Capture Screen Contents

Capturing a screenshot is a skill that all computer users should have. Why? Because when troubleshooting XP's errors, it often helps to show someone what's your experiencing.

This is especially helpful as an answer to the question: "What does the error massage say?" Rather than trying to duplicate the error, or referring to some Post-it note, you can just send someone exactly the screen you're looking at.

I'm using special software for my screen captures, but it doesn't have to be that complicated to generate a screenshot. All you have to remember is the PrtScrn key.

Here's what to do: to capture the entire screen, press PrtScrn (on some keyboards you have to hold down the Ctrl or Fn key first). You won't see anything magical happening, but a picture of the desktop is saved to the clipboard. To use the picture, just paste it into the program of choice, like a Word document, for example:

Figure 14-15. Capturing a screenshot with Ctrl+PrtScrn.

If you want to capture only the current program window, use the Alt+PrtScrn combination and then perform the paste.