Windows 7 links getting harder to use – DirectX edition @ AskWoody

Windows 7 links getting harder to use – DirectX edition

Posted on May 9, 2016 at 07:12 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

From reader MS:

Just noticed something on Microsoft’s pages.

I’m trying to find the DirectX downloader for a co-worker having trouble with his at-home game. (The things we do to keep our users happy.)

Microsoft’s page at https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/kb/179113 has a link to the DirectX web installer about a screen down, pointing to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=159853

Depending on your web browser configuration, that link now appears to take you either to:

– https://www.microsoft.com/library/errorpages/smarterror.aspx (IE)

– https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/software-download (IE)

– https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/software-download/windows10 (Firefox and Chrome)

IE will give you either of the first two links, apparently randomly (I sometimes get the former, sometimes the latter, page). Firefox and Chrome seem to consistently give me the Windows 10 download page directly.

Similarly, searching Microsoft for DirectX (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Search/result.aspx?q=directx&x=0&y=0) and selecting the link for the End-User Runtime Web installer, takes you instead to a page that lets you download Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 ISOs…

The only runtimes I can find on the Microsoft site are the June 2010 ones. Everything else seems hidden/broken.

Call me cynical, but is this the next push on the Windows 10 front, making everything related to Windows 7 or 8.1 harder and harder to find?

Windows News DirectX, Windows 7 links

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