Using Windows Help And Support

Figure below shows the home page of Windows Help And Support. You can get there by choosing Help And Support on the right side of the Start menu. Or, more simply, hold down the Windows key and press F1. (If you have configured your Start menu not to include the Help And Support item and you forget the Windows key+F1 shortcut, open the Start menu, and type help in the search box. Help And Support will appear either at or near the top of the search results.)

The Help And Support home page has austere navigation and search tools, along with links to a variety of resources. Many computer manufacturers add their own links and content to this page.

Ensuring Access to Online Help Topics

Opening the Options menu and clicking Settings takes you to the Help Settings dialog box. The first of the two check boxes here is your ticket to online help topics. This content on Microsoft web servers is continually updated. If you leave the option selected (its default state), whenever your computer is connected to the internet you'll have access to the latest version of each help topic. Unless you have a dial-up internet connection, there's seldom a good reason to clear the check box.

The second check box, Join The Help Experience Improvement Program, if selected, allows Microsoft to collect information about how you use help; such information can assist the company in its efforts to improve the system. If you're working with a slow internet connection, you'll probably want to clear this check box. If you're curious about what kind of information Microsoft collects and how it uses that data, you can click the link to read the privacy statement online.

Unless you have a very slow internet connection, it's best to ensure your access to online help topics by selecting the first check box in the Help Settings dialog box.

You can't display help from older programs
The original format for help files is the .hlp file format. This long-lived and widely used format has been used in help files for all versions of Windows from Windows 3.1 (in 1992) through Windows XP, along with all types of applications for Windows. If you use older applications, there's a good chance that you'll find some .hlp files on your computer's hard drive. Alas, the program needed to display those files, Winhlp32.exe, is not included in Windows 7. The Winhlp32.exe program has not been updated for many years and has officially been put out to pasture. Newer programs, as well as Windows itself, now use one of the newer help engines to display help files saved in one of the newer formats.

If you have some ancient .hlp files that you must use, you can download Winhlp32.exe from the Microsoft Download Center. For details, see Microsoft Knowledge Base (MSKB) article 917607 (w7io.com/0301).