Microsoft launches "Fix It"

Can someone explain in simple terms what this actually is? The page is so vague and markety I'm really confused.

This has been a part of the MS knowledge base for at least one year. Why is this "news" now?<p><a href="http://blogs.technet.com/fixit4me/archive/2008/11/19/welcome-to-the-fix-it-for-me-blog.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.technet.com/fixit4me/archive/2008/11/19/welcome...</a>

No magic at all... I had my "monthly bluescreen of death" but the "Fixit tool" did not recognize the error. It just told me about a crashing Internet Explorer. This is interesting because I never used my Internet explorer.<p>Unfortunately my system is running smoothly for the rest, so I can't evaluate the ability of the Automated troubleshooters. 2 hours of usage and not impressed so far.

Honestly, this is a great <i>idea</i> for most users, although how MS hopes to pull it off is a mystery, their cryptic error messages are rarely covered at all on their official sites...wouldn't it seem reasonable that the developer that raised the error would be responsible for at least making some somewhat informational note about it? And now, they are intending to actually fix it, automatically???? lol

executing binary from a non-secured page seems like a no brainer.

what sort of magic is this?

It seems terrible to me that users should even need tools like this. Why should they have to care about this stuff? Gone are the days when every computer user is a hobbyist.

This has to be at least an incremental improvement. MSDN's knowledge base has the worst case of linkrot I can think of on the internet.

I'm glad I'll never have to run this.

Is it "install Linux"?

a good start for users who dont know anything and wont spend hours of searching on technical blogs.<p>simplifying is always the best way to handle with a large front of customer's.