The Minority Report

You know…it’s the little things in life. As a systems administrator, I’m in and out of the Services MMC snapin pretty frequently. It’s annoyed me almost every time because it opens at 640x480px and defaults to the Extended view. Well, I took a shot at it once and set the properties to “Open Maximized” but that does not work. So I suffered…until today.

The Services MMC Snap-In has two views namely Standard and Extended. The Extended view provides information about the selected service in the left side of the details pane. Also, it includes links for starting, stopping, or pausing the selected service. If you have a small monitor and need more screen real estate, you can configure the Services MMC to open in Standard view by default.
How to configure Services MMC Snap-In to open in Standard view by default – The Winhelponline Blog

I can’t believe I waited so long to Google such a simple little thing but I feel stupid. Go visit that dudes page and check out the other tips but I’m snipping the whole thing here:

You can use MMC in author mode to create new consoles or modify existing consoles. Follow these steps to set Services MMC start in Standard View by default.

1. Click Start, Run and type %windir%\system32
2. Backup the file Services.msc and store in a safe location
3. Right-click the file Services.msc, and choose Author
4. The Services MMC Snap-In opens in Author mode, in which you can customize the window size, pane width, view mode (Standard or Extended) etc.
5. Customize the Snap-In accordingly.
6. From the File menu, click Save to save your settings.
7. Exit the Services MMC, which is currently in Author mode.

Now open Services MMC (services.msc) normally and see if the settings are applied.

Did you know about the MMC snapin Author option? Neither did I.

You can use MMC in author mode to create new consoles or modify existing consoles. To create an administrative tool, you add snap-ins and other items to a console. You can create additional console windows that provide views of the various items that make up a console. You can also create taskpad views that contain shortcut links to run menu commands from different locations and tools in the console, as well as run command-line functions. After a console is saved, you can distribute it to users.
MMC in author mode: Microsoft Management Console (MMC)

I know it’s a MMC and there are different rules for .msc files but once again it’s a tad annoying that Microsoft isn’t consistent and just use the Properties page to set “Start Maximized”, etc.