Microsoft Word 2007 is one of
the culprits on my PC. :-)

A worse offender is HP's remote printer management software. Now THAT is a
company that has perfected the art of writing ill behaved software. It dies
and causes that well meaning but utterly usless popup every time I move out
of range of whatever printer it thought it was talking to.

What I want is an easy way for me to tell the popup "hey, I already got this
message a couple times before, I know it's caused by dodgy software that you
can't fix, so would you please stop showing this popup to me?".

> Every version of Windows from the very beginning has had these warnings when
> an application crashes (don't you remember the famous "Unrecoverable
> Application Error" from Windows 3.1. days?).

Fair enough. But why did I almost never got such messages on my XP machine,
but don't often get through a day without one on Vista?

> Macs tell you when an app has crashed, as does Linux. For Vista to not do
> that would be a very unusual design decision.

I would by no means argue that MacOS and Linux are immune. Contrary to
popular opinion, Apple also has a talent for usability mistakes and useless
error messages in their software; they just do it less often than Microsoft.
Linux treats lack of usability as a point of pride. :-> I've used (and
programmed on) Unix/Linux, Windows, and Apple machines for more than 25
years, and understand none are perfect. I would rate Vista's as the least
perfect of all in this respect.

> I think you are making a big fuss about entirely the wrong thing. If I were
> you, I'd be cursing the applications that keep crashing, not Vista for
> telling you about it.
>
> SteveT
>
>

I assumed Microsoft Word 2007 is Vista compaible, but did not check.

The HP software that is the major culprit here says it is supported on
Vista. Whether it's "Vista compatible" certified I don't know.

I am not sure whether any other programs have given me this message.

Thanks for the help Steve.

"Steve Thackery" wrote:

> Mark has sorted you out, but I'd be very concerned about all these errors
> you're getting.
>
> Are you running Vista-compatible software?
>
> SteveT
>
>

>I assumed Microsoft Word 2007 is Vista compaible, but did not check.

Yes, it certainly is. I use Word 2007 every day (I'm a technical author)
and can't recall suffering this problem, so I wonder if there may be
something specific to your particular machine or setup.

> The HP software that is the major culprit here says it is supported on
> Vista. Whether it's "Vista compatible" certified I don't know.

Ah yes. In my experience, HP make great hardware and truly appalling
software.

SteveT

> Fair enough. But why did I almost never got such messages on my XP
> machine,
> but don't often get through a day without one on Vista?

I'm still really puzzled by this. PROVIDED the software is properly
Vista-compatible, there is no reason at all why apps should crash more often
in Vista than in XP.

I honestly think there is something else odd going on.

I've run Vista since it came out in the UK (almost two years ago) and it
genuinely has been rock solid for me. Not a single freeze or blue-screen.
Of course, various applications have had problems, including Word 2007
(which I can still crash almost at will), but I really couldn't lay the
blame on Vista.

We might have to agree to differ here, but I get the "X has stopped working"
prompt so rarely that it just doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I'm quite
glad of it as it's a sign of possible problems with the application. The
fact that you suffer it often enough to be a real nuisance makes me think
there might be some other problem.

Sorry, though, that I can't help with what that could be.

SteveT

"x" <> wrote in message
news:7131749E-42EE-4DFE-9B09-...


>I assumed Microsoft Word 2007 is Vista compaible, but did not check.


Yes, definitely.