a) interesting idea, truly born of enduser frustration

b) swap notepad for wordpad. just do it. wordpad’s always there and notepad REALLY sucks, as opposed to wordpad merely sucking.

c) the best-kept secret in windows administration is the “all-in-one” management console in the context menu of ‘my computer’. Rclick MyComputer > Manage, and right there are your system logs, users/groups, device manager, disk manager, services, and a bunch of other little bits and pieces. I’ve never been one to remember Run box commands because the manage option has enough meat in it to avoid all that shit.

d) if you’re going to number them, see if you can colour-code the boxes for your zombie-brained users, too. “Press 12. It’s in the block of blue buttons”

e) I can’t fault this user as he did type what I told him: “type “foo” then “bar”, then press enter” > didn’t work > read that command back to me > he’d typed “foo bar presenter”…

Very handy, thanks!

Only one suggestion. Why does it use IE to download missing helper apps rather than my default browser or something embedded? Would be much trouble to add a win32 wget binary, and use that? IE is more often than not the problem I’m trying to fix, or at least the cause of the problem.

To solve the XP v. Vista/7 defrag difference, you could use sysinternals contig, which is much better anyway – this simple command will save you a lot of defrag time: contig.exe -q -s c:\

@ Travis McCrea:

LOL! This!

A coworker actually suggested that I number the buttons for precisely that reason. Another suggestion was a text box where a user can type in a number to trigger specific button.

“What is this luke? I am a doctor not a network crazy lunar scientist.

I click the button and theres all these buttons, why can’t you just do this for me?”

“You want me to click the fing test? I don’t have one.”

“oh ping test.. how do I do that? Press what button”

“no, I already closed out of that”

“…. seriously luke there is like a million buttons on there, how am I supposed to find the one you are talking about”

“you know what, I will just wait and have someone come help me… thanks though”

:D

@ Scott:

Well, the XP only entries only exist in XP. For example Vista/7 do not have Local Settings or Documents and Settings folders. Same with defrag and user management commands – the are different for each version of windows.

@ MrJones:

Sort of. I still work with a lot of XP machines though, plus this only has the stuff I need on regular basis and none of the useless stuff.

Looks almost like youve benn looking for godmode^^
http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2010/01/05/windows-7-god-mode/

Very useful app, Luke. As helpdesk/network admin I think this app will save me a lot of time. Are you going to add Vista and 7 functionality for the XP only items in the future, I hope?

Hey. This application deleted Office! :)

Love it. Thanks. Great tool. Will play with it and see if I can come up with some suggestions. Thanks Luke

I can’t wait for the stories about some luser who claims that this application “deleted Office” only to find out later that they simply didn’t have the computer plugged in.