any free screen capture software?

[brianluce]

It'd make tech support so much easier to email the screens to techies. Any good freebies out there?

[brian.wells]

I take it that you are working with windows and not mac, which has some really great screen capture tools (i.e. select an area of the screen to capture) built into the operating system. What you can do for free on a Windows box is hit the PRINT SCREEN button and paste the screen capture into a free open source image editor, such as the Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/windows/), for cropping. Hope that helps

[brianluce]

The Gimp rocks!!!

[Barry_Green]

Try download.com, you'll probably find something.

[Tom Marshall]

Irfanview has screen capturing ability. If you've never used the program, it's probably the best free image viewer there is. You can also do basic manipulations with it as well as file type conversions (eg convert a tiff file to a jpeg, etc).

http://www.irfanview.com/

[Gord.T]

I just tried this one.My first try had some issues, the second try was okay.

Also, the avi file created is not viewable using VLC but is okay played with Windows Media Player. Probably because I used the Microsoft Video 1 compressor.
Its free and does not expire.

Look under Free Programs...AutoScreenRecorder 2.0 Free

http://www.wisdom-soft.com/downloads/downloadfiles.htm

[brianluce]

I just tried this one.My first try had some issues, the second try was okay.

Also, the avi file created is not viewable using VLC but is okay played with Windows Media Player. Probably because I used the Microsoft Video 1 compressor.
Its free and does not expire.

Look under Free Programs...AutoScreenRecorder 2.0 Free

http://www.wisdom-soft.com/downloads/downloadfiles.htm

that's an interesting one, it captures video I guess, not just frame grabs.

[cinealma]

Try Gadwin. Freeware. I use it all the time. Can capture to clipboard, file or printer.

[killa]

i can advice one cool prog but its not free...have demo without timelimit-
-Screen VidShot.
i use it now and do not complane...advice you to try...

[MasterP]

No need for other applications (unless you want to get fancy that is)
For the generic tech support help-type stuff:

In windows:
1. Click in the window you want to take a shot of
2. Alt+Print Screen (captures the screen)
3. Open MS paint and hit Ctrl+V (paste)
4. Save it as a .jpeg and email
:)

You can also select a section of the pasted screenshot and cut it out in paint (ctrl+x) then select file -> New, and paste it into the new file
Save it as a jpeg and you are set!

[Anhar Miah]

In the past when using printscreen on some videos, they do not get captured, they just turn into a black box. I think for those situation you would need some kind of decent screen cap utility.