Tag Archives: XP

Screen Captures

Posted on by

I have had a few people ask me what is the key that says Prt Scrn for? Well, in the olden days it used to be that you would press that key and whatever was on the screen would be printed.

Now it is used to capture a picture of the screen and sends it to the clipboard. There are two options for the capture:

  1. To capture everything on the screen, press the Prt Scrn key.
  2. To capture only the currently active window, press Alt and Prt Scrn keys at the same time.

You will have to save your capture to a graphics program to save it.

XP’s built in Paint or, if it is installed, Microsoft Photo Editor would be the cheapest means of accomplishing the save. You could also use any program capable of pasting your screen capture and saving it such as Paint Shop Pro, IrfanView, etc.

There are more capable screen capture programs available, both free and paid, with a lot more options.

For more information search Google for “screen capture software”.

I use Gadwin PrintScreen 2.6, the latest release, I believe it is 3.1, is available at gadwin.com and is a freeware product.

Organizing Your PC Part 2

Posted on by

As you know from Organizing Your PC Part 1, I like to have all the screen space possible available. To further do this I utilize the Quick Launch Toolbar, the Taskbar and the Desktop Toolbar. Using these makes everything I need readily available but, does not use up my screen real estate. These areas are shown in the image below:

I will just give you a brief description of these areas at this time, and will go more in depth about how I got them the way they are in subsequent posts in this series.

The Quick Launch Toolbar contains all the items I regularly use and need accessible. Not all the icons shown on the Quick Launch Toolbar are standard from Windows, some I have changed to reflect something of significance to me.

The Taskbar shows me the Windows I currently have open, both minimized and maximized. I don’t need that much space and will explain why later on.

The Desktop Toolbar contains all the items on that are on my desktop , which are hidden from view, as explained in Part 1 of the series. I have it shrunk down as far as it can go but, I can still access everything by clicking on the double right facing chevrons (>>).

More on each of these in the next installment of the series.

As an update on my hurricane shutters, they are now telling me that they should be installed June 9th. That should work out well.

C:BPCA News and Recovering Missing Toolbars

Posted on by

First of all the May 2006 edition of C:BPCA News has been sent out.

It is also available in PDF format at http://snipurl.com/BPCA_News (Note: link no longer valid)

Hurricane Wilma

Secondly, as I was writing this entry, the man from the shutter company arrived to make the final measurements for the hurricane shutters I have ordered.

The day of Hurricane Wilma is when they were first supposed to come out and give me an estimate. Of course, that did not happen. It was November before they could take the initial measurements and then it took until late December to get the architectural approval from the condo association.

Luckily, the price has stayed the same, but with the shortage of materials and labor, the last time I talked to the company they thought we were looking at sometime in the late fall for installation.

Hopefully, with the final measurements now taken so that they can be manufactured, my shutters can be installed prior or right at the beginning of this year’s hurricane season. Hurray!!!!

Tip

Lastly, my wife called me all in a panic yesterday because she could not see the toolbar in Outlook that has the icons for creating a new message, printing a message, etc.

She thought she had totally messed up the company computer.

I calmed her down and told her it is not a big deal, she must have just slipped with the mouse and turned off the toolbar.

Sure enough, I told her to look at the menu bar, find where it says View, left click on it, then left click on Toolbars, and then make sure that the Standard toolbar has a check next to it. Mission accomplished.

In most cases, if a toolbar is missing, visiting the View menu and experimenting with turning various toolbars on and off should recover it for you. You might even run across a useful toolbar you didn’t even know existed because it wasn’t turned on by default.

Most of the newer software has a lot of optional toolbars, that can be helpful, once you know about them.