Windows 7: Up and Running

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 in Figure 8-22.

Figure 8-22. Controlling the display output options

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.

Note

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 ...