How to take a screenshot in Windows XP

eddie — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:53:44 +0000

Unfortunately, Windows XP doesn’t come with the nice automatic screenshot utility like Mac OSX does. No worries, though – it’s still possible to take a screenshot with Windows XP, it just requires a few more steps.

One of these days, I am going to write a nifty screenshot utility that I’ve been planning for some time. Until then, just follow these steps.

1. Get whatever you want to take a screenshot of on the screen

Duh.

2. Hit the “Print Screen” Key

On a normal keyboard, the Print Screen key (sometimes abbreviated “prt scrn”) is located above the number pad.

Pressing the Print Screen key causes an image of whatever is on your screen to be copied to the clipboard.

3. Start your favorite image editor

If you have Photoshop, fire it up. If not, you can use the simple image editor that Windows XP ships with – MS Paint. MS Paint is located in your start menu, under “Accessories.” Alternatively, you can run MS Paint by going to Start->Run and typing “mspaint”. (no quotes)

Note – if you’re looking for a nice free image editor, you may want to check out The Gimp.

4. Paste the image from the clipboard onto your screen

Use the Edit->Paste functionality, or try the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-V (paste.) You should now be able to use the photo editing program to crop the image to your liking, add text, etc. When finished, simply save the image to your hard drive.

5. A note on image formats

If you are using MS Paint, the default image format will be BMP or “Bitmap.” BMP files tend to be very large and limited in their usefulness. If you are taking this screenshot to email to someone, you should probably choose to save the image as a jpeg (JPG) file.

Eddie On Everything » screen shot

How to take a screenshot in Windows XP

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