Help and Support Center: The Headlines and Online Search Features

This section provides information about:    

  • The benefits of the Headlines and Online Search features in Help and Support Center

  • How the Headlines and Online Search features communicate with sites on the Internet

  • How to control the Headlines and Online Search features to limit the flow of information to and from the Internet

    Important For greater control over the communication between components in Windows XP and sites on the Internet, use Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 instead of with Service Pack 1. Windows XP Service Pack 2 provides a number of new Group Policy settings that control communication between components in the operating system and sites on the Internet. For more information, see the Microsoft Web site at:

    https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=23354

    https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=29133

On This Page

Benefits and Purposes of Headlines and Online Search
Overview: Using Headlines and Online Search in a Managed Environment
How Headlines and Online Search Communicate with Sites on the Internet
Controlling Headlines and Online Search to Limit the Flow of Information to and from the Internet
Procedures for Disabling Headlines and Online Search

Help and Support Center is a self-help portal that was first included in Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition. It is also included in all versions of Windows XP, including Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1 (SP1). Users access Help and Support Center in a number of ways, including:

  • Selecting Help and Support from the Start menu.

  • Selecting Help and Support Center from the Help menus for Control Panel, Windows Explorer, My Network Places, My Pictures, My Computer, My Music, or My Documents.

Headlines

A useful feature of Help and Support Center is the Headlines area. This area is typically titled "Did you know?" and is usually located in the lower-right corner of the main window, unless the window has been customized by the OEM or modified for certain languages. A page in Help and Support Center with more Headlines is exposed to users when they click the "View more headlines" hyperlink at the bottom of the "Did you know?" section. Headlines provides a dynamic source of content that users can visit frequently to find help and support on current issues as well as those that were known at the time the operating system was released. For example, it may display links to topics that inform the user about new security bulletins, software updates, or new Help content.

Online Search, another useful feature of Help and Support Center, enables users to query online Web sites automatically when performing a search. By default, the Microsoft Knowledge Base is designated as one of the Web sites for online searches. OEMs often customize the Online Search feature by, for example, adding a check box to the search window to enable the search engine to query their OEM-specific Web sites for results. To produce the most informative results when querying the Microsoft Knowledge Base, certain information such as the version of the product installed is collected from the user’s computer and uploaded to the servers hosting the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

Overview: Using Headlines and Online Search in a Managed Environment

By creating a system registry key or by using other tools available in the Windows user interface, you can control the extent to which the Headlines and Online Search features access the Internet. More details on the methods and procedures for controlling these features are described in the following subsections.

How Headlines and Online Search Communicate with Sites on the Internet

Headlines

The Headlines area is updated only when there is Internet connectivity. The user is not required or prompted to connect to the Internet. Help and Support Center uses information contained in the NewsSet.xml file (stored in the systemroot\PCHealth\Helpctr\Config folder) on the user’s computer to determine:

  • Whether or not to update the Headlines area

  • How frequently to update the Headlines area

  • Where on the Internet to obtain the Headlines updates

This subsection summarizes the communication process:

  • Specific information sent or received: If there is Internet connectivity, when the user starts Help and Support Center, the Help and Support service (helpsvc) compares the current date to the date specified by the TIMESTAMP attribute in the NewsSet.xml file and calculates the total number of days that have elapsed since the last time Headlines was successfully updated.

    Then, if the number of elapsed days is greater than the number of days specified by the FREQUENCY attribute in NewsSet.xml, the Help and Support service connects to the Web site specified by the URL attribute and downloads an updated version of the file NewsVer.xml to the systemroot\PCHealth\Helpctr\Config\News folder. The user is not uniquely identified.

    Note For Headlines supplied by Microsoft, the URL attribute in NewsSet.xml is:

    https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=11

    For Windows XP, this currently redirects the user to the following site:

    https://windows.microsoft.com/windowsxp/newsver.xml

  • The downloaded NewsVer.xml file contains links to the news content files (news blocks) for the Windows XP operating system and the installed language. These news blocks contain the information used to update the Headlines area—that is, links to and descriptions of the latest information from Help and Support Center, Windows, or support-related articles posted on Microsoft Web sites, such as the Windows XP site (https://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/).

    Note If the OEM has customized the Headlines feature, then the OEM-supplied Headlines may have links to the OEM’s Web site.

  • If there is no Internet connectivity, Help and Support Center displays an offline message in the Headlines area similar to the following:

    When you are connected to the Internet, this area will display links to timely help and support information. If you want to connect to the Internet now, start the New Connection Wizard and see how to establish a Web connection through an Internet service provider.

  • Default and recommended settings: The Headlines feature is enabled by default. Recommended settings are described in the next subsection, "Controlling Headlines and Online Search to Limit the Flow of Information to and from the Internet."

  • Triggers: The Headlines feature is automatically triggered if there is Internet connectivity when the user starts Help and Support Center.

