Chapter 36: Other Windows XP Resources

What Materials Are Available from Microsoft?

Other materials about Windows, besides those listed on the Windows Update Web page and the Help And Support Center window, are available from Microsoft:

• Microsoft Product Support Services Web site at http://support.microsoft.com Site with support information for all Microsoft products. Use the searchable Knowledge Base to find articles about problems and solutions, known bugs, and overviews of how products work. You can also get to this page by clicking the Support link on the Windows Update Web page.
• Windows XP home page at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp A good resource for general announcements and information about Windows XP. You can also check the general Windows site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows.
• Internet Explorer home page at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie Each component included with Windows has its own page at the Microsoft Web site. From the Internet Explorer page, click Features to see an overview of the new features incorporated as part of Internet Explorer.
• Outlook Express home page at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/oe Click the Features button to see details about Outlook Express
• Computing Central at http://computingcentral.msn.com Microsoft's MSN-hosted Web site about computers. Click the Software link and the Operating Systems link for information about Windows.
• Microsoft's Usenet newsgroups Discussion groups about Microsoft products. Microsoft hosts over a thousand discussions on its news server, with newsgroups about its major products in a variety of languages (two-letter country codes appear in the newsgroup names, like br for Brazil or fr for France). Choose Start | Help And Support to see the Help And Support Center window, click Get Support Or Find Information In Windows XP Newsgroups, and click Go To A Windows Web Site Forum in the Task pane. Then follow the instructions on the Web page. You can also use Outlook Express to read the newsgroups. To add a Microsoft news server to your list of servers in Outlook Express, run Outlook Express. Select Tools | Accounts and click the News tab. Click Add, choose News, and follow the prompts as the wizard walks you through the steps to add the news server. The public Microsoft news server is named msnews.microsoft.com. After you add the server, download all the newsgroups so that you can see a list of what's available on the server. Many newsgroups discuss Windows and its components.

You can get online help from Microsoft by using the Help And Support window's Support button.