Kevin writes:

> Not as rare as you might think.  I also have one that was marked as
> internal.  I even called up and complained about it being marked this
> way.  I told them that I would rather have it marked so that others can
> find it if they have the same problems.  They told me that it was not
> duplicated by a lab person, so it was not officially a problem. (Even
...

Kevin makes an important point ... one that I think we need to
emphasize repeatedly to HP...

   It's VERY IMPORTANT to get our bug reports recorded in the user
   accessible database, *EVER IF NOT DUPLICATED BY HP*.

Several of the last few bug reports I've submitted via the HP ESC have
been dropped by HP because they couldn't duplicate it.  These include:

   - Unexpected error writing to a MSG file (instead of an EOF or a
     wait-until-room)   ... this problem has happened sporadically for
     years to many people.  I finally submitted a bug report, only to
     have it closed because HP couldn't/wouldn't duplicate it, and I
     didn't have time to write a special purpose test for it for their use.

     The Response Center engineer said:
        A duplicatable test case would be greatly appreciated since I can't
        find any KPRs for this problem.

     Well...guess what...you aren't going to find any if they don't
     get logged!

  - Call ID A5534987 :: tobyte goes into infinite loop, eating CPU and disk
    ...has happened sporadically since 5.0

    This call generated SR5003448894...but I can't find it on HP ESC!
    And...there are no user-visible bug reports more recent than
    1995 with "tobyte" in them!

    Closed, cannot duplicate.  (At least this one is in the internal
    database!)

    However, no other users will realize that a problem might exist!


Other recent annoyance with a non-visible SR:

  HP ESC document 1653144998 says:

     This problem is due to a bug in a change made to HPGETPROCPLABEL's
     ...
     a the fix for SR# 4701-251603; this fix is supposed to allow the
     ...
     three characters of the symbol (ref. SR# 4701-251603 for details).

  ...but, can you *see* SR# 4701-251603 via HP ESC?  Nope, of course not!

  So, I reported a *that* as a bug report (the lack of SR# 4701-251603)
  and got a good response (thanks!):

     I was unable to find this SR on our Technical Knowledge Database as well,
     so I submitted a request to our LAb to research this issue.

  Followed by a bad response:

     Unfortunately, this SR is not going to be viewable in Electronic
     Support Center.

Sheesh.  We *pay* for this?  Shouldn't we be charging HP instead?

--
Stan Sieler                                          [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.allegro.com/sieler.html