Why is it that the Microsoft developers have an inability to get their systems and processes to output a meaningful error message now and again? I mean, is it really that hard?

I try to stay away from company slagging, but Microsoft, really…?

I have recently bought an XBox 360 and I think its great. Had no crashes, and no problems with it, until I joined XBox Live. I was offered a month free – great. I used that, and then on the XBox dashboard, I noticed an advert for another free month. Double great. However, when I tried to activate this, I received a cryptic error message on the screen. Something like, “This operation failed. Error 8005342” – nothing else.

Great. I searched on Google, and found that many people had this error, and someone seemed to think that registering my credit card details, on www.xbox.com might be a good idea to try. I did this and re-attempted the procedure with success this time. So, why if the error is “no credit card details entered” – why the bloody hell doesn’t the error message say that??!?!

And just now, I was trying to install .Net framework 4 on a test PC. I receieved another message, “The install failed due to a fatal error”… Helpful. What if someone you know dies and all the doctor said was, “he died”. “Why?”, “He’s dead”

Helpful.

Turned out, I needed to install something called the Microsoft Windows Imaging Component. Again. Why not tell me this instead of “a fatal error”

Its no wonder people have so much trouble getting used to using a computer!!!

Sorry for the rant. Just pisses me off!