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Capturing Screenshots in Windows XP

Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 1:33 pm
by Pete
I just spent about an hour trying to figure out how to capture screenshots from a full-screen Command Prompt window in Windows XP, and found no good solution. I tried "Print Screen", a few shareware programs and other stuff, and I simply couldn't capture a screenshot.

In the end, I did a ghetto workaround... taking a picture of my screen with a digital camera and then using the image from the camera. It worked, but the screenshots end up really distorted, blurry, and the colors become very desaturated.

Is there any way to use "Print Screen" to capture screenshots of DOS programs in Windows XP? Or any other good-working method?

I know that I can capture a Command Prompt screenshot if the program is displayed in windowed mode, but whenever I run this particular QB game, it automatically switches to full-screen mode. And then I can't capture screenshots. When I press "Print Screen", all that gets copied to the clipboard are a bunch of lines of blank text (spaces).

This is pretty aggravating, so I thought I'd ask for some help. I'm thinking I need to install a dual-boot Windows 95/98 partition if I'm gonna keep on running a QB site. I can't run a good 90% of new QB releases because of friggin' XP.

Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 3:59 pm
by Nodtveidt
In order to keep doing reviews for V Planet's new site, I'm triple-booting my new system: Win98 (of course), Win XP, and FreeBSD. That way, I have the legacy support for QB games, the ability to take full advantage of my computer's resources, and a platform to port everything to. :D You might want to seriously consider dual-booting, man... :D

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 4:37 am
by Z!re
People should start adding their own screenshot routines.

And stop the whole: "It runs fine on my computer, so it must work on everybodys" thing.

EMS being one.

And the: "I have a delay, its a for/next, 0 to 9328742983749234 it only takes 0.1 seconds on my p5,77ghz 9tb ram"

.... *slam*



Anyways, you could always ask someone with win98 to run it and take some screenies.

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 6:09 am
by Guest
I use Windows 2000 only (no dual boot or such, although I want it with Win98).

In Win2000 you can also view graphical screens in window, instead of only in fullscreen as in WinXP.
Have you tried Screen Thief?
Also, you could try a D3D DOS Emulator like DOSBox.

When the NTVDM crashes on something, DOSBox is usually the best (but xtremely slow) alternative! Did you try it already? ;)

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 6:10 am
by Anonymous
Omg, forgot to log in.

I use Windows 2000 only (no dual boot or such, although I want it with Win98).

In Win2000 you can also view graphical screens in window, instead of only in fullscreen as in WinXP.
Have you tried Screen Thief?
Also, you could try a D3D DOS Emulator like DOSBox.

When the NTVDM crashes on something, DOSBox is usually the best (but xtremely slow) alternative! Did you try it already?

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 6:09 pm
by m2j
I posted at question like that in QBNews, and they said the only way to do it was with a dos tsr (VGSCAP12)... Well, not the ONLY way, but the easiest way...

What I needed was a way to convert the screen to a bitmap, dumping a bsv was no good, and I don't have a bitmap writing routine that can write the full screen without qb45...

matt

Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 8:16 am
by Guest
Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 can be downloaded for a 30 day demo - you can take screenshots of any operating system using that... although only for 30 days.

Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 11:59 am
by Nodtveidt
The Microsoft Virtual PC demo I downloaded from Microsoft the other day is good for 45 days. Plus...no one says you can't crack that sucker to extend the demo time... ;)

Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 10:38 pm
by barok
I tried using all those programs, but they never worked for my system that uses windows 2k. However, i found that dosbox works perfectly, if you can avoid the fact that it's slow.

Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 11:47 am
by Nodtveidt
Which programs...screen thief and the like, or VM apps? Coz the VM apps ONLY work in NT-based Windows versions...

Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 1:14 pm
by Anonymous
barok wrote:I tried using all those programs, but they never worked for my system that uses windows 2k. However, i found that dosbox works perfectly, if you can avoid the fact that it's slow.
Speed has increased a lot in the new DOSbox 0.62! Try it out! :P Plus, you can increase DOSbox's speed with Ctrl+F12, and decrease the speed with Ctrl+F11.

Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 12:35 am
by Guest
A new release? Cool!

I know you can increase speed, and often while running a program in it i'd hold in the ctrl+f12 button for like, 5 minutes, before i realized it only takes about 5 seconds for the cpu to reach 100%.

A new release is awesome! Dosbox is the only way i can play games that use ems, emm and ds4qb++. (only sometimes.)

Whenever i try taking a screenshot with any screenshot programs such as screen theif such, all i get is a black screen. A program i found called purrint seemed to work nicely as well: if it took more than a black screen. ;)