Q: What is a screen capture, and how do I do it?

The easiest way to screen capture, without any special software, is to use your keyboard keys.

Locate your PrtScn key.

Press it once. You have now captured your entire screen to temporary memory.

It's that easy.

(Note if your keyboard is relatively new, you may have to toggle the F Lock key, so that the PrtScn key is active).

If you just want to capture the current active window (and not the entire screen), for example, you want to capture an error message or the results of a virus scan, hold the ALT key down while you press the PrtScn key.

You now have captured the active window into temporary memory.

The next step converts the capture into an image

Now open your favourite image editor program.

You may use Paint, PhotoShop, PhotoPaint, PaintShopPro, or any other photo editor.

In this example we'll use Paint -- start the Paint program.

While holding Ctrl down press V. Alternatively, click Edit and then Paste.

Your screen capture is then pasted into Paint as an image.

The image to the left is a screen capture of the Run command (it could be any Window or error message), as it is pasted into this Paint program.

Now click File, and then Save As. Choose to save as a JPG file into My Pictures folder.

Note, earlier versions of Windows do not have the Save As JPG option. Choose to save as GIF or BMP. JPG is the preferred option because of it's relatively small file size.

Using Windows Explorer, browse to My Pictures folder, and your now saved screen capture is an image stored on your PC.

If your PC support technician requests you email this screen capture image, simply attach or insert this image into a new email, and then send.