Mitch Tulloch's Blog

Finding technical info on Microsoft's web site

When I want to quickly find some specific technical info on Microsoft TechNet, I usually just google the Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB). That’s why I created the scripted Web page that I shared with you in last week’s post — it's a lot quicker to type “Remote Assistance” Vista in a search box than “Remote Assistance” Vista site:support.microsoft.com when you’re looking for KB articles concerning the Remote Assistance feature in Windows Vista. See here for a demo of my KB quick search page.

But what if you want to browse more systematically the available technical information concerning some Microsoft product or technology? You could of course try going to http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx and click through various menus and links until you find something relevant to what you’re looking for. The problem however is that there are over 50 million pages on Microsoft’s Web site, so you can spend a heck of a long time browsing around there and still not find what you want.

By luck however I stumbled across this page which, in my opinion, might be called “the IT pro’s home page for technical info on microsoft.com. I love this page because it lists all the various products and technologies Microsoft has, and if you click on one of the links it takes you to a TechNet page that typically includes information on deploying, configuring, maintaining and troubleshooting the product. So if you’re an IT pro who works mainly with Microsoft products, you might want to add that page to your Favorites, or even make it your home page.

And here’s another useful page on microsoft.com you need to know about. Using this page and an RSS newsreader, you can subscribe to RSS feeds telling you about the latest KB articles for specific products.

Have you found any other pages on microsoft.com that have been especially useful to you as an IT professional? Feel free to add a comment. Thanks!

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