A new tool in Windows 7 is the Problem Steps Recorder (PSR). It is nice for us computer technicians who cannot always be on site or remote in when a customer has a problem. It also helps greatly if the customer has trouble describing the problem or how it occurs, especially if it is after they follow certain steps and the issue occurs. More than once I have gone on site, and the user who is having the issue is not there for one reason or another, I attempt to duplicate the problem and cannot. This left the end user frustrated when they come back to work and still have the issue.

Windows 7 greatly reduces that with PSR. PSR is basically a series of screen shots and text that records all keystrokes, mouse clicks et al, that the end user performs. It saves the sequence of events in a document that can be saved, emailed or printed.

You start PSR by clicking on the “Start” menu and typing in “psr.exe” in the search box. See the image.

Next you press the “Start Record” button, carry out the clicks and typing done and then “Pause” or “Stop Record” to finish up. When you chose to stop, you will be asked to name the file and the location to save it. Pretty simple.

You can view the recorded steps in Internet Explorer by double-clicking the ZIP file and extracting the “.mht” file.

Well, there you have it, a quick simple way to record how an error is occurring.
Until we meet again, have a virus free week!