I did not know what “machine actions” were until I had been using the K1000 for about a year. Part of the reason is the browser I use. I am a Firefox user, and the default settings for machine actions did not work with Firefox because they require Active X. I didn’t realize what I was missing until a KACE genius at the Konference took the time to show me how to customize the actions.  When I got back to work, I setup Internet Explorer with the proper security settings as described in the KACE FAQ.

http://www.kace.com/support/kb/index.php?action=artikel&cat=1&id=518&artlang=en

After that, I tried out one of the default settings. “Explore using HOST NAME”.

By clicking on the tiny icon next to a system’s IP address while in “Computer Inventory” I get access to the remote system’s admin share on the hard drive. This is great, but I wanted to try out a custom task. You get to set two machine actions, so I left the first one set to “Explore using HOST NAME” and set the second one to use a utility I find useful.

BlueScreenView by NirSoft is a quick way to look at a remote system’s minidump file after a BSOD. It is a simple exe file I already have on my regular workstation, I just needed to enter the command into the K1000.

In the K1000 > Settings >  Control Panel > General Settings > Edit Mode under Machine Actions.

I entered the following command and clicked “Set Actions”.

c:\\BlueScreenView.exe /minidumpfolder "\\KACE_HOST_IP\c$\WINDOWS\Minidump"

So far, so good. Now if I get a call about a BSOD, I can tell the user to reboot, and I can see the report by clicking on the icon. I heard future revisions to the K1000 may include the option for more than two machine actions to be set at once.