Quick Tip: Need a User to Take Screenshots of a Problem? Try Using Win7’s Built-in Tool [Tips and Tricks]

I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this before. There’s a neat tool that ships with Windows 7 called the “Problem Steps Recorder” tool (psr.exe)

The Process Works Like This:

• A user clicks the record button
• The user performs all the steps to recreate the problem (and can add comments at each step)
• The user clicks stop recording, and is prompted to save a ZIP file, which they can then mail to a technician.
• The ZIP file contains an MHT file.
• This file contains a screenshot of every step the user performs, as well as system information regarding those steps. You can look through them one-by-one or play them as a slide show.

To Access the Tool

From a windows 7 machine, in the Start menu, type psr and click PSR.exe.

NOTE: if you have applications running in Administrator mode, you will need to run PSR.exe in administrator mode in order to be allowed to capture those.