joeu2004@hotmail.com wrote:
> Is anyone else experiencing chronic delays or failure when trying
> to access any of the Excel newsgroups through "MS Community
> Newsgroups" (MSCN)? How do I report such problems?

FYI, with networking trace tools, I have confirmed that the problem
is indeed within the MS internal network or systems. When I try to
access a newsgroup, the TCP connection is established just fine,
and support.microsoft.com even ACKs the HTTP Get request. But
the Get operation appears to time out on the MS side, and 2 minutes
later, support.microsoft.com sends an HTTP 500 general error with
"connection: close". This misbehavior occurs at least 19 out of 20
times in the past 2-3 days. It is has been generally reliable for the
12-18 months before that.

MS support ("contact us") says that we should send such problem
reports to writeus@microsoft.com.