Become A Technical Guru With Problem Steps Recorder

How many times have you tried to teach your mum or old granny a simple task on the PC, but you never seem to be able to get the message across?

Firefox? What is that? Browser? Browse what? …

In MakeTechEasier, we understand how you feel, because we have been teaching people to do simple stuffs on their computers day in and out and we know how frustrating it can be. Apparently, what appears simple to us is actually an arduous task for many.

In Windows 7, there is this small and simple application that could make your life much easier. Problem Steps Recorder is an useful tool that allows you to record down your steps to troubleshoot the issue. It is almost like a screencast application, except that it saves in the MHTML format.

Using Problem Steps Recorder

In your Windows 7, click on the Windows Orb (also known as the Start menu) and type in psr in the search field.

Select and run the psr.exe application.

Click on the Start Record button

Do the required action.

At any point of time, you can Add Comment button to add comments to your recording.

Once you are done, click Stop Record. You can also click Pause Record to stop recording temporary.

PSR will then prompt you to save the recording. The saved file is in zip format. When you unzip it, you will get a MHTML file where you can double click to open it in browser.

Viewing the recording

In the file, you will see the actual steps (with screenshot) recorded by the psr. For example, I recorded the way to uninstall an application in Windows 7. The following screenshots are the result generated from PSR.

1st step: Click on the Start button.

2nd step: Click on the Control Panel

3rd step: Click uninstall program

5th step: Uninstall the application

As can be seen, every single step that I did was recorded.

Uses of PSR

Here are some ways that you can make use of the Problem Steps Recorder:

• be a technical guru and provide visual technical support, especially for your old granny.
• If you are facing a problem in Windows and are seeking support, you can use PSR to record down the problem and email to the support officer. It enables them to has a better understanding of what went wrong.
• Documentation: You may have discovered a hack to solve something and you want to record it down and store it somewhere so that you can refer to it in the future.

Have you tried PSR? What do you mainly use it for?

Note: Problem Steps Recorder is only available in Windows 7.

Tags: Software, support, technical, windows 7