The ONLY company I've ever had to deal with, that makes updating a part of your system a ROYAL pain in the ***.

So Gmax won't open my saved files. Fine. The problem is addressed HERE.

Only guess what? To get the patch they speak of, which I'm sure is pretty old by now based upon everything else I've found, I have to call MS and tell them to email it to me. Screw that.

So I run a search on the patch name. I get no hits on Mircosoft.com, but plenty elsewhere. I pick a candidate, and attempt to download it. The link is dead. GAH!

So I go over to Mircosoft.com and run a search for it. Guess where that leads? That's right, absolutely NOWHERE. I hate that site. I hate it. I hate it. I HATE IT. I can never find ANYTHING there. Even something that should be simple, like getting a copy of DirectX, always ends up taking me 30 or more minutes. 15 of which is spent hunting for the version I need.

Back to Google. I discover that not only is this patch anchient, but it has an update! So, lets look for the update! Sounds like it should work, right? WRONG. Oh, I managed to find the page on Microsoft.com, but it relates to WinXP, NOT Win2k, which is what I need.

I've been running in circles for the last 30 minutes. I hate Microsoft. Their OS blows, they have a website that is useless, and I can't find this one freaking tiny patch so Gmax will open my files.

Don't even think of telling me to move to Linux. That solves nothing, and you get put on my hitlist.

Someone be kind and find that for me. I don't have the patience to do it anymore. I hate dealing with MS. I really, really do.

...how is it Microsoft's fault that another company has failed to make its software standard-compliant?

Yeah, this sounds like more of a problem with GMAX than it does with Windows.

Gmax got busted after the release of SP4. Now, I never said it was MS's fault, Discreet sure as hell could've released a patch, and MS sure as hell could make finding the OS fix ALOT easier. It goes both ways from where I sit.

Why not simply use Windows Update to find the fix?

Considering how not up to date I keep my computer, that'd take forever.

I actually did finally find a working link to a 2k version of the update. Everything works again as it should.

Now if I could just get rid of the headache I have comming on...

You don't have to install all the updates. Have you even tried it?

I've run an automatic update before. It searches for all of the updates you need first. This is the part that'd probably take forever for me.

So you hate them, while you don't follow the instructions and call them? That's pretty.. odd.

whoops, wrong button. meant to start a new thread.

Microsoft told me how to fix my problem but I didn't do it and now it won't work They suck.

Yeah. The only reason to call that number, was if you wanted the beta of the hotfix. Note that I said the information looked quite old. This was later proven correct when I saw the offical date on the XP patch as being 2003. I'm reasonably sure the telephone line that was devoted to answering that specific call, is dead.

What a program designed to resemble crap? Quick do the most logical thing, BLAME THE OPERATING SYSTEM!

You guys read well, you know that?

The blame lies on BOTH parties.

Discreet only made a half effort to fix the problem. They consulted with MS and got that hotfix made. At the same time, they SHOULD HAVE BUT DIDN'T make a patch for their program to ensure something similar didn't happen again.

Microsoft caused the problem. Unknowingly, yes, but they still caused it. If I didn't have SP4 on my computer, things would be fine. While they fixed the problem, their fault lies in that the patch was made almost impossible to find.

They fix problems with Windows just because another program has a problem with the new fix doesn't mean Microsoft needs to come in instantly and fix the damn thing.

And I'm not saying that they even needed to. I see it as both parties in the matter screwing up.