Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Quick fix for the annoying windows services admin ui defaults

One of the great interface crimes with Windows is the Computer Management Console!

As a web developer, I end up starting and stopping services a lot. The default interface is rubbish, but did you know you can change it? Probably not, it's classic poor interface design.

I really hate the extended versus standard mode default and that I have to make al these redundant clicks... but there is a solution!

So here you go, How to Configure Services MMC Snap-in to Open in Standard View by Default

I can't believe I never thought of searching for this before.....

Basically the cliff notes summary is, you can always open via explorer a MMC file in "Author" mode via a right click, tweak it and then save it as the default view.

For example in my case is simply having Computer Management open to Services in Standard Mode.

3 annoying clicks you never have to repeat again!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

net start ""
net stop ""
?

Brian Kotek said...

Just take 10 seconds a write a batch file for whatever services you want to start or stop.

Zac Spitzer said...

there are a lot of things which are easier via gui....

i like using the command line, but honestly a GUI is simply far simpler and quicker at times..

some of those services have rather long names

Brian Kotek said...

I love a GUI too, but come on, you only have to type the service name once into a batch file and save it, and that's it. It really takes about 10 seconds. Try it, you'll agree!