Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Browsing Through Windows Help And Support

You might be the type who'd like to read through Windows Help And Support as well. Or you might find it easier to find a subject by drilling down through a table of contents-like hierarchy. Either way, the Browse Help button (or the Browse Help Topics link on the home page) is your entree to the help topics that interest you.

To explore the available help, click a subject heading. You'll be rewarded with links to more narrowly focused subject headings as well as links to detailed help topics. Links near the top of the page trace your path to a topic; you can use these "bread crumbs" to quickly find your way back to an intermediate subject page.

Searching for Help Topics

Finding a particular help topic is straightforward. Simply type your search word or phrase in the search box (in the toolbar at the top of the Help window) and press Enter. Windows then displays links to up to 30 of the best results, with the ones most likely to be useful to you at the top of the list. If you're using online help, it searches the online topics; otherwise, it looks only at your local (offline) content.

The Microsoft Knowledge Base (MSKB) is a repository of thousands of articles with detailed troubleshooting solutions and other useful information. The Windows 7 help system (unlike its predecessor in Windows XP) does not search MSKB articles, but you can use Help And Support as a launch pad for MSKB searches. Instead of using the search box, click the Ask button, and then click Microsoft Customer Support under the Contact Technical Support heading.