Is there an alternative way to report a problem with Visual Studio?

Horribly corrupt system?

What would a "horribly corrupt system" look like, that would block VS?

No. The system is practically new, and I do my work from an external drive. The security is set high, but why would MS Defender want to block its sister products?

I just wanted to report that after updating VS, my build now takes about 16 times longer - from 11 seconds, prior, to 2 minutes 40 seconds.

I lower the security bar to see if MS's security is blocking VS from connecting.

Although I find that unlikely, since I am able to search online from the IDE.

Please walk us through the process you're using to report an issue. Include screenshots of the places where it isn't working. In general the following process should happen.

1. VS is running and you click Report a Problem.
2. Your default web browser pops up going directly to DeveloperCommunity and Visual Studio.
3. You type a summary and start of the details and then search, if it doesn't find anything automatically, to see if there is any existing reports.
4. After the search runs, if nothing matches, then you have the Can't find the solution button to click.
5. Fill in the details of the issue, optionally include the information about VS, replicate the issue, etc.
6. Submit the ticket.

The bulk of this is done directly in the browser. However getting the VS information, showing the instances, etc requires communication and that is where firewalls tend to get in the way.

Have you tried temporarily turning off your firewall to see if the issue goes away. If so then the issue is at the firewall level so you'll need to add an exclusion to allow communication.

Another thing to note is that while you're reporting the issue you need to leave VS running otherwise it won't be able to get the information it needs.

You can also check the Windows event log to see if any errors occurred.

I followed both procedures here, and got the screenshot in the original post.

I'm here in the firewall setting - Allow an App.

Is this the file I need to allow - dump64?

No you don't need that file. Please clarify where in the process it is failing. At which step in the process does it lose connection to VS?

Did you temporarily disable the firewall? If so then the firewall isn't the issue so adding exclusions won't change anything.

Did you look in the Windows event log to see if any errors are raised at this point?

Try running VS with the /log <logfilepath> option. Then use Report a Problem. It'll log information to the <logfilepath> that you can then look at it.

Please clarify where in the process it is failing. At which step in the process does it lose connection to VS?

I did that.

It's not clear what I posted?

On clicking Report a problem, the browser opens to the page, as shown in the screenshot in the original post.

Did you temporarily disable the firewall? If so then the firewall isn't the issue so adding exclusions won't change anything.

I'd rather not disable my Windows firewall.

I would prefer adding exclusions. I located the file to add, with the help of AI.That wasn't the problem.

It came to my mind to try Edge, and that revealed that Microsoft does not like my default browser. Or my default browser does not like Microsoft.

I believe the former is more accurate.

The page loads fine in Edge.

Why didn't I figure that out before... It should be obvious. :)

Thanks.