Help and Support Service

[JuggaloBrotha]

On my home system I have the Windows Help and Support service disabled and I've recently started working on an old .Net program lately.

I've noticed that when I run this sub:

    Friend Sub ShowSystemInfo()
        Dim ConfigKey, SubKey As RegistryKey
        Dim msInfoPath As String
        Dim msInfoProcess As New Process
        ConfigKey = Registry.LocalMachine
        SubKey = ConfigKey.OpenSubKey("Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\MSInfo", False)
        msInfoPath = CStr(SubKey.GetValue("Path"))
        msInfoProcess.Start(msInfoPath)
        msInfoProcess.Dispose()
    End Sub

I get a Help and Support messagebox telling me that Help and Support service is not running. So my question is:
Why does the above code need the Help and Support service in the first place?

 

[cjard]

Make a new text file on your desktop
Call it A.NFO
Open it
It will fail too.. but on any normal system with help & support service running you will find:

HelpCtr.exe loads with the following command line:
"C:\WINDOWS\pchealth\helpctr\binaries\helpctr.exe" -mode hcp://system/sysinfo/msinfo.xml -url hcp://system/sysinfo/msinfo.htm?open=C:\DOCUME~1\JUGG~1.BRO\Desktop\a.nfo


So, yep.. that system info window is actually done by HelpCtr.exe now, using some XML to lay out the details, I guess...

 

[JuggaloBrotha]

interesting, usually the Help and Support service is completely useless

not that it matters in my code example above, all it does is open a window displaying that computer's info, nothing important