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From: David Gaertner <gaertner@austin.ibm.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.beta
Subject: Re: Merlin Betas
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 00:30:11 -0500
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
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Message-ID: <31D0CAE3.4514@austin.ibm.com>
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> If you have Warp running on the same machine (so you can run BGReport and
> collect the hardware and disk layout information), then you should be able
> to file a report along the lines of:
> 
>   "I installed the Merlin Beta1 into the C:  partition of my P150 with
>    32 Mb of RAM.  After the first four diskettes, with the "copying"
>    progress bar about 80% completed, it simply froze.  After 5 minutes
>    with no activity I tried pressing Ctl-Alt-Del, but nothing happened;
>    I had to use the System Reset button before I could reboot.
> 
> This is as specific a description as the developers are likely to get
> under these circumstances.  It'll at least warn them that the problem
> exists, and they can get back to you by phone or e-mail if they need
> some extra information.

But what if the problem is hardware dependent and we can't reproduce the problems
in our labs?  For the sake of time, the more complete the problem description, the
easier the diagnosis, i.e., the easier it is for us to find the real problem. 

The description above is almost too vague for us to really get a handle on what's
happening. Believe me, a well documented bug report will go straight to the
developers.  A bug report that requires more investigation will take more time
before it lands in a developers bug bucket.  Also, easily reproducible bugs get 
fixed more quickly.

Install bugs are often very difficult to diagnose.  Merlin's been installed thousands
of times - successfully, but each installation has unique circumstances that sometimes our code 
doesn't handle correctly.

There are some things you can do to further diagnose install problems.  See the README
for information on getting "behind the scenes" of the installation
(i.e., ALT-SHIFT-F3) and the log files in the \OS2\INSTALL and \IBMINST\LOGS directory.

(I really should be sleeping so I can be fresh for fixing more bugs tomorrow....)