Printing the Screen

By Dick Evans, www.rwevans.com

When someone has a problem on their computer like some weird message appearing on the screen, I will ask them to describe it. Hardly ever works! Sending me a printout of the screen with the error message on it is much easier to understand. But how does one do that?

Years ago, back in the DOS days before we had Windows, we would print the contents of the screen by having printer hooked up and ready to go and then press the PrintScreen or PrtScr or PrtSc key usually located in the top right of the keyboard and perhaps the UPPER case of the SysReq key. Press the key and instantly the words on the screen would print away on the old dot matrix, impact printer.

The key is still there, but it does not send the contents directly to the printer. And it now sends all of the screen contents, words, images, and colors. Where does it go you ask? Press Shift+ PrtScr key and whatever is displayed on the screen is sent to the Windows clipboard. Alternatively, use Shift+Alt+PrtScr and only the contents of the Window having focused is sent.

You cannot see the contents of the clipboard. Have faith that what you sent is really there. To turn it into an image file that can be sent to someone else by email, Open the Windows paint program (Start > Programs > Accessories > Paint) and Ctrl+V to paste the clipboard content.

Ctrl+S to save the image as a file. Place it in a location where you will be able to easily locate it, give it a name, and change the Type to JPG. Now you have a screen print or a picture of the screen containing the weird message to email to your PC Guru to analyze.

Printing the Screen

By Dick Evans, www.rwevans.com

When someone has a problem on their computer like some weird message appearing on the screen, I will ask them to describe it. Hardly ever works! Sending me a printout of the screen with the error message on it is much easier to understand. But how does one do that?

Years ago, back in the DOS days before we had Windows, we would print the contents of the screen by having printer hooked up and ready to go and then press the PrintScreen or PrtScr or PrtSc key usually located in the top right of the keyboard and perhaps the UPPER case of the SysReq key. Press the key and instantly the words on the screen would print away on the old dot matrix, impact printer.

The key is still there, but it does not send the contents directly to the printer. And it now sends all of the screen contents, words, images, and colors. Where does it go you ask? Press Shift+ PrtScr key and whatever is displayed on the screen is sent to the Windows clipboard. Alternatively, use Shift+Alt+PrtScr and only the contents of the Window having focused is sent.

You cannot see the contents of the clipboard. Have faith that what you sent is really there. To turn it into an image file that can be sent to someone else by email, Open the Windows paint program (Start > Programs > Accessories > Paint) and Ctrl+V to paste the clipboard content.

Ctrl+S to save the image as a file. Place it in a location where you will be able to easily locate it, give it a name, and change the Type to JPG. Now you have a screen print or a picture of the screen containing the weird message to email to your PC Guru to analyze.

Password Protect Folders

I was looking for a way to encrypt or password protect a folder and folder and found this little freebie with a Google search. It is called LockDir and can be downloaded at http://tinyurl.com/password77. This page will also instruct you on the "how to" of using it. Simply put you just copy the .exe file into the folder you want to protect. Then open the file. 

Enter the password you want to use to access the folder and click Protect. All the files in the folder will be hidden except for the lockdir.exe file. To unlock the files, open lockdir.

Now just enter the password you used and click Unprotect. The files are available to you. For detail instructions see the page opened when you click the download link above.

Recovering Data from a Broken Computer

Q:  I have an old laptop that broke. How can I obtain the stuff on my hard drive? I need a few items on it.

A: If broke means it will not boot, but otherwise turns on, you need a bootable CD and then you can copy the material off the old drive onto a USB flash drive. The Hirens Boot CD works well for this purpose. http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/.

If not, you need to remove the hard drive and connect it to a special set of cables that will turn it into an external hard drive. Then you can plug it into your new computer and copy the files off of it.

Here is the adapter you need http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1KT0NJ7560

You take out the old hard drive CAREFULLY. Then you plug it into the adapter and then plug the adapter into a USB port on the new machine. The drive will work just like a USB flash drive and you can drag and drop files from and to it.

When you are all done, you can use the old drive as a backup drive.