Free Hotfix Support

While searching for Knowledge Base articles related to the mysterious view state errors we've been seeing, I found a hotfix, KB831150, The "Viewstate is invalid for this page" error message does not provide sufficient information to troubleshoot the issue." You might've noticed all hotfix downloads have disappeared from the Microsoft Support site. I've always been hesitant to call them, as KB articles suggest, until I learned that hotfix support was free.

I don't want to put words in the mouth of Microsoft Support folks, but as far as I know, support of hotfixes related to .NET is free. The number to call in the US is 1-888-677-9444. The rationale for calling instead of downloading hotfixes off the web is to make sure each hotfix is applied "to systems that are experiencing [a] specific problem."

This is the first time I ever called Microsoft Support, and I was impressed. The guys I talked to were very helpful.

I also called Microsoft for this hotfix. However, I was told that this hotfix is only for .NET Framework 1.1 with no SP1 installed. Supposedly 1.1 SP1 has this functionality.

I know this post is fairly stale, but I thought I'd type a quick comment here in case anybody else is searching for information about servicing in Visual Studio or the .NET Framework and happens across this post.

I work with a team in Developer Division at Microsoft that was formed to help fix some of the processes that we have around servicing, aftermarket solutions, and customer connection issues. We're called DDCPX (DevDiv Customer Product-Lifecycle Experience Team...I know, a mouthful), and we just started a blog that I posted the URL to above. We'd like this blog to be a vehicle for feedback about servicing--stories like this one above are things we should be aware of. We can hopefully communicate back to you through the blog some of our future plans on improving servicing in Visual Studio and the .NET Framework. Hope to see some of you there!

Joe, thank you for the link. Will definitely keep an eye on your team blog.