FrontSlash: Problem Steps Recorder Tool

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Problem Steps Recorder Tool – Command-Line Syntax

Introduced at Windows 7, Microsoft Problem Steps Recorder Tool (PSR), it’s a nice utility that let’s you take print screens / screenshots a littler further.

With this tool you can record what’s happening on your screen and get also some more info like, where did you clicked, what happened when you clicked, etc.
All that it’s then compiled on a very small file so you can send it through an e-mail for example.

Now…
Imagine you need to launch PSR through a command-line with certain configurations.
Here’s the syntax you can use:

/start	:Start Recording. (Outputpath flag SHOULD be specified)
/stop	:Stop Recording.
/sc	:Capture screenshots for recorded steps.
/maxsc	:Maximum number of recent screen captures.
/maxlogsize	:Maximum log file size (in MB) before wrapping occurs.
/gui	:Display control GUI.
/arcetl	:Include raw ETW file in archive output.
/arcxml	:Include MHT file in archive output.
/recordpid	:Record all actions associated with given PID.
/sketch	:Create slide show HTML pages.
/slides	:Store output of record session in given path.
/output	:Store output of record session in given path.
/stopevent	:Event to signal after output files are generated.

PSR Usage Examples:

psr.exe
psr.exe /start /output fullfilepath.zip /sc1 /gui 0 /record <PID>
    /stopevent <eventname> /arcetl 1
psr.exe /start /output fullfilepath.xml /gui 0 /recordpid <PID>
    /stopevent <eventname>
psr.exe /start /output fullfilepath.xml /gui 0 /sc 1 /maxsc <number>
    /maxlogsize <value> /stopevent <eventname>
psr.exe /stop

Notes:
1.    Output path should include a directory path (e.g. '.\file.xml').
2.    Output file can either be a ZIP file or XML file
3.    Can't specify /arcxml /arcetl /arcmht /sc etc. if output is not a ZIP file.

Get more info about PSR at:
TechRepublic - Explore the Problem Steps Recorder in Windows 7