Panic Button is intended to ease the work of people who supports end-users, either sysadmins/helpdesks, or those who simply help friends and family. I got the idea after getting frustrated by reports like “I had this error message on my computer. It said that the whatsit had caused a thingy operation”. Noone ever wrote down error messages, and could never remember what they said. I tried to teach people how to take screenshots, so that they could send screenshots of error messages, but that didn’t work.
So, I wrote Panic Button. The user clicks (or double-clicks) on an icon in the OS system tray. Panic Button then takes a screenshot, and displays a form where the user can enter some details. When the user clicks the “Send” button, the screenshot is sent to a preconfigured e-mail address as an attachment.
Requirements
Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista
20MB of hard drive space
Access to an SMTP server (to send e-mail), or a network location that reports can be saved to
Most users will want the version that is packaged as a Windows installer (Panic_Button_#-#.exe)
If you want to make it available to many people on a network, and don’t mind setting everything up manually, you may prefer the Network_Panic_Button_#-#.zip file
Lastly, the source code is available as a zip file (Panic_Button_Source_Code_#-#.zip) or from CVS (deprecated).
All three can be downloaded via SourceForge.net. Make sure you read the help file and configure Panic Button before trying to use it.
If you get any trouble, just contact us via the community forum.
