Hi guys,
Taking a screenshot of your desktop or any other screen.... i can do.
But now i'm looking at taking a screen shot my 'login screen'.... i've a few and wanted to record them.
But!!! how do i do this??
Every man to there own.... and i have no idea how to do this.
I welcome any replies.
Thanks.

Hello Starbuck,

Have you tried any of these http://www.snapfiles.com/Shareware/gmm/swscreen.html

HI Startbuck

If by screenshot you are using "Print Screen" ( button next to F12 ) then this will work with any "Login Screen" I've used it many times, to get more of the screen capture press F11 before "Print Screen" then F11 again. The only thing that you will have to temporary write down is the password. Once you have pressed "Print Screen" open up "Paint" then paste in there, Save it; give it a cryptic name if you are using a shared PC and not "My Login Bank Detail"

Thanks for the replies, i'll try these out and let you know.

it can be done in MSPaint, Prt Scrn next to F12 btn > open MSPaint, > edit > paste > file > save as > .jpg or .gif

Sorry, I don't think that i've explained myself clearly.
An ordinary 'screenshot' i can take... no problem.
What i'm after is a way to take a screenshot of the actual login screen.
Where you click to sign into your account! (where all the users login)
An ordinary screenshot won't work here because you are not signed in..... so your account isn't active.
I've seen pics of this in tutorials on 'windows' ... so it must be possible somehow. (or are they just pics, pasted together)

Few ideas:
1.Use a virtual machine (although it's a pain if you don't have one set up already)
2.I'm almost certain that there are some applications running at the login screen even without a user logged in. Maybe you could add a screenshot utility to that service list and work from there?

Edit: Now that I think of it, point #2 may be unlikely.

Hello Starbuck,

When I first read your initial post and understood the environment you were describing, I searched using Google. Most of the Google hits seemed to conclude that it couldn't be done or claimed you needed extra software. However, I did find the following:

"Screenshot of Windows XP login" -- see response #7 by Ender:

http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-x...gin/141998.html

The procedure is somewhat tedious, but I tried it and it does work. A quote of that procedure follows:

QUOTE

1) Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to open the Windows Task Manager. Click on the Processes tab and highlight Explorer.exe. Click "End Task" in the lower right. You will be presented with a warning, which you should select yes on.

2) If everything worked, your taskbar and desktop should have disappeared. Don't worry, it's temporary. In the Task Manager, go to the File menu and select New Task. In the resulting input box, type "logonui" and click OK. The logon screen should now appear behind the Task Manager. At this point, go ahead and take your screenshots. You can open Paint by typing "mspaint" into the New Task box.

3) Once you have finished taking and saving the screenshots, select "logonui.exe" in the process list in the Task Manager and click End Task. This will close the logon screen. Finally, go to File and New Task. Type "Explorer" into the text box and click OK. Your taskbar and desktop should now re-appear.

(NOTE: In the steps above, "End Task" should probably be "End Process".)

http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/7263/scrn001aqx4.png

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/758/scrn002aww5.png



But since the above post by Ender is somewhat old, out of curiosity I tried the "normal" method ("Shift+PrintScreen") on an XP Professional Service Pack 3 system (with all Microsoft updates installed). The "Shift+PrintScreen" method does work on XP Pro SP3, with the limitation that you can capture only one screenshot (i.e., one instance of pressing "Shift+PrintScreen") at each boot/logon sequence (because you need to wait for the logon to finish before you can start the 'Paint' program to paste & save the screenshot).

http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/4660/qck001aep2.png

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/4859/qck002ank4.png

http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/5573/qck003aac7.png

You'll note though, that the screens are slightly different. Using Ender's method, the "Turn off computer" option at the bottom-left of the screen does not appear, while it does appear during a normal boot/logon.



Perhaps there was a limitation in earlier incarnations of XP (i.e., original, SP1, SP2) with respect to the "Shift+PrintScreen" functionality at logon, but evidently that limitation doesn't exist anymore in XP.

If you are using Vista, things may be different. You might want to try the Vista variation of the method described by Ender above. I haven't used Vista, so I can't give you any more specific directions.

NOTE: The only thing I couldn't get to work on XP Pro SP3, using either of the methods above (i.e., the one by Ender or "Shift+PrintScreen") was to capture a screenshot of the "Classic NT" logon screen that you can access by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del twice in succession when the standard XP "To begin, click your user name" screen appears. Perhaps you need to use a variation of Ender's method specifying the name of the program that is responsible for that "Classic NT" logon, but I don't know the name of that program.

Hi M...

Have only just got in from work, so will try these suggestions tomorrow.
As i have m/c's running XP and Vista.... i'll give both of these a try.
Sounds very encouraging though.
Thanks for the time you took in replying.
I'll let you know tomorrow how the Vista procedure goes.

Hi M...
I can see that i'm going to have to play with this a bit:
The instructions you posted.... work fine with Xp.
except that it brings up the 'original XP' logon screen.
I use 'Logon Studio' to change my logon screen.... but the current one doesn't Open. ( only the original one)
Think i'll have to go look in the registry for an entry.

As far as Vista is concerned..... the instructions are not working.
Will have to play with this and see if i can find the Vista reg entry.

Thanks for the suggestions.... it's given me something to work with.

Hello Starbuck,

I think that, in the end, the advice given by aommaster above (to use a virtual machine environment) is probably the best and only way to capture screenshots of some of the more "impossible" screens (i.e., those that appear very early during installation/boot/startup, or those that appear very late during logoff/shutdown, or maybe even those that appear due to a system crash caused by a software problem).

I did find the following very interesting site containing screenshots of many of the "states" of various versions of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) -- I'd forgotten how primitive the earliest versions of Windows look when judged by today's standards. Click the "screenshots" tab and then select the interface and version you want to view:

"Graphical User Interface Gallery Guidebook":

http://www.guidebookgallery.org/index

The technique the author used to produce all the screenshots was to use virtual machines. See the "Technical Details" section at:

http://www.guidebookgallery.org/site/about