April 20, 2010

Microsoft Guided Help - Amazing!

OK, I think I'm a fairly smart cookie -- or candy bar -- but sometimes I overlook the obvious.

Due to a horrific crash and an accumulated slowdown on my PC, my tech friend and I spent the better part of Sunday and Monday reinstalling Microsoft Windows XP and my software. Now I'm back up and running (mostly) with a few things left to do (like install all my Adobe stuff -- ughh). Anyway, after the install, I couldn't figure out what happened to my old favorite icon -- Show Desktop. It wasn't there. So I did a Google search for "missing show desktop icon". What pops up? This page from Microsoft.

Several solutions are offered including Windows Key + D (which I didn't know) plus an icky script thing which I'm too lazy to do. And what's this?? A "Fix this problem" button. I've never seen that before. Being a curious kitty, I clicked it and got the usual download request for something mysterious called GSA ACW packages.
Hmmm OK, I'll run it. Told you I'm a curious kitty. (Which is probably why my system was so junked up it needed reinstalling. My tech friend was like uggghhh.)

Anywho, next thing I know, I'm getting a guided tutorial on how to fix the problem including a moving cursor, dimmed Windows and highlights. What it did was tell me the icon was already installed and activated my Quick Launch bar (see I really do sometimes miss the obvious). Yay! It was very cool watching it do all this automagically while showing each step. So Microsoft, you have a winning approach with this one!

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