  • User notification: Users are not given the choice to select whether or not to update the Headlines area before an update is performed. An "Updating ..." status indicator is displayed in the Headlines area, however, to indicate when an update is being performed. Once Help and Support Center has completed checking for new headlines, the Headlines area is labeled "Updated: date," where date is the current date.

  • Logging: No information related to Headlines is entered into the event log.

  • Encryption: The data transferred to Microsoft is not encrypted.

  • Access: The only data generated on servers at Microsoft from the process of updates to the Headlines area is a single number telling how many times a connection has been made, by any computer, to the link that supports Headlines updates. No computer is identified in the process of a Headlines update. The data can be viewed by the Microsoft group that provides support for the link through which Headlines is updated.

  • Transmission protocol and port: The transmission protocol used is HTTP and the port is 80.

  • Ability to disable: You can disable Headlines by setting a registry key. For more information, see "Procedures for Disabling Headlines and Online Search," later in this section.

Online Search

Online Search can only query online Web sites like the Microsoft Knowledge Base when there is Internet connectivity. Users are neither required nor prompted to connect to the Internet. When a user performs a search in Help and Support Center, if search options have been set to search the Microsoft Knowledge Base or an OEM-designated Web site, the search engine automatically searches the specified site.

This subsection summarizes the communication process:

  • Specific information sent or received: To produce relevant results when querying the Microsoft Knowledge Base, certain information is collected from the user’s computer and uploaded to a server at Microsoft that hosts the Microsoft Knowledge Base. The user is not uniquely identified. Following is a list of the information collected:

    • The search text string entered by the user

    • The language code of the operating system

    • The product Knowledge Base to be searched (for example, Windows XP or Outlook)

    • The version of the operating system installed (for example, Home Edition or Professional)

    • The number of results the user has indicated that they want in their result set

    • Titles field status (indicates whether or not to search the article title only)

    • Type field status (indicates whether to search using "all" or "any" of the search string)

  • Default and recommended settings: Online Search is enabled by default. Recommended settings are described in the next subsection, "Controlling Headlines and Online Search to Limit the Flow of Information to and from the Internet."

  • Triggers: Online Search is automatically triggered if the search options are left at the default or are set to encompass searches on the Internet. (Online Search is also dependent on having Internet connectivity when the search is performed.)

  • User notification: Users are not notified before Help and Support Center performs an Online Search. A permanent headline is provided in the Headlines area that instructs users about setting their Online Search options, including how to turn the feature off.

  • Logging: No information related to Online Search is entered into the event log.

  • Encryption: The data transferred to Microsoft is not encrypted.

  • Access: The data uploaded to the server at Microsoft is aggregated and clustered. Information about the most common queries is later made available to the Windows Product Support Services and Windows User Assistance teams to help in developing new content or in revising existing content.

  • Privacy: Microsoft does not retrieve any personally identifiable information from a user's computer during an online search. A permanent headline is provided in the Headlines area that instructs users about setting their Online Search options, including how to turn the feature off.

  • Transmission protocol and port: The transmission protocol used is HTTP and the port is 80.

  • Ability to disable: You can disable Online Search through the Help and Support Center user interface.

Controlling Headlines and Online Search to Limit the Flow of Information to and from the Internet

Using the appropriate system registry key, you can disable the Headlines feature and eliminate the entire "Did you know?" area in the Help and Support Center user interface.

By configuring the user interface, you can to disable the Online Search feature. For more information, see "Procedures for Disabling Headlines and Online Search," later in this section.

How Controlling Headlines and Online Search Can Affect Users and Applications

The Headlines area provides a good way for users to obtain up-to-date solutions to common problems, updated self-help content, and information about software and driver updates. If you decide to disable the Headlines feature, the Headlines ("Did you know?") area in the Help and Support Center user interface will be blank and links to new content or software update notifications will never be presented to the user.

The Online Search feature enables users to obtain help from online Web sites and can often reduce the support load on the internal Help desk. If you decide to disable the Online Search feature, users will only be able to query local Help content.

Disabling Headlines and Online Search will not affect any other applications.

The following procedures describe how to:

  • Disable the Headlines feature on individual computers by using a registry key

  • Disable the Online Search feature on individual computers by using search options in Help and Support

To Disable the Headlines Feature on Individual Computers

  1. Open Registry Editor by clicking Start, clicking Run, and then typing regedit.

  2. In the registry tree (on the left), navigate to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PCHealth\HelpSvc\.

  3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD value.

  4. Type Headlines as the name for the new value (the Type is REG_DWORD), and then press ENTER.

    Note Setting the data value to 0 (or leaving the default for a new REG_DWORD) disables Headlines. If the Headlines REG_DWORD has another value or doesn't exist, then Headlines is enabled.

To Disable the Online Search Feature on Individual Computers

  1. Click Start, and then click Help and Support.

  2. Below the Search box, click Set search options.

  3. Clear the Microsoft Knowledge Base check box and any other check boxes below it. For example, the manufacturer of your computer may have added a check box to enable your search to query their Web site for results.

  4. Close Help and Support Center.