Bugs generally fall into one of two categories: minor bugs that you can work around and major bugs that stop you in your tracks. While we are interested in all bug reports, it is the ‘show stopping’ bugs that command our immediate attention.

Fortunately, most bugs fall into the first category. For those, please take some time and read the suggestions in the Before you submit a report section. But if you are facing a major bug, you might want to jump immediately to the Urgent section below.

You can find the answers to many questions in our web site. The place to start is the user support home page where you can find our user support policy. After that, we suggest visiting the user support home page where you will find links to the various resources we offer.

We've also put together a web page on How To Get Your Bug Fixed that you should read if you want to make sure your report has maximum impact.

Of course, you are encouraged to contact us about the problem you are seeing. If you haven't talked to somebodoy here at QSA ToolWorks about the bug you are seeing, please contact us. We may already be aware of the bug and a second report would only be redundant. Plus, we may already be aware of a workaround to your problem.

Since we took over the ongoing development of Helix (starting in June, 2002) we have fixed hundreds of bugs in Helix. Some are easy to describe; others are very low level and are seen in the form of "general flakiness and instability."

If you are using an older version of Helix, please either upgrade to the current version and retest, download the current demo and retest, or read through the release notes for the newer products and see if we haven't already fixed your bug.

All bug reports are now filed through our online database: techdb. Instructions for accessing techdb are found here.

Mac OS X captures the exact nature of the crash in a ‘crash log’ that is extrememly helpful in finding the root cause of a crash.

If you are experiencing crashes in a Mac OS X Helix product, read this FAQ page for a detailed explanation of how to send that crash log to us.

If you are looking for immediate help solving a problem, do not file a bug report and walk away! You will not receive a reply to reports submitted that way!

Of course, we do want you to file the report, but reporting a bug is not the same as asking for help. When you report a bug, it goes ‘onto the pile’ where it sits until an engineer is ready to work on that bug.

If you need immediate help, or you have a question that requires an answer, you must contact technical support directly.

If you are experiencing a crash and are looking for immediate help, here are some step-by-step instructions:

1. Submit a Bug Report. When you submit a bug report through techdb, a Bug Number is automatially assigned.
2. Attach a Crash Log. Is the crash in an OS X native Helix product? If so, attaching a copy of the crash log to your report really speeds up the process.
3. Contact technical support. If you don’t call or email, we won’t know it is urgent. When you do contact us, be sure to include your Bug Number (see step one) so we can quickly work to resolve your issue.

In a crashing situation it is easy to be overwhelmed with all of the information gathering that must be done, so if you find yourself not knowing what to do next, forget all of that and contact our technical support department. The phone number and email address are found here.