If you’re having a problem with a Microsoft product, then the first stop for finding a solution pretty much needs to be the MS Knowledgebase. It’s solved problems for me and for clients times without number. Often however this has involved printing out the article in question in order to follow a series of steps on the computer with the problem.
A new, and very welcome addition to some articles on the Knowledgebase removes the need for this — a “Fix it” button, shown above, has been added. When this button is available, it will download a small file that contains a script or executable that performs all the steps for you. For example, if Internet Explorer is missing from your desktop, the “Fix It” button downloads a small installer file containing a script to put it back.
I can see this going far, and hope it’s a major change in fix delivery. Help Desks in particular should gear up to build local libraries of these scripted fixes, in order to push them out where required. And building the server-specific fixes into System Center Operations Manager for automated behind-the-scenes problem resolution would be a great next step too.