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Take screenshots for troubleshooting in Windows XP

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A picture is worth thousand words. This is so very true when you are trying to describe your problem to an IT-specialist. You should always write down exact error messages you are seeing when a program or Windows XP itself does not work correctly - this helps a lot in problem solving. But it is even better to e-mail screenshots to the IT-specialist trying to help you.

Full screen or open window?

You can take two different types of screenshots in Windows XP - either the whole computer screen area or just open window or error message.

Use full screen area only when something is wrong (maybe screen colors or strange open windows) and there is no error message displayed. To do that, press Print Screen (could also be Prt Sc or Print Scrn) button on your keyboard once.

If there is an error message, make sure it is active (click once on the message area - but not any buttons in it!) and press right Alt+Print Screen on your keyboard. Right Alt might also be Alt Gr on some keyboards.

Saving the screenshot

Whether you pressed Print Screen or right Alt+Print Screen, the screenshot now resides in a special memory area called Clipboard. Clipboard can only hold one item, so if you take another screenshot, the older one gets overwritten.
To see the screenshot and save it, open Start Menu by clicking the green Start button or by using keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Esc, hold your mouse pointer over All Programs, then move to Accessories and click on Paint.

Open Edit menu and click Paste, or use keyboard shortcut Ctrl+V to paste the screenshot from Clipboard to Paint:

You can maximize the Paint window for better visibility. Make sure you pasted the correct screenshot. Next open File menu and click Save As...:

By default, Paint saves the screenshot to your My Pictures folder. This is generally fine, but you can select some other folder to save the screenshot to, if you want to.
Enter the name of the file to File name and select JPEG from Save as type. Then click Save:

That's it! You can now send the saved screenshot via e-mail to your IT-support guy.

Looking for Windows Vista version of the article? Click here then.
Looking for Windows 7 version of the article? Click here then.

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