Kurt Shintaku's Blog

For those of you without a Premier Support contract, this is an online method of getting access to hotfixes that are not readily downloadable.  We’ve had this link available for a while however it seems that it’s gotten some coverage recently so now that the cat’s out of the bag, I don’t think it’ll be bad to post it up here.

• PREMIER CONTRACT OWNERS:
  If you have a Premier Contract, you’re WAY better off simply using your Premier contract, i.e. calling your Premier TAM or going to the Premier web site.  In fact, because your login provides you with access to https://premier.microsoft.com, you have access to most every hotfix we produce and they’re available for direct download – no muss no fuss.  The Hotfix request method below requires that you submit a request and wait for a response via email from a Support representative. 

  If your company has a Premier Support contract, but you don’t have access to the Premier web site, you should contact the person in your organization responsible for being the Premier Support liason and ask to have your Windows Live account be given access.  It no additional cost to the company and adding your name to the access list simply provides access to all the great support resources of Premier like downloadable hotfixes, private support newsletters for individual products, private download servers for service packs and patches, support alerts, but not the ability to call in for support under the company’s expense.

I’ve read off of a few sites (I think Steven Bink’s site was one of them) that some folks are speculating that we made this available in response several hotfix collection sites being "created" on the Internet to allow people to publicly upload/download patches and hotfixes we don’t normally release to the public… and I suspect their correct but not in the nasty "nyah nyah nyah" way that they’re intending.

From what I’ve been told, there’s a large number of folks that are using ‘updates’ as a way of spreading malware, simply as disguising their trojan as a hotfix.  It’s like people that disseminate poisoned or fake prescription drugs:  People that can get the drugs one way, decide they’ll buy them from illicit sources instead, not realizing the potential danger.

So instead, we’re providing a way that people can get the hotfixes from the source – us – without having to trust a 3rd party and potentially hurt their machine.  Meanwhile, we keep track of these individuals through their email address so that we can notify them if the hotfix gets revised, or if we discover something wrong with the hotfix and have to ‘recall it’.

HOTFIX REQUEST: 
https://support.microsoft.com/contactus2/emailcontact.aspx?scid=sw;en;1410&WS=hotfix