Windows Print Screen Key - how does it work

doopydug · 23 Jan 2010 at 08:36

I have a dell computer and desperately need to take a screenshot. However, when I press the print Screen key, nothing is saved to the clipboard so when I try to paste it into notepad, there is nothing there.

The key itself says "Print screen " on the top half and "Sysreq" on the bottom half. I have tried holding down CTRL or ALT or SHIFT with it but I cannot seem to get it to take a screenshot - am I doing something wrong or could it possibly be disabled on this computer?

Cyclone · 23 Jan 2010 at 09:22

Dont think you can save it in notepad. Use Paint and save it as an image.

doopydug · 23 Jan 2010 at 09:24

You STAR - THANK YOU !!

bledd · 23 Jan 2010 at 09:43

install this..

http://www.getpaint.net/

after you've taken the printscreen, create a new image (file, new) in paint.net

it'll autosize to the size you need, now you can crop it and save as a .jpg

also, if you hold Left ALT key whilst pressing printscreen, it'll only copy the active window, ie if you had calculator open and on top, it would only be the size of the calculator, and not full screen

deadite66 · 23 Jan 2010 at 10:41

if you have vista/7 you can use the snipping tool

Hotwired · 23 Jan 2010 at 10:48

What Cyclone said, Notepad can't do images (except ASCII art), if you'd done it in Wordpad or Word it would have worked.

bledd · 23 Jan 2010 at 10:50

Hotwired said:
What Cyclone said, Notepad can't do images (except ASCII art), if you'd done it in Wordpad or Word it would have worked.

Word and wordpad are a terrible way to send images!, I hate it when someone sends you a doc file full of pasted jpgs, they're usually all distorted and resized badly

Hotwired · 23 Jan 2010 at 10:53

I know but point was Notepad can't do anything with images, the other two can do basic mangling of pixels ^_^