Fixing Windows 7 Help and Support

For the past few months I noticed that Windows 7 Help and Support feature wasn’t working correctly.  Pressing WIN+F1 or choosing “Help and Support” from the Start menu would open a window, but the help contents weren’t there.  Searching for a topic wouldn’t work either.

The text would display “__elbasuser__” in several places.  I narrowed the problem down to using the offline help option.  Choosing online help would display the correct help content, but the problem still nagged me.

After much searching on the internet, I found a solution.  Apparently when the Broadcom Bluetooth software is installed, it corrupts Windows Help.

The solution is to delete a registry key.  Under the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Assistance\Client\1.0\Namespaces\OEM\en-US\Titles

Remove the following subkey:

"BRCM_Bluetooth_Help"

Restart Help and Support and you should be set.