Cool Windows 7 Feature…

I’d have to say that one of my favorite new features from Windows 7 – that doesn’t seem to be all that well known – is the new Problem Steps Recorder. It’s a great way for someone to show you the steps they’ve taken when encountering an issue, or for you to document the steps you’ve taken to perform some task or action and send on to your colleagues. Here is what you do:

1) First, hit the Windows Key + R to get a “Run Program” window.

2) Type “psr” and hit enter.

Then you’ll get this little application to come up:

Just hit “Start Record” and you are set. The utility will record screenshots every time your screen changes. You can also add comments at each step of your “repro”.

Once you are done and click “Stop Record”, it will prompt you to save the results into a compressed file automatically. The contents of this archive is an HTML archive file, with an extension of .mhtml or .mht. When you double click this, it will open in Internet Explorer with the screen shots of each step you took and any comments you may have added.

Very handy for many purposes. There are many cool features in Windows 7 (Presentation Mode, the Shake, Window Docking), but I usually find very few people are aware of this little gem.

Jay