Regarding Windows 2008/R2: I've changed my desk-top color to red. I've played with the "appearance settings", but none of them are tolerable to the eye. Is there something I else I can do to make production look different? Obviously, I don't want to run something dangerous when on Prod when I think that I'm on test or QA.
Ideas: 1) Anything in the task bar? 2) What about a small pop-up program that always comes to the foreground? Any such free program exist?
BGInfo from Sysinternals is a free program that's very common in enterprise environments. Configured to run at user logon, it can not only make the desktop look aesthetically unique, but can also display useful information about the server.
Also, you could consider pushing, via GPO, custom Powershell profiles and Cmd.exe settings that change their colors from the defaults on all production as well.
Just a couple ideas.
Edit: Beaten by a second. -_-
Some great ideas I've seen -
1.) Stick a long, deep red bar across the top and bottom of the background image. I've found this to be unobtrusive and pretty helpful.
2.) Some darker red text on the default blue background also looks pretty good without hurting the eyes.
3.) You might take a look at BGInfo. It's a useful utility that prints various data about the server over the background
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897557.aspx
I think I have found something that meets my needs, and can be done without 1) downloading third party programs, 2) registry hacks, 3) compiling C++ code.
1) Right-click desk-top, then select "Personalize". [If this option does not appear, try "Start" then "Color" then enter, then pick the item "Change Color Scheme".] 2) I suggest if you are using Windows Standard, then switch to Windows Classic. Leave one the way it was, then make your changes on "Windows Classic". I'm still not sure how to add a whole new "color scheme". 3) Click the Advanced button. 4) In the Item select list, I change two items to red: a) Active Title Bar b) Active Windows Border
As mentioned in my original question, I think changing the desktop itself is totally inadequate. There needs to be something unique on the open screen. I keep RDP windows open for DEV, QA, TRAIN, and PROD most all day. When I click on one, I rarely see the desktop, but only the active Window, which for me, is usually SQL Studio (SSMS) or BizTalk Admin Console.
I'm not sure how the Windows 2008 taskbar icons can be resized. Windows 7 lets you choose 'Small icons' in the taskbar properties. (Taskbar and Start Menu Properties, Taskbar tab, check Use small icons).
Or change the size for the quicklaunch bar icons.
Would that be distinctive enough for you?
I actually have an extremely useful method for handling these kind of issues, opened a while ago looking for differentiating between multiple user accounts on the same server See Differentiating between multiple runas account windows. I had since made a minor tweak and now I see exactly who I'm running under and on what system. Very handy and it works for the vast majority of window types.
#Include <Array.au3>
#include <WinAPIEx.au3>
While ( True )
Sleep( 100 )
Local $PID = 0
Do
$handle = WinGetHandle("[ACTIVE]", "")
$iPID = WinGetProcess($handle)
Until $iPID > 0
Local $aUser = _WinAPI_GetProcessUser($PID)
$UserName=$aUser[0]
$title = WinGetTitle ( $handle )
$result = StringInStr($title, "Owned By")
If ( $Result == 0 ) Then
WinSetTitle($handle, "", $title & " - Owned By " & $UserName & " on " & @ComputerName )
$title = WinGetTitle ( $handle )
EndIf
WEnd
This can be fired off from a scheduled task, desktop icon, etc.
Note - it also requires a custom autoit library WinAPIEx.au3 file to to be compiled. Also note that this needs to execute with admin level rights to be able to render changes to anything that is launched as an admin.
You could also use a login message that warns the user that they are on a production system.
