Skip to main content

Disable Print Screen Key in Windows

Often abbreviated Prt Scr, the Print Screen key is a useful key supported on most PCs. In DOS, pressing the Print Screen key causes the computer to send whatever images and text are currently on the display screen to the printer. Some graphics programs and Windows, use the Print Screen key to obtain Screen Captures.

1. Maximize the window you'd like to capture.
2. To copy/capture the current window, hold down ALT + Print Scrn at the same time. To capture the entire screen, just press Print Scrn.
3. Open a new document in MS Word, MS Photo Editor, or Adobe PhotoShop.
4. Paste the screen shot by holding down CTRL and V at the same time.
5. Print the document when you're finished pasting screen shots.

Macs prove more versatile because the screen captures are automatically saved as files in the PICT format - Apple's version of Microsoft's BMP. This file is created when one presses Command plus Shift plus 3. To save just the window you want, hold down Command plus Shift plus 4 plus caps lock. Now you can open any window and make a copy by holding down the Control key and clicking inside it.

Q How can I can disable the Print Screen function to prevent users from copying images to the clipboard?

A. Windows implements Print Screen using a registered hotkey. Windows uses the predefined hotkeys IDHOT_SNAPDESKTOP and IDHOT_SNAPWINDOW to handle Print Screen. These correspond to Print Screen, which captures the entire screen, and Alt+Print Screen, which captures only the active window. To disable these functions all you have to do is register the hotkeys, which causes Windows to send your app a WM_HOTKEY message when the user presses either hotkey. Your implementation can ignore the message to bypass the default screen-capture behavior. A good place to do it is in your mainframe class.

The ALT-PRINTSCREEN captures the active window. If you had a dialog box open and wanted that image only, ALT-PRINTSCREEN will only capture that part, while PRINTSCREEN captures the entire monitor screen's view. If there is only one window open (blue title bar at top), then ALT-PRINTSCREEN essentially does the same as PRINTSCREEN.

In Windows, you can capture only the active display by pressing Alt and the Prt Scr key. That key is usually to the right of the function keys at the top of the keyboard. Or, by pressing the Control key and Prt Scr, the entire screen showing the currently selected window and all other stuff can be acquired.

In either case, these moves create a file in the highly detailed BMP format, holding a pixel-by-pixel version of the page at the precise time the keys were pressed. The BMP file is held in the computer's memory, so one needs to paste it into some kind of a program that accepts photos, like the Paint program in Windows or flavors of Photoshop.

Popular posts from this blog

How to Download Contacts from Facebook To Outlook Address Book

Facebook users are not too pleased with the "walled garden" approach of Facebook. The reason is simple - while you can easily import your Outlook address book and GMail contacts into Facebook, the reverse path is closed. There's no "official" way to export your Facebook friends email addresses or contact phone numbers out as a CSV file so that you can sync the contacts data with Outlook, GMail or your BlackBerry. Some third-party Facebook hacks like "Facebook Sync" (for Mac) and "Facebook Downloader" (for Windows) did allow you to download your Facebook friends' names, emails, mobile phone number and profile photo to the desktop but they were quickly removed for violation of Facebook Terms of Use. How to Download Contacts from Facebook There are still some options to take Friends data outside the walls of Facebook wall. Facebook offers the Takeout option allowing you to download all Facebook data locally to the disk (include

PhishTank Detects Phishing Websites by Digg Style Voting

OpenDNS, a free service that helps anyone surf the Internet faster with a simple DNS tweak , will announce PhishTank today. PhishTank is a free public database of phishing URLs where anyone can submit their phishes via email or through the website. The submissions are verified by the other community members who then vote for the suspected site. This is such a neat idea as sites can be categorized just based on user feedback without even having to manually verify each and every submission. PhishTank employs the "feedback loop" mechanism where users will be kept updated with the status' of the phish they submit either via email alerts or a personal RSS feed . Naturally, once the PhishTank databases grows, other sites can harness the data using open APIs which will remain free. OpenDNS would also use this data to improve their existing phishing detection algorithms which are already very impressive and efficient. PhishTank | PhishTank Blog [Thanks Allison] Related: Google

Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is a popular tech blog by  Amit Agarwal . Our popular Google Scripts include  Gmail Mail Merge  (send personalized emails with Gmail ),  Document Studio (generate PDFs from Google Forms ) and   File Upload Forms ( receive files  in Google Drive). Also see  Reverse Image Mobile Search , Online Speech Recognition and Website Screenshots , the most useful websites on the Internet.