Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Utilities/Troubleshooting Tools

Windows 7 ships with some really neat utilities to help you work with external accessories as well as troubleshoot problems. Here are some of the cool ones.

Projector Screen Selection

If you have ever done presentations using your notebook computer, you know the kind of nightmare you sometimes have to go through to get your display projected correctly on the projector screen-find the right key combinations on your keyboard, toggle a couple of times, and so on. If you want to use the projector screen as an extension of your screen, you need to go to the screen settings and mess with the setup again.

In Windows 7, you can now quickly control the display projection by pressing the Windows-P key combination. You will see the pop up shown.

As you can see, you can easily control how the display is shown on your computer and the projector simply by selecting the option that applies to you.

You can also use the command displayswitch.exe to invoke the projector pop up. You can run it from the command prompt or the search field of the Start menu.

Problems Steps Recorder

One very cool tool shipped in Windows 7 is the Problems Steps Recorder application. This is one of the internal tools that Microsoft uses for feedback, now available in Windows 7. The Problems Steps Recorder application basically captures screenshots of what you are doing and details each step with descriptions of the actions that you performed. When you are done recording, the details are saved as a web archive.

To launch the Problems Steps Recorder application, use the command psr.exe (you can also find it by searching for "Record steps to reproduce a problem" in the Control Panel).

To start recording, click the Start Record button. From this point onward, whatever items you click on the desktop will be recorded. In the process, you can also add your own comments (in addition, the system will automatically insert detailed descriptions of what you are doing). When you are done, click the Stop Record button. You will now be asked to specify a filename for saving the recording.

The recording will be saved as a .mht file (archived web page) and zipped automatically to save space.

Open the archived report and you will see a detailed description of what you did.

The entire Windows desktop is captured in the report.

You can also view the report as a slideshow. Click the "Review the recorded problem steps as a slide show" link.