Whew, that's alot of acronyms.

Anway, one of the bugs that's really been annoying me is that when running under Windows and IIS as a CGI HelpSpot sometimes throws these weird CGI errors. In fact this isn't a HelpSpot bug, but rather a problem with IIS, however, that's not the point because at the end of the day it's my customers who will be having the problem.

The problem is complex because it doesn't affect all machines, often on machines with the exact same builds one will send the errors while the other doesn't. It seems that the issue is related to the speed of the machine.

After looking around for weeks I think I've found a workaround. It's not a fix really, but a setting you can apply to Windows which seems to instantly solve the problem. If you've experienced this issue with HelpSpot or other CGI apps (seems to be an issue with PERL as well) on IIS you may want to checkout the workaround here:

http://www.userscape.com/helpdesk/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=20

I finally found this answer buried in this bug discussion:

http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=9852

Unfortunately for the guys who create PHP the discussion isn't very flattering for them. They basically respond with the standard "well use open source products" answer instead of any actual help. The bug is from back in 2002 though so hopefully they've matured since then